fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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A Doctor’s Visit

My new doctor enters the examining room where I have been waiting for him, seated on a rumpled paper sheet at the edge of a brown leather lounge chair. Behind the doctor’s blue mask, he is wearing a furrowed brow of worry.

This is my first visit to a doctor in more than ten years, but I am not apprehensive. I am fortunately healthy, and have been for years, but post the pandemic, if that’s indeed where we are, I figure it’s time to inquire about the status of my right wrist, which hurts and puffs up from time to time after it’s exercised. I am a writer and transcriber, and my wrist reacts adversely depending on how much work I do.

I just want confirmation that it’s carpal tunnel syndrome and not something else—and, along with that, I want to connect with a GP, because I’ve heard it’s wise to do so, to have a professional acquainted with your medical history in case of an emergency. It’s what people do.

This GP is situated on the main street of a town in Ohio, a few miles away from the community where I have been living since ending my second marriage and deciding to flee the East Coast for somewhere cheap to do what I have always wanted to do, write. He was recommended by a friend who also rarely sees doctors.

My new doctor is handsome and fit, somewhere in his late fifties, with curly graying hair and wire rims. One look at his ring finger tells me his fingers are slightly swollen, although his hands and spatulate fingernails are immaculate, even before he turns to wash up in the corner sink. On this late May day, we are both wearing jeans and Nike sneakers.

I finish a work-related text and send it off and put aside my cell phone so as not to appear rude. Then, as if to make up for my momentary lapse, I pose what I consider to be a caring question, inquiring how the doctor’s year with COVID has been. Instead of getting the expected stock reply—something like, “Well, it was a struggle for us all, wasn’t it, I’m glad we’re past it”—my question elicits a torrent of unabashed, scorching complaints.

“Many of my patients got the virus, and it was overwhelming, mainly because there was absolutely no support from the local or federal government,” he says. “The government was slow to recognize the basic needs of the hospital workers—but then it focused exclusively on them.” Doctors in private practices, serving hard-hit communities like his, got no support whatsoever, and, while losing business, had to fend for themselves by paying for all COVID-related supplies like PPE.

He looks at me straight on. “It’s been awful.”

Standing to my right, the doctor slips down his blue paper mask to his chin to facilitate chatting. I keep my mask on the entire time.

“I got COVID early on,” he explains. “Every one of my office assistants also got it.”

“Are you planning to get the vaccine?” I ask.

None of them have been vaccinated or intend to get the vaccine.

“I check for antibodies all the time. I’m loaded with them,” he informs me. “Having antibodies works better than a vaccine that’s merely experimental. The CDC has its own agenda, trying to see everyone vaccinated. Anyway, the only people who really get COVID are those over age sixty-five who have multiple other conditions like obesity and diabetes.”

I mention instances where young, supposedly healthy people caught the virus and died.

He replies, “That’s because they didn’t know what to do then”—a comment that bears elaboration, although he offers none. He says the CDC just wants people vaccinated in order to have the numbers, “as if that will prove something.”

I ask whether he has thought of sending an email to our governor.

“Writing a letter of complaint to the governor is the last thing I want to do when I get home at night,” he replies. “Anyway, things are a little better now.”

He tells me he’s been a doctor thirty-five years. “Got into it for the right reasons, and of course when COVID came, I realized it was my job to help people. But ask me, would I do it again? No, I would not. I definitely would not. Do you know what it’s like knowing someone for years—my patients are like my family—and then having to tell someone they have cancer?”

He sighs and places his stethoscope on my chest and then on my back, while asking me to breathe in and out, then takes my right hand and turns it over, testing my wrist for agility and pain.

“You can get it X-rayed across the street if you want,” he says. Sure. Insurance is paying, and the proximity is convenient.

After my exam, which takes about five out of the fifteen or so minutes the doctor has been in the room talking with me, he studies me appraisingly, perhaps mentally going over what he has just said. A part of me wonders whether he is remorseful, feels his words may have betrayed his profession in some way. But this turns out not to be the case.

“It’s been very nice talking to you. Avoid seeing any doctors at all for as long as you possibly can” are his final words, and his only prescription.

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Arya F. Jenkins is a Colombian-American poet, writer and peace and social justice activist. Her poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in many journals and zines and have received several Pushcart Prize nominations. Her novel Punk Disco Bohemian was recently published by NineStar Press, and her short-story collection Angel in Paris & Other Stories is due out in 2022. She also serves as a disaster volunteer with the American Red Cross. “My Colombian mother wrote and published many fine short stories and books in English; her father, a judge, was also a writer. I became a newspaper and magazine journalist just out of college in the mid-1980s, and that whetted my appetite for all kinds of writing.” More at aryafjenkins.blogspot.com.

Comments

13 thoughts on “A Doctor’s Visit”

  1. I’m retired now, I was trained in Internal Medicine and eventually board certified in Urgent Care Medicine. Many times I’ve been frustrated and burned out. Never, ever did I inflict my emotions on a patient. This strikes me as pretty close to abuse. I’m sorry you had to endure that and in the end neglect of a further plan for your care.

  2. When looking for a doctor, ask any nurses you know who they go to. No nurse would tolerate the likes of the doc you saw.

  3. Thank you for a well-written portrait of a severely burned out PCP. His effect on you his new patient is clear even without you stating it.
    In response to Sally G, actually there is lab evidence that vaccine immunity is superior to natural immunity against variants, and a study just came out in August (published in CDC’s MMWR) showing double the risk of reinfection in unvaccinated people vs. vaccinated. I wonder if this doctor’s burnout clouded his judgment about vaccines. The pressure from insurers and governments to meet Quality Improvement targets for vaccinating and screening our patient panels, while keeping up with the umpty-ump other needs of our patients, adds a layer of stress to the incredibly complex job of primary care.

  4. Private-practice doctors are mistreated by what is now an industry; many are being forced to shutter practices in favor of a hospital staff position (insurance costs, both malpractice and claim run-arounds, ever-changing networks, etc.). I’m surprised he was so open; such honesty is rare. He is right about survivors’ antibodies likely being more effective than a vaccine, but the risk of a serious case is too great to trust to surviving. Obviously the comments about age and obesity are a gross oversimplification.
    I hope the X-ray went well.

  5. It’s nice to know that he had pretty fingernails. This guy sounds like a quack. Consider finding yourself a real doctor, one who believes in science.

  6. Russell Hostetler, MD

    That guy sounds like he would be as helpful as a screen door in a submarine. Move on, Ms. J! There are real doctors out there.

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