Wanna pass a medical exam? Get a fat old doctor. I wasn’t in the best shape when I went for my physical, but compared to my doctor, I was possibly godlike. The contrast was so great he gave me an advance on next year’s test, so I don’t have to come back for 2 years. Yep, fat doctors, that’s the key to good health advice.
…Or so I thought. It turns out, the “skip next year’s physical” idea might have been more of a way to avoid work. My legs have been bugging me (I can’t seem to manage more than a few weeks of training before I blow an ankle out or something), so I finally figured I should look into some kind of orthotics. (Ok, first I was looking for “implants”, but I knew that wasn’t right, so I asked about “inserts”, and while closer, it didn’t register with anyone, so apparently it’s orthotics I’m looking for, which are also different from prosthetics). I head over to the receptionist and try to make an appointment. She tells me that I need to speak to something called a “chiropodist”, and I should go to another counter (it’s a big medical complex). Don’t I need some kind of referral? No, she assures me, it’s all good. I get the appointment with the guy whose job sounds like a kind of bug, but when I get back to work it occurs to me to check what my health plan will cover. It turns out I do in fact need to see my doctor for a referral if I want to avoid paying for the insert thingies. Back to the office I go. This time the receptionist refers me to the sports medicine doctor, because my doctor apparently doesn’t do orthotic referrals.
I didn’t have a doctor for the longest time, and when I decided to get one, it took some work to find someone who was accepting new patients. Once I had one, it was a bit anticlimactic. I thought that it would infer some kind of power or something – like having a lawyer, but not quite as snobby. Could someone please explain to me what a doctor actually does? Someday I’m going to be talking to someone and they’ll let it slip that they’re the president’s personal physician, and I’ll be all over that charlatan.
My previous doctor would at least make stuff up – I’d ask hiim about some problem I’m having, and he’d always say something along the lines of “Hmmm, it could be zerfliganitrolia, but I don’t think that’s it, because that would also cause your brain to run out of your nose, so I think it’s probably the flu”. From my limited experience with the new guy, his diagnoses go like “if there’s no rash or swelling, it’s probably perfectly normal”. I swear, one of these days I’m going to go get a tatoo of a big mean rash and watch this guy flip out.