I Hate Doctors!

 

I HATE DOCTORS!!!

by very patient David L Lewis

Have you ever noticed you feel bad when any of those medical-type persons are around? It’s their fault! How many times does a fellow have to explain how good he was feeling just before a couple of strangers scooped him up and dumped him off at one of those doctor places? Then they ask you what is wrong. How would we know? Do doctors ever think it might just have been a bumpy ambulance ride, or those noisy sirens that caused all this?

One of the many things my father taught me is that if a man has earned the right to be called “doctor’ he has earned the right to be called ‘doctor”. [Yeah, okay, dad died never having met a woman doctor.] I’ve always attempted to treat doctors with the respect my father taught. However, I have been unceremoniously detained no less than fifty times in various hospitals. seen by so many medical-types even God has lost track, and now see doctors younger than my grandson. After a while an old man has made some observations worth sharing, with grievances justly elaborated on...

Did you know that doctors don’t even know everything? Imagine that! Remember when we were kids and our parents assured us doctors would know what was wrong and what to do? Maybe that was true in olden days. In the world we actually live-in there is more new stuff coming out every day than existed when I was young. My father died in 1966 of problems quickly and almost routinely dealt with in my lifetime. There’s just too much to know about the human body, too many variables as to what some drug, test, procedure which worked on others will work on this patient. Really liked it better when they knew everything – or we at least had parents who told us that.

They think we know what they’re talking about when they tell us what they know, as of now, about why we got there. Hey, a lot of us are just not all that bright. In writing it is called ‘the curse of knowledge’. That is, forgetting the hearer does not know what you know. Hate when any medical-type assumes we patients know what they know, more often than not we do not.

They always ask what do you “want” to do? I don’t want any of this stuff! As I used to tell clients, “If you knew what to do you wouldn’t be here.” Finding out what to do is why we trust you, doctor. Just tell me what you recommend and why. I’ll pretend to understand what you’re talking about and do it. And, if you ain’t worried, neither am I.

Doctors never remember every detail of what we’ve gone through. Remembering all that individual stuff we have to do ourselves. And, sometimes the doctor whom we see changes, and the new guy don’t know nothing about the trouble we’ve seen. Best they can do is to be familiar enough with our case to know we’ve gone though a lot of stuff. [BTW: Beware of doctor you’ve never seen before who hasn’t read your file. If he walks in the door not even knowing I was a heart patient, as has happened, we are both in trouble.]

All we are allowed to even ask of doctors is to believe they care what happens to me. Care enough to be familiar with our history, care enough to make us believe you care about the outcome. When they do those two things we will talk about what great doctors they are, and how much we love them. Come to think about it, that’s the kind of doctors I’ve [mostly] had. As Gilda Radner used to say on SNL, “Never mind”.