A crappy computer and a doctor's appointment

Whew. Internet Explorer really sucks, eh? For the last two weeks, every time I go into Blogger – either on my blog or yours – about 100 windows start popping up. Then I play “Whack-A-Mole” trying to close them all out while others keep opening up. It’s annoying and time consuming. Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me?

Being old and somewhat resistant to change, I have long refused to switch to Firefox, even though I’ve had it downloaded forever. Finally, even I could see the benefit of using it and I hope everything will be okay now. One window at a time and blogging life looks good again.

So anyone who knows me knows of my hatred distaste for the medical profession in general. I have been jerked around for 23 years with this thyroid issue and nobody seems to know how to fix it. Or wants to spend any time trying to figure out how to fix it. I finally got fed up two years ago after going to a highly-rated holistic MD who did nothing but sell me hundreds of dollars worth of overpriced supplements and hand me a large bill. No improvement in my overall health so I said, “screw them all” and haven’t been to a doctor since. I feel just as bad but at least it’s not costing me any money.

But all good things must come to an end and when my thyroid swelled up so large that I could no longer eat without fear of choking to death, I decided it was time to find someone to at least do the blood work and order a biopsy to make sure the little malfunctioning bugger hadn’t turned cancerous on me.

Of course I had to have a complete physical – it’s required of all new patients. What a racket. But, okay…I haven’t been in two years, and I AM 50 now, so I guess I’m alright with that.

And, by the way, I hate filling out health history forms for 15 minutes, only to have the doctor come in and start asking you the exact same questions you just answered on all those forms. Is it too hard for them to at least scan the form before talking to you? (And I also think some of those questions are none of their business – like my sexual history. I’ll discuss that with my gynecologist, thank you. I left lots of unanswered questions on the form; they didn’t seem to notice.)

So she did all the usual things and said, except for the thyroid thing, I was in great shape. She wants me to have a colonoscopy (yeah, we’ll see) and an ultrasound on my thyroid. They took lots of blood and I peed all over a cup in a cup and I’ll get those results on Monday.

But here’s the only thing that really pissed me off. I get done with all that and go to pay and the receptionist says, “oh, the doctor wanted you to have these referrals,” and she hands me a business card for a gastroenterologist (for the colonoscopy), which I quickly dropped to the bottom of my purse, and two business cards for general surgeons.

General surgeons? WTF? I asked what those were for and the receptionist was also puzzled. She tried to call the doctor who was with another patient so I didn’t get an answer on that. Don’t you think if she thought I needed a referral to a general surgeon she would at least discuss it with me? I’m guessing she’s jumping the gun and assuming the thyroid has to come out. Without even seeing the results of the blood test or the ultrasound.

So, yeah. Not overly impressed with this doctor, either. But she did give me the prescription I asked for - Retin-A for my huge pores and overall aging skin. Made the visit all worth it, in my opinion.

The search for a competent doctor continues. Next stop (after all test results are in): The University of Michigan Medical Center.

And how was YOUR week?