My Doctors Are Younger Than Me

How true. I’ve been living in Montreal for the last ten years and one of my co-workers told me that his GP is whoever he gets at the walk-in clinic. My wife and I got a family doc because a relative was a doc and was able to call in a favour from a colleague.

Sooner than we expect, sadly.

It seems that when my wonderful old doctor retired many years ago (he was incredibly good at what he did, and so looked the part that he could have played a doctor on TV) things started to change. I started growing older, and doctors grew younger. Now doctors are almost universally younger than me. My current doctor is a woman young enough to be my daughter. But she knows what she’s doing, and, like any good doctor, is a believer in doctor-patient collaboration. It’s all I ask.

I fear that Quebec is giving the entire Canadian health care system an unjustifiably bad image. Quebec is in so many ways the architect of its own misfortunes.

My mom went to our family dentist until he retired and his son took over the practice, and she stayed with the son. Until he retired… Sucks to look for a new dentist when you’re in your 80s.

I had to go to a dental specialist to have a growth in my gum biopsied (tested negative) and he and his assistant looked barely in their 20s. They offered music from their Spotify app and I was caught off guard. I had no idea what to request, so I just said “electronic music.”

You’re lucky to be worried about your doctor retiring first. My electrophysiologist recently died, and my pacemaker is 10 years old and on its last six months of battery life. I don’t mind driving with that little yellow warning on the fuel gauge, but my pacemaker is a little more problematic.

I’ve adjusted to young doctors, but young airline pilots freak me out.

Does the pacemaker have a light that turns on that you can stick some tape over? Always fixed my check engine light.

Yeah, I’m kind of the same way. I’m 48 with a wife an two small kids and a quarter of a million dollar a year tech company executive job but still kind of feel like a 30 year old who is technically but not quite mentally an adult.

But in a way, it’s kind of cool. i can roughhouse with my kids and help them convert our livingroom into a Lego cityscape. Back in the pre-Covid days, I can hang out with my 20/30/40-something coworkers, and every now and then, I can use my 30 years of experience to resolve some client issue because it’s probably not the shit-show their super-eager to please mind is making it out to be.

I can beat you all. Not only is my doctor younger than me by about 20 years, she isn’t even a doctor! She is a Family Nurse Practitioner. Before her my doc was a Physicians Assistant who was also younger than me. I don’t think I’ve seen an actual doctor for about 12 years.

I think that’s terrible. A nurse once asked me, “By any chance, are you still working?” I wish people weren’t so insensitive.