I’ve known people who run to a doctor for what often seem to me the most unworthy of causes. I am not one of those. In fact, I’ve been told a few times in my life that I ought to see a doctor for this and that, but I generally opt for “hoping nature will clear things up.” Recently, however, friends had said I really should have someone check out a problem with my nose.
I became worried myself and decided to contact my doctor. When I say “my doctor” I mean he-who-I-never-see except for my annual physical.
I don’t like being required to explain a personal medical problem to someone who is answering phones, but I realize things have to be filtered. I have no idea who the person I got to talk to is – he/she didn’t self-identify – but it is going to be necessary to get a diagnosis from this phone answer if I am to get through to my doctor.
First, however, a recording had said that if it was an emergency I should “hang up and call 911.” Having a growth on my nose that was looking ominous was not an emergency – but if it was a cancerous growth I wanted to get advice as soon as possible. There was also a question concerning a kind of blockage, or flap, inside my nostril. How this was translated I’m not sure but I was finally put through to someone who works in my actual doctor’s office. And was helpful. After re-explaining the two problems she said that the doctor was “out today” but that she would write a note for him, which he should receive tomorrow, and get back to me.
I waited a few days for his call, but it never came, and so I decided to research Ear, Nose and Throat doctors in Yellow pages as well as online. Of course one cannot easily choose; published reviews say either that the doctors are excellent, with 5 stars, or occasionally “so rude that I would never go back.” And this of course was why I had originally hoped that a short phone call to my doctor, who knew me and whom I trusted, would have set me off in the right direction.
So after further internet searching I decided upon a particular doctor who had his own office and who appeared to have good reviews as well as a dozen years of experience.
The person who answered the phone rapidly announced “ENT Analogy.” That was odd – after all an analogy is essentially a comparison – so it wasn’t clear (to me anyway) what was being announced. I thanked her and rather than ask about analogies said I may have reached a wrong number, and went back to the internet, to look up “ENT Analogy.”
I found it almost immediately; the same phone number but this time “ENT and allergy.”
So I called that number back, but realized I’d surely reached a corporation after successive Press 1s and Press 2s, with their musicalized intermissions, plus repetitive re-descriptions to a series of unknown personnel.
Three weeks after my original call to my own doctor I received an unsigned, yet with my doctor’s name, letter in the mail, saying “we have been unable to contact you” – this despite their office having my (long-time) home phone, full home address and email address.
So, in summary, I should have known that reaching one’s own doctor is no longer something do-able. Corporatization means money – and that of course, in many fields and occupations, is how, apparently, it has to be.
David Nightinglale is an emeritus professor of physics at SUNY New Paltz where he taught for 31 years. His first novel, The Centauri Settlement, is produced by TheBookPatch.com .
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