Last time I got lectured by my doctor about not coming in until my WBC level was through the roof ;). As I age I’ve been working on gaining a better happy medium between neanderthal-male-stoicism and jumpy hypochondria.
I go to the dentist regularly, every six months, for regular cleaning and inspections.
But I go to the doctor only when I’m feeling bad for a specific reason, rot for regular checkups.
I went in April because the effects of a lingering cold were gettin me down. I almost never get colds, so I was worried. Then the blookwork showed my blood sugar was too high, so I will be going every so often for a while, to monitor that.
I go when I’m sick or feeling crap, of course. There is no cost involved and getting things addressed sooner, rather than later makes good sense. Clearly I go more often now that I’m older. I also use the TeleHealth line and speak to a nurse, if I’m unsure. Sometimes they just direct you straight to urgent care, saves time for everybody.
Now that I’m ‘of a certain age’, I am enlisted, due to family history, in screening programs for, breast, ovarian and clon cancer. I get prompted yearly to get screened, it’s nearby, no cost, pretty easy really!
I know someone that went to a doctor b/c they had a ‘rash’ and the doctor said poison ivy and send the guy home . 2 weeks later the rash had spread and the doctor said ’ scabies’. By that time the guy had given scabies to a lot people . You can get scabies anywhere , even going to the movie or trying on clothes in a store. :eek:
I went to my gyno this year. I will be 40 in November. She says, “You’re going to be 40! Would you like to schedule your mammogram?”
…If I must. Great bday present!
When I do need to go to hospital for tests or whatever, I have to admit St. Peter’s Hospital around here is wonderful. They are a Catholic hospital but absolutely respectful of people like me. The very first time I went (10+ years ago) for a test, they asked me once if I had any religion preference. I marked “atheist” on the clipboard.
Never since then have they ever asked me again. And they are nice and respectful.
But some things you just never go for. I don’t have asthma but periodically - like once a month - I have extreme shortness of breath. This happens for just a few minutes. It’s concerning, but I am not going to the doctor unless I can replicate it for him! Same as with the aches and pains. I don’t have a lot, but there are definitely more than there used to be!
But as I grow older, I find I am more willing to go.
I’ve had enough on-going conditions (BP) and serious incidents (stroke) that I’m very cool with doctors. Plus I have one I really like and have had good results with. So for me the deciding factor is “is how I feel/what I have effecting my life”. Two days of not doing what I want because of how I feel or some skin issue or whatever and I’m on the phone and looking for an open appointment.
I agree with **edwardcoast **up in post #24.
They’re pros in business to see people. If I have an issue, I go check it out with them.
Admittedly I have a slightly different standard to uphold than y’all; it’s illegal for me to go to work if I feel the least bit out of sorts or have damn near any chronic condition whatsoever. So I am very pro-active at getting stuff evaluated the instant it shows up.
DrCube’s rant in post #30 matches nothing in my experience as a child, as a member of the US military, or in the 30 years since then using private US healthcare.
Sometimes waiting room sits are longer than desired. I call ahead to ask how behind they are and try to obtain early AM appointments. I also fire doctors who don’t provide good customer service and replace them with somebody who does. I rarely wait even 15 minutes to be seen.
I have never had a claim for services denied by an insurance company. Nor have I had them deny a desired treatment up front. This includes the experience for my wife who is, sadly, a frequent flyer at the doctor / hospital. I / we show up, get worked on, I maybe spend a pittance on a co-pay, and somebody else picks up the rest of the tab no questions asked.
I understand that not everybody has this nice of an experience. But I’m here to tell you this experience absolutely is available in the US. I’ve lived in several cities over the years, and none seems much better or worse than the others. So it’s not just some local phenomenon.
I’m a secretary who works with a lot of doctors. They are all geniuses, and I have the utmost respect for them. Until there’s something wrong with me, and then I will tell you that doctors don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and I can handle it myself.
I still go now and then when my husband really wants me to. But the last time I went with an actual problem, it was a bunch of tests and then the blank stare teela described. So I diagnosed it myself with the internet…I was having TEXTBOOK ocular migraines. Was that so hard?
Anyhoo, these days I’m having frequent dizzy spells. They come and go, I’ve been having them for months, and they’re not very severe. There’s no way in hell I’m taking a vague complaint like that to the doctor.
I hope you stopped reading that textbook.
