My family has a history of heart disease, diabetes, and pancreatic cancer. These are the first things I say to a new doctor. Remember in the olden days, when people had the same doctor forever, and he or she was the family doctor, so not only did they know you, but your whole entire family? Was that ever real? Because I’ve had a thousand doctors.
Probably it has to do with the fact that medical insurance hasn’t been a constant, and when it has been available, I have chosen an HMO. Kaiser, specifically. I haven’t been mistreated at a Kaiser facility, but I definitely have had some WTF moments. What was cool about it was that you got access to your records and prescription refills online, and that doctors had a record of everyone you’ve seen because Kaisers are all connected. When my family was on welfare after my parents divorced, I remember just not going to the doctor. The welfare approved facilities were not pretty, nor was the wait to get an appointment. But I eventually got jobs with benefits, and even though I had fairly cheap copays for visits, I still felt like, “Do I really need to see a doctor? Can’t I just wait it out and see?”
I’ve had some pretty bizarre experiences with doctors, who are like a different branch of over-educated people, so I kind of understand their language. They spent a lot of time reading, studying, and perfecting their knowledge of body parts, so they haven’t put a premium on interpersonal skills. Some try, some are just naturally good at it, and some, well, they need some serious help. I try to be understanding of their limitations.
I once went to a gynecologist that I selected specifically because she was Latina. I had never had a hispanic doctor ever, much less a woman, so I though it would be awesome. She was super cool and interesting and she chatted with me rather than just being a robot about the examination procedure. And of course she asked the delicate question “what are you?” (she didn’t ask it that way, but that’s the jist of it) and I told her my family is Cuban. Well, hold on to those stirrups, because the conversation got rolling. I was treated to a lovely discussion of why Fidel Castro “isn’t really that bad.” Which, being a liberal, I understood her point politically. However, is now really the time, lady? How are my ovaries? Do they feel ok? She continued gabbing about Fidel and at the end told me “everything seems fine,” which was not reassuring.
Because I wanted to add my husband on to my insurance, I had to switch to a PPO rather than stick with Kaiser. He likes his doctor and I felt no real connection to my stable of 5,000 doctors, so I thought, I should probably find a good doctor and stick with her/him. There is so much more information on doctors now online! I found someone I thought would be great. She’s got great degrees, did much of her internship in low-income communities in SoCal. She’s African American, works in Long Beach and Compton, and she loves hanging out with her son and reading science fiction. Sounds like someone who would understand me a little better than Joe Doctor at Kaiser.
She was really, very nice. She chatted with me for over an hour about my life and plans one day to maybe have a kid, I told her about how I’m moving, what I do for a living. She gave me good tips about getting around copays by just calling and leaving her messages instead of coming in for referrals.
She saw my family history and immediately gave me some sobering advice. I need to lose weight. I need to eat better. I need to exercise more. The statistics she rattled off about my likelihood of having diabetes and heart problems really hit me hard. I know I’ve been slacking, and that I don’t lead as healthy a lifestyle as I would like. I’m not 20 anymore. It was good to have someone give me the info I needed to hear, not a cursory glance at my file and “have a nice day.” I felt like she actually cared, but...well she has a strange bedside manner.
She said a few things that bummed me out. First of all, I would need to lose at least 25 lbs before even thinking of having a kid or I’d risk diabetes, heart problems, and a deformed baby! The baby guilt train was just leaving the station too, because I am also a bad potential mom because I have tattoos. Apparently, you can’t give blood if you have tattoos (Red Cross says you have to wait a year, but she says there are ‘new rules’). So her advice to me was, “tell your husband not to get any tattoos so if the baby needs blood he can donate.” Like I'm basically a lost cause for ever helping my kid with a blood transfusion. Dude, wasn’t this hypothetical future baby like, living amongst my bloodstream for 9 months? WTF? That just cannot be right.
Her advice on losing weight was pretty good, stuff about buying frozen rather than canned vegetables. How I should try to avoid processed foods and go for the organic stuff if I can. Until she got to the practical kinds of advice you’d give to someone fucking obese. She literally told me that instead of getting a cake, consider getting a cupcake. Like I eat whole cakes! She remarked that some people just can’t help themselves and eat the whole cake. She squeezed my ankle as part of the exam and showed me how the squeezed part remained white. She said that it was indicative of too much salt in my system. But she didn’t say it that way, the way that would be NORMAL. She said, “You see that?” To which I said, “Is it because I’m retaining water on account of my monthly “situation?” She said, “that’s bacon, ham, chips.” Oh. My. Gaaah.
She then told me that my ideal weight for my height should be 120 lbs. I, being a woman, have already looked up the ideal weight/height calculations and have known them since I was 17. For someone my height, I should be between 120-145 lbs. Why, when encountering someone overweight, would you give them the lowest possible weight as the goal! That’s nuts! I haven’t been 120 lbs. Since I was vegetarian and in high school. If she had said 140, I would have been like "that's doable, I can see myself at that weight."
I know, I need to be healthier (btw, she did corroborate my theory that nutrisystem food is full of preservatives that aren’t good for you), I need to exercise and eat better. I need to get out of this rut that has kept me from moving forward, but I really did not need to hear that I need to be 120 lbs. I walked out of the office in a daze.
Part of me wants to think that I’m just mad/depressed because she called me on my laziness. That it’s about time someone said it to me straight. I can tell you I didn’t want to eat at all yesterday, and that I went out and bought all kinds of healthy stuff and didn’t drink soda or coffee at all. I took my dog on a super long walk. I made salmon and asparagus for dinner. Those are good things. Scared straight type of things.
Part of me thinks she means well, but is used to being in a “lecturing” kind of conversation with people who maybe don’t know much about nutrition or who just want the lap band surgery or whatever. And my family history does warrant a serious look at my habits. But the weird advice about tattoos, mom guilt, and the cupcake thing are red flags, no?
I haven’t cried about it, because I haven’t thought it through long enough and I'm trying to be positive. But I had to write this post in small increments over the past 28 hours. I wasn’t even going to post it, but I feel like this isn’t supposed to be a vanity project, it’s supposed to be about my successes and failures. I’ve worked really hard in the past year to overcome some obstacles, including getting healthy. And I did lose about 15 pounds at the beginning of the year, but I went right back to my old habits once school rolled around again.
Sigh...just when you need a cocktail most, you can’t have it because it’s full of calories and will render you infertile.
Have you ever gotten crazy advice or weird guilt trips from your doctor? How did you deal?
