Two Doctor Appointments in One Day

A couple of weeks ago entailed a lot of doctor appointments. I have new insurance this year, which is a lot better than the insurance that I had in 2017. I will be posting about my horrible experiences with them and my on-going issues with them. Anyway, all of my doctors now accept my new insurance. But I had not seen a primary care physician in over 2-3 years for multiple reasons. Primary reason was because I just didn’