Doctors

It has been an interesting week for me of lessons that you'd think I'd have already learned. Lessons like:
My husband will always love me no matter what.
God is ALWAYS faithful, even when I don't believe it.
Some things in life just aren't worth worrying about.
Stress kills.

I have on and off struggled with high blood pressure. All self induced. Over weight, lack of exercise, poor eating and letting stress get to me. Example: every time I go to the doctor (female type doc) my blood pressure is quite high. What's with that? After all, I'm almost fifty, have had two children and get my yearly exams almost every year. Yet, I get in there and the blood pressure is way up there. I think its their fault. After all, think about it. The whole doctor office process is designed to cause stress.

First you call for an appointment that you want right away and you have to beg and sometimes exaggerate the symptoms to get to speak to a nurse, who will talk with doc and then maybe get back to you the same day. Only to be told they can get you in next week.

So you wait (not so patiently) for the appointment, hoping you don't get a call that the doctor was called into surgery and they need to reschedule the appointment, or worse yet, your symptoms go away and you cancel only to be charged for the canceled appointment.

The traffic is always bad on the drive there no matter what time of day the appointment is and today the main exit off the highway is CLOSED!!! DETOUR! Oh yeah, that is another lesson I should have learned already: "Expect detours!"

So now you're late, feeling bad, even though you know you will be kept waiting for 30 minutes or more. You get in and the front desk asks for your insurance card. They eye it up looking for something to be wrong on it, or perhaps checking to see if it is counterfeit. I don't know. They give it back, take the co-pay, and tell you to go sit down.

Then you get to wait. Usually next to someone who is coughing up a lung. Or a kid with a major nose drip problem wiping it on everything it comes in contact with. If you weren't sick before going to the doctor you are convinced you will be in three days. FINALLY, they call your name.

So what is the first thing they do? Weight! I have given up on being polite at this point because they always put that stupid thing on too low a starting point and usually I have to watch them go slowly, slowly, up up up. Until they realize the bottom needs to go up to the next BIG latch and they start the top one all over again. You'd think I was at the circus with the goof-ball that tries to guess your weight. For goodness sake they do this all day long, day after day, year after year. You'd think they could look at you and get a close starting point. No, they don't, too busy looking at your chart; rarely making eye contact. I bet they don't even know I have blue eyes. So I have taken on putting the weight where I know it belongs, before I even get on that dreaded thing.

Next you go to the room and they ask you all the same questions you just spent 20 minutes answering on the intake form. Usually they ask the same question twice because they are too busy looking at the next question to even pay attention to your answer. Okay, now with all that over they decide to take your blood pressure.

I'm not surprised its high. What surprises me is that I haven't lost my top by this point.

So all is done, I'm twenty bucks poorer. There is good news and bad news. The good news is that there is nothing seriously wrong. The bad news is that the symptoms are real but they have no idea what is causing them. "Maybe its stress" says the doctor with the diploma hanging on the wall. "You think?" is my sarcastic response.