Bedside Manner

Here I am sitting at home, watching E.R. reruns with my sick cat on my lap and wondering about health care. I just got back from a doctor's appointment. I asked for a full physical because I haven't had one in years.

To digress a bit, this is because I went about five years without health insurance. You might wonder why me, a healthy woman in her twenties, didn't have any insurance. Was I too poor? No, I COULD NOT get insurance because I had tourette syndrome and some degeneration in my cervical spine. These preexistings made it impossible to get health insurance, so once I went off my parent's insurance I was totally out of luck - turned down by everyone. I don't even want to start on how ridiculous this is.. Why, for instance, couldn't I get insurance that covers everything but my preexistings??

I had to go five years without going to a doctor for my neck in order to erase the preexistings and get insurance. Finally, I'm on Blue Shield (thank god!) And so now, here I am, and I've been feeling a little under the weather - perhaps a little stressed out and I go to the doctor for a physical. I wait half an hour in the waiting room where the only magazines available were Field and Stream, Golf Digest and a magazine called Reminisce which is filled with old photographs sent in by readers and is apparently in existance so that people can look at the pictures, read the captions and cry about how good life USED to be. I am in the actual office for two minutes. It is unbelievable to me that a doctor can assess the entire situation in such a short amount of time. She barely looked in my eyes or ears and listened to me breathe for two breaths. She was halfway out the door while I was asking her the couple of questions I came in with.

So, now that I've made fun of the magazine celebrating the "good old days," let me ask what ever happened to the doctors I had as a kid who used to answer all of my questions and spend the time that I needed them to spend? Our world moves too damn fast..