One of the little toes I assume you mean. A break of the big toe can be serious.
Or to really enjoy them.
Actually, back when I was in high school/college, I removed several warts on my own by cutting into them with a blade. The job I did was less painful, and left less scarring than the ones that I had removed by a doctor. And, my job had a lower percentage of “return of wart” than the doctors.
I bet you could do your own vasectomy with the right tools after watching about 2 of them. Slice, pull, snip, cauterize, tuck, sew.
The high cost of medical care may be one reason why some folks won’t go to the doctor.
Last fall my husband, who is 54 years old, went in for a comprehensive physical exam for the first time in his life. He has always been an astoundingly healthy person, and the only previous times he’d ever received medical care were minor outpatient surgeries (wisdom teeth extracted and a sebaceous cyst excised, more than 20 years ago). I nagged him mercilessly about the need for a thorough medical checkup. Every time I read in the paper that a middle-aged man had a heart attack or a stroke, I crafted a nag session out of the news. Finally, after my husband’s best friend had a heart attack, my guy decided that maybe he wasn’t immortal, and he made an appointment.
The good news: he got a clean bill of health. The bad news: we are out a couple thousand bucks for physician fees, lab tests, x-rays, and et ceteras. Given our economic status, I doubt that I will be able to convince my husband to go back to the doctor unless an emergency exists.
I’m not going to quote you, Trunk, because I don’t think that needs to be said again…ever again. Cauterize?!
Why am I reluctant to see a doctor? Because I’m not sick. When I went to the doctor with the flu a few years back, his advice was bedrest, fluids, OTC medication. I got my very sick self (it really was a flu, not just a bad cold) out of the house only to be told to do the things I was already doing? Thanks, next time I’ll just hit WebMD.
If it doesn’t require a scalpel, it doesn’t require a doctor.
I would venture to guess it’s because most guys are trained by society to fix things that are broken. We learn how to fix things that are broken.
Take the car into the garage to change a flat? Maybe once — and then you say, hell, I could’ve done that. What’s that tool there? I’ll get me one of those. A jack, you say? And in what order do I put the lug nuts back on?
Go to the doctor six or seven times and hear the same thing: lose weight, quit smoking, drink more water, get plenty of rest. Hell… I could’ve done that.
Of course, one time in a hundred it really is serious and requires a special medication, or surgery, but mostly we don’t go because we think we know what’s wrong and what to do.
I get this explanation all the time, working in medical billing. “I didn’t open the bill because I thought that insurance was supposed to pay that. I didn’t call you and tell you my insurance information because I thought you knew. I didn’t call my insurance company because I thought that was somebody else’s responsibility.” In short, thinking it’d go away if you just ignored it.
I’m never reluctant to see a doctor, provided I can afford to. Sometimes I can’t. (And I’m solidly middle-class.)
I take it you don’t have health insurance? My physicals are free, except for the $15 copay. Before that, when I had a health spending account plan, they were flat out free, and didn’t count against the health spending account.
In the future, save yourself some trouble. At 54, he needs a regular prostate exam, and maybe cholesterol/LDL/HDL/triglycerides check. (I suppose you could do the prostate exam, but my wife won’t go there and I don’t want her to. 
) I can’t think of anything else, other than a reqular eye exam, in case macular degeneration is setting in. With no insurance, that should run maybe $250 and he really only needs one every few years. He can monitor his own blood pressure.
Agreed on all accounts. It’s a pain in the ass to do it, it costs money, and it has no benefit. WebMD is free, easy, and I can do it from home. So the question is why SHOULD I go to a doctor?
I don’t think it’s exclusive to men.
I have not yet tried Web MD. I prefer to go to Urgent Care rather than see my doctor, which requires an appointment that I might not be able to get for that day, or I’ll have to take off of work, or I’ll be in there for two or more hours before I actually see him. I can get the same care and meds via U.C. in a shorter amount of time, seven days a week, evenings too.
Come to think of it…some faculty on my campus are permitted to use the student health center as well, which is the same as U.C., so I could go there if it’s during the week.
Just how scared are straight men of getting a prostate exam? It’s one finger up there for a few moments, it’s not like being fucked.
I am pretty resistant to going to doctors because 15 years of the naval hospital taught me that the navy considers every single spouse to be there looking for attention because hubby is out to sea and we are lonely. If I felt the tickle of pain in my back that corresponded to a kidney infection, I would wait until it was patently obvious [dead white face, dark sunken eyes, blood in urine] because if I didnt, I got ignored. [I am asymptomatic with bladder infections and it takes getting the start of back pain to indicate I have an infection going on.] I have diagnosed PCOS, but I have to get seasonale offline because I had my tubes tied and they wont prescribe it for me because I can’t get pregnant and using it to totally supress my menses is not something they do. I personally think it is rediculous for me to bleed out and go through labor monthly if I am not producing the spawn of Satan [or my husband, whichever comes first] The only time I got any real response from them was when I mentioned that the little pea sized lump was now ping pong ball sized in about 30 days…
I just went [feb 3d] to a doctor because the pain in my foot that didnt go away was keeping me from being able to walk. Turns out I managed to break my 5th metatarsal. When I mentioned to the doc in a box a few aches and pains from my joints being more or less about the same as the broken bone, he decided to run blood work on me, and it turns out you could sharpen my head and use me on a chalkboard - my calcium and vitamin D levels are so out of whack he sent me to an endo who has told me that my parathyroids are pissed off at me and making my life hell…now I am being run through a lot of diagnostics so she can figure out how serious it actually is [wed was teh parathyroid scan and today was teh dexascan for bone density] so at least not all docs think women are hypochondriacs looking for attention!
Just make sure when you are gettting this done, the doctor doesn’t have BOTH hands on your shoulders…
I’m reluctant because, most of the time, there’s nothing they’re going to do for me. Sometimes they might give me antibiotics which I’m probably not going to take, but most of the time they’re going to say “sorry, nothing we can do”. In fact, the few times that I have gone they haven’t even said that much…they just pretended to be interested and then said they could refer me to someone else if I wanted.
I hate the doctor because I know that if I ignore it chances are it’d go away.
Or it’d almost be dead. Whichever.
Oh, I wouldn’t say that - no more than mildly uncomfortable really.
I don’t go unless I am at death’s door, because I can’t afford it. I don’t have $250 a month for health insurance, let alone the thousands it would probably cost me to actually see a doctor.
I’ve only been once in the past 6 years, and that was when I had pneumonia and could barely breath anymore. Cost me $480 just to have some guy come in the room for 10 minutes and write me a prescription for some penicillin. The service to cost ratio is completely insane, in my opinion.
Not at all. I hardly ever go to the doctor but the prostate exam is no big deal.
If I’m sick I usually adopt the approach of “if it doesn’t clear up on its own in three weeks, then… I’ll wait another three weeks”. Going to the doctor is a lot of hassle in order to get treatment that is often of marginal benefit. Example: I went to the doctor with conjunctivitis. I subsequently learned that going to the doctor on average results in only about half a day faster recovery - so the next time I didn’t bother and it cleared up on its own.
I went to the doctor with lower back pain. He took X-rays and couldn’t see any problem. So I no longer go for that - I just do some exercises and it clears up.
There again, most women I know seem to go to the doctor at the drop of a hat and women do live longer on average…
Um, it’s not just us straight guys - cite 
Now, I don’t actually keep track of the sexual orientation of all the posters around here, but I also don’t think this is a big secret or anything.