Luckily I have excellent insurance and a great medical center, so I go when something looks wrong for a couple of days. I seldom wait, but when I do I think that I’m probably waiting because someone with an emergency got put in before me. Since my wife was that person when her retina detached, I’ve been on the other side and don’t mind.
My PCP is great. And going to the doctor even when I thought it unnecessary probably saved my life.
I was donating blood one day and got rejected for a racy pulse. I’d never been rejected in over 40 years of donation. I had drunk a lot of Mountain Dew for lunch, so figured it was the caffeine. I scheduled an appointment with my doctor so that he could give me a note to donate again. Turned out I had AFib. It got caught and put under control before I had a heart attack, which at least saved money if not me.
I had pain in my arm and elbow and fingers. I figured arthritis. My doctor diagnosed it as a bad disk in my neck. An X-ray proved him right. Caught early it got fixed with physical therapy, no surgery required.
And my high fever early this year wasn’t a cold or flu but pneumonia. The right medicine had me feeling better in a day.
If you hate your doctor, get another one.
I’m very anxious about going to doctors. There pretty much has to be something wrong that might be life-threatening or cause permanent disability, or that I need a prescription refilled. If some problem might be my fault, I’ll tough it out longer than something that I can be pretty sure isn’t my fault.
And now I’ve been cured by a lawyer! 
I have a number of chronic conditions that require medications, so one criteria is: “are any of my prescriptions expiring?”.
Any truly unusual pain will send me in, e.g. recently I developed severe abdominal pain right where an ovary-gone-bad would be, and near where a septic appendix might be. Turned out to be neither - ligament damage or something from a fall a week or so before, and it go better on its own in a few weeks - but the ovary / appendix thing was potentially serious enough that it warranted the visit and testing.
An asthma flare will get me in quickly.
A bad rash such as described in the OP probably would get me in - even though “poison ivy” is usually not a big deal, you didn’t know that time (next time you will), if it’s widespread enough, a course of oral steroids can be nearly miraculous. When I was 9, I had poison ivy on my face - from playing with a fallen leaf in the fall - and really should have gone to the doctor but back then, you just toughed it out with Caladryl.
And of course there are a number of annual followup things that are sort of routine: gyn, gastro, dermatology (the derm does a scalp-to-toes lookover which would have caught that carcinoma on the scalp). I don’t know if I’d have bothered with going in because of the combing-hair annoyance actually, so in your shoes, if I didn’t have my annual thing I’d be dead by now :smack:
On the other hand, I’ve now had 2 or perhaps 3 sudden, severe, vertigo attacks lasting about a second each - a year or so apart. I told the doctor the next time I was in for something else (and lots of followup has so far turned up nothing at all… including a head MRI. Yep, they imaged my brain and found thing. Quit laughing.).
so to speak
OK, off-topic nag here, but, get the damn thing done.
I actually had mine as an afterthought. I’d turned 50, and a misdiagnosed drug side effect was behaving like massively worsening GERD. By the time I saw the gastroenterologist, that had been sorted out, but he recommended an endoscopy anyway because of the history of reflux. I said “well, I’m 50, while you’re at it…”. Long story short: northern end was fine, southern end brought the comment “I wouldn’t have wanted to see you go another 5 years with those polyps”.
I work in a medical clinic. I pretty much only book an appointment once a year (so I can get refills of my migraine meds if I need them) or if I have something that requires an antibiotic.
To the OP, deep calf pain is one I would not ignore. Throw a clot and you could die. Or worse.
That’s not good enough. If a basic function of normal life is giving you pains, there is something wrong. If your doctor treats you as unsympathetically as you describe, change your doctor.
Got that one scheduled already - I made the appointment after my initial consult last year when the little scalp spot first appeared.
And in the grand scheme of things, a colonoscopy really isn’t that big a deal. It’s not like it’s a weekly ordeal - 10 years apart (barring problems) is hardly worth worrying about. Yeah, drinking the “cleaning liquid” is not much fun, but the actual procedure, at least when I’ve had it done, is performed when you’re out. They hook you up to a sleepy IV, and when you wake up, it’s over.
Getting blood drawn is more of a trial for me - mostly because I have lousy veins, but that’s another story.
A friend with vertigo had the same thing happen. Of course, we teased her for a week about the brain MRI finding nothing.
Then she said that her doctor told her to sit on her bed, and fall back really hard “to push the little bones back into place”. And we laughed harder. We think she was describing this, but the doc may have really told her just what she said.
Yep, just pick one from the awfully short list your insurance will agree to pay.
My son-in-laws father did die from exactly this.