It never really hit home until I was sitting with a bunch of friends at a party and the subject of dermatologists came up. I was the only straight male in the group, and I sat silently as the others gushed about how much they loved, not liked, but loved, going to the dermatologist. After a while, I spoke up. “Ew,” I said. Unless there was a serious problem, why would anyone want to see a dermatologist? They looked at me like I had two heads. They liked some random guy poking and prodding them. They liked being examined. Ew.
I don’t like doctors. It bugs Dr. SJ to no extent, but I will only go to the doctors if there is a damn good reason to go. The greatest invention of medicine is urgent care, what we call “doc in a box,” where you go without an appointment with a specific complaint and the doc deals with the specific complaint and otherwise leaves you alone.
Dr. SJ insists I go to annual routine examinations. I tell her I’m fine and I don’t need to go. She tells me I’m foolish, which strikes me as beside the point. I tell her that even if wanted to, I have nowhere to go. I used to have a primary care physician, a young woman doc, but as she became more experienced and got more patients, she became more annoying. Instead of her seeing me as soon as I was put into a room, I got some high school kid asking me personal questions that were none of her business and with whom I had no interest in engaging.
When the doc finally deigned to show, after a half hour of my life was lost forever, she gave me 3 minutes of quality time telling me generic nonsense about weight and cholesterol, as if I planned to spend the rest of my life eating veggies and statins. I felt fine, just as I had at my last exam, ten years earlier. And if I was about to drop dead, so be it. We all have to go sometime.
But the last straw was when I had a medication that required refills, and when the script ran out and I needed a refill, as both the doc and I knew it would, I was informed by the very official receptionist that I had to come to the office for a visit first. I did, and after sitting in the exam room and telling the high school kid with the clipboard that I already answered the questions three months ago and had no interest in doing so again, was met by a PA who refilled the script. I then got a bill for $150 for an office visit that I neither wanted nor needed. Guess where that bill ended up?
In the New York Times, a woman named Jancee Dunn explains why men don’t go the doctors. Of course it was a woman writing about why men do or don’t do things, because who would know better? She uses her husband and his father as her lead in.
Last year, my husband Tom received this memorable text from his father: “FYI, getting brain surgery tomorrow. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
This was the first we had heard about his brain surgery. When Tom phoned his dad and asked why he wasn’t told sooner, my father-in-law had a clear explanation: He’d delayed his visit for so long that, when he finally saw a doctor, his symptoms had progressed and he was immediately booked for the procedure. (Happily, he fully recovered and is fine.)
To put this into man words, he didn’t go to the doc until he had good reason. And it all worked out fine, although it wouldn’t have changed anything if it hadn’t.
It appears that this is a shared trait among the men in my family. Over the summer, my husband pretended an abscess on his back didn’t exist until it resembled a dolphin’s dorsal fin, and he ended up in Urgent Care, still protesting that it was probably a bug bite.
And buried in her biased presentation of post hoc revisionism is the point, that until Tom knew it wasn’t a bug bite and required medical care, it didn’t. We get a million bumps and bruises in life. We wake up feeling a pain every morning and, by midday, it’s gone. Problem solved. Go to a doc and they’ll want to take x-rays, an MRI, send you to a specialist and stick a finger up your butt. Have you heard the sound of latex snapping from behind you? It’s not pleasant.
But avoidance can make the anxiety and fear worse, said Nora Brier, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. And if a patient waits until symptoms are severe, “it does tend to propagate a stigma that they should be scared of the doctor’s office,” Dr. Bajic said.
I’m going to take a leap of faith and assume “Nora” is a woman. Another woman explaining why men do things. I’m shocked. But is it “anxiety and fear,” or is it just the annoyance, the wasted time, the needless cost and the fact that physicians always seem to find some anticipatory procedure or medication for a problem you don’t have. Does the doc always tell you to do, or not do, something, even though you’re only there for an exam?
After the prescription refill fiasco, I dropped her as my PCP. I asked Dr. SJ if she had someone else to be my new PCP, and she gave me a name of a physician she thought was excellent. Her office was almost an hour away, which was almost an hour too far, but I called to find out whether she would be the type of doc I could live with. Her officious receptionist informed me that I could not question the doc as to her bona fides, as to whether I wanted her to be my primary care physician, but had to come in for an office visit. I hung up the phone. No one lives forever.
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This male perspective didn’t start with “Turn your head and cough” but that certainly helped solidify it.
I had shoulder surgery at the VA after my Afghanistan tour. In four consults over 8 months I met the surgeon for a grand total of 7 minutes before he cut me.
