Going to the doctor

A strange week, this was. I don’t get sick much, and I don’t go to the doctor unless I have to. Over the years, we’ve met some alright doctors, even one or two really good ones, but we’ve also been treated by several doctors that proved quite incompetent. I therefore tend to approach any healthcare taker with great distrust, and only consult one if I really can’t diagnose or remedy a health-related problem by myself.

Like this week: I had some out-of-the-ordinary problems early this week that didn’t seem to resolve on their own, and that I figured required technical analysis, so I made an appointment with a family doctor at the clinic on Thursday, early afternoon. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any of the equipment needed to analyze my initial complaint, so she sent me over to the ER. I figured this was all right – some blood work, analysis, etc. and I would be home in time to make dinner – right? This is where it all went downhill. After three different doctors and one nurse checked my blood pressure probably six times, they decided I had to be admitted and put on an IV with blood-pressure lowering medication. “An IV?! But I just wanted you to check something.” I felt helpless. In the past, I’ve had issued with blood pressure, but whenever I met an actual cardiologist, I was always advised that the best course of treatment was diet control, weight loss, exercise and life style adjustments. Now suddenly all these ER doctors want to put me on medication, starting with an IV-injection? Add to this, that Lebanon isn’t exactly known for promoting natural health care, but rather has one of the most invasive and aggressive approaches. Was this a symptom of such an approach? Were they overreacting?

I could have gone home, I guess, but the doctors were quite convincing, and practically scared me into staying, telling me I would have a seizure if I left the hospital untreated. So, after eight hours of laying on a bed in the ER with an IV in my arm, and many, many blood pressure controls later, I was allowed to go home, equipped with a prescription, and not sure what to make of anything.

This whole incident took up three whole days of this week – three, THREE, days that I was supposed to spend on getting us all set up for the new school year. (Actually four days, if you count the next day, which I had to spend delegating and performing cleaning assignments in an attempt to sort out the complete disaster that resulted from my four guys spending half a day in the house without me. How do they do it?!) So, instead of ‘school preparations+beach+work=productive week’, I got ‘a bunch of wasted time+beach+work=not so productive week’, and worst of all, no inspiring, pretty pictures, or exciting blog posts to share about the start of our new school year.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. At least I got to go to the beach though, right? J