His staff assured me he was a world- class Ortho. Former NFL team surgeon they said.
I asked a close friend who is an OB/GYN and she said “yup, sounds like an ortho.”
Their version of a dermatologists is totally different from mine.
I see him every six months and after every office visit I have blisters from getting spots frozen off.
Every third visit or so, I have to get a follow up appointment to have skin removed and stitches put in.
I hate the wasted time in the waiting room, the repeated inane questions by a bored tech, the answers which will never be read by anyone.
I know this post isn’t about dermatologists but you hit a sore spot, literally.
If I’m reading this correctly, what happened when you needed the next prescription refill?
A choice had to be made. I made it.
So you chose to go without and your doc chose to let you go without rather than not get her fee for an office visit.
That cheap stuff from Mexico is great stuff. Good choice.
Laetrile isn’t cheap.
The “office visit” could be a function of your state laws. Elsewhere around the country, there are “teledocs” aplenty who can manage to put in a script without actually seeing you.
As far as trips to the doctor, I do the annual physical and apart from that, only for problems. But the annual physical is something I probably wouldn’t do if I had to drive an hour. I think my whole family’s attitude on this comes from my parents and grandparents. In their day, doctors were pretty scarce, and the ones that were accessible here in the flats were here because they had a problem. Usually, a poorly controlled or uncontrolled alcohol problem. When a doctor was needed to deliver a baby, there or four men would go with a car to sober one of the doctors up and bring him. For things like cold and flu, people used home remedies. For punctures and lacerations, horse linament and peroxide, with home stitching as necessary, and maybe a consultation with a veterinarian if it was really bad.
Nowadays, medicine is a lot better than that, at least in the urban centers. For people in the rural areas, it may still be the old rules, plus now the option of a hellishly expensive helicopter ride if they need to get to a real hospital. Doctors still can’t do much about colds and flu, or old age, for that matter, and a major heart attack or stroke will still take someone even if they go to the doctor every day. Eventually, something gets us all.
I’m printing this article and taping it to the frau’s bathroom mirror. Maybe she will come to an understanding that I’m not the only man in the world who avoids doctors until level 8 or 9 pain is involved. Especially VA doctors. More likely she will sympathize with Dr. SJ, but a guy can hope.
I showed this to my wife. She didn’t get it, said our doctor wasn’t like wanting to see you every time you needed a script refill or wasting your time (which I always do sit at least a half hour when I can’t avoid going)…. Completely missed the point.
All I got for the effort was an arched eyebrow and, “When was the last time you had a physical?” I’m a slow learner.
You knew it wouldn’t go well.
I had a great uncle who served in the Great War of 1914-1918. He had plenty of money, and multiple relatives cautioned me never to tell him he could get care at the VA, because he would have. It’s not all bad, but some VA facilities are a lot better than some others, and you really have to do your research if that is your medical help.
I’m a 63 year old man. In 1979 I joined the Navy. At that time I was age 19, weighed 98 pounds, had a high, squeaky voice, and no facial hair. (We didn’t see the doc much, where I was raised in rural Idaho. The doc was 50 miles away. If the condition wasn’t life threatening, we took care of it ourselves, or ignored it.) During the induction physical, it was finally discovered that I possess a condition that prevents my body from producing testosterone naturally. The Navy docs put me on testosterone replacement therapy, which I’ve been taking ever since.
Fast forward to January 2023; testosterone prescription needs refilling. New PCP, same insurance carrier since 1984. Old insurance carrier and new PCP decide I don’t “need” testosterone replacement, based on a single, high blood testosterone test. After a week of no testosterone I’m having hot flashes and mood swings that would rival any of those experienced by an age 50-something menopausal woman. Subsequent blood testosterone test reveals testosterone levels now well below normal. New PCP asks; “what happened?” I replied; “this is what happens when I don’t take supplemental testosterone.”
It’s not only the docs. It’s the entire medical system we’ve created. The current system exists not for the patient, but for the drones who operate and benefit from it.
That your new PCP had to ask…
The Navy doc was an old captain named Poole. After a cursory examination, Poole said; “I know exactly what’s wrong with you. We’ll take some blood tests to be certain, but I’ll start you on testosterone right now.” I began to feel the effects within 24 hours.
Yes, that the new PCP had to ask. Therein lies the irony.
You forgot dentists. The Best and the Brightest did not flock to Bakersfield in my early years. Smelled a lot of alcohol in my youth.
I am sure that Marathon Man is a documentary .
Did I forget or is this not a post about dentists and your comment would do well on s/dentalhate.
SHG, your remarks reveal that you’ve lived a pretty healthy life.
I just made a little list of the doctors who have me on automatic for visits at intervals ranging from 90 days to a year. Oncologist, Urologist, Ophthalmologist, Cardiologists (2), Dermatologist, Dentist, and VA PCP. Once they’ve saved your life a time or two, you get more accepting.
I have enjoyed generally good health, for which I am thankful.
Many older men in my acquaintance are not in good health, for reasons largely self-inflicted, have multitude medical appointments, and will not stop running their yaps about the details. It’s like Chinese water torture. Why do they talk about it? So routinely I cut our interactions short. I doubt they realize they do it.
OTOH you and I have always been compatible.
Things being what they are, that’s really the only hope.
The only reason I kept going to the Dr for a while was to keep the FAA class II medical certificate. Even with that, I was always worried, what are they going say/find that will ground me. My military friends tell me they have the same concerns, nothing good ever comes from seeing the flight surgeon.
Boss, we might be a world apart but the problems are exactly the same.. Luckily for the system, the two women in my house more than make up for my total lack of doctors visits.
Once they can get you to take one medicine, you will need more to counteract the side effects! Eventually one of them will kill you I reckon. Its a great scam once its running.
My Mother was an old fashioned diploma nurse. Her philosophy which I’ve adopted for the most part was stay away from medicine as much as possible and if hospital visit is required she would be on a stretcher.
To be fair she died at 59 but I think she was right about measuring how much visiting medical practitioner’s contributed to quality of life
Another tough guy I know refused to go to the hospital because he didn’t have a good reason. When he finally went he learned he had late stage cancer. He was dead two weeks later. There isn’t any inherent virtue in stubborn ignorance, be it legal, medical, or political.
Nothing is more convincing than your one anecdote. This changes everything.
I write to persuade the closed minded. Thanks for the validation.
Is Dr. Pepper actually an MD?
Asking for a friend.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Charles Taylor Pepper (December 2, 1830 – May 28, 1903) was an American physician and surgeon, who is often cited as the namesake for the soft drink brand Dr Pepper.
He’s a fizz-ician Hal
Although people practice risk management in their daily lives, it is often suspended when doctors are involved.
Good things can happen when you go to the doctor. But bad things can happen too. The odds are hard to know with any precision, but that is true of most of the daily decisions all of us make.
Whatever the odds, if a healthy person sees the doctor, the odds of something beneficial happening are less than for a sick person, and the odds of a negative outcome are higher. At a minimum, time and money are likely to be wasted, and doctors are extremely good at wasting huge amounts of patient’s time.
Law firms have reception areas, doctors have waiting rooms. Both provide professional services, but only one acknowledges the value of the client’s time.
For acute problems, urgent care, doc-in-box and emergency rooms for the more serious cases are very, very good. For chronic illness, medicine is not nearly as good for far too many ailments and patients.
For healthy people, the negative risks are significant, the expected benefits negligible. Physicians who find some anticipatory procedure or medication for a problem you don’t have are creating negative outcomes.
It is not “anxiety and fear,” but the certainty of harms, plural, minor or otherwise that tip the scales against going to the doctor when one feels fine.
Best doctor I ever had got his medical degree while serving the armed services. Solid attention to detail, good bedside manner, brutally straight-forward, and a sense of humor that is rarely found outside of criminal law. I’ll never forget the gleeful tone with which he told me one day, “The good news is, I won’t be sticking my finger up your ass today.” He left me for the VA, a boon to them if there ever was one. I’ve never found a replacement quite like him.
At 46, I realize I’m a baby compared to you adults. I too don’t like going to the doctor, and it’s not just to avoid the conversations where the doc tells me the “good news.” (Id.) I’ve spent more than my fair share of time in the ED and getting MRIs because some stooge was too busy or too important to listen to what I was saying. That, coupled with the sheer amount of B.S. makes me far less motivated than normal to pay a visit to Dr. Longfinger.
Having said all that, you have a family that, from what I gather, loves you. They presumably want you to be an active participant in their lives for a while longer. I lost my dad to mesothelioma when I was 23. He was 57. Far, far too young. My mom is still alive but never recovered mentally or emotionally from dad’s death. I essentially lost both parents.
Sure, we all die some day, but not all of us die gracefully, quickly, or both. So if I may be so bold, from one father to another, quit your whinging, put on your big boy pants, and find someone who will write you a script for those meds, even if it means having a high schooler question your okole or probe your bona fides.
If for no other reason, do it for your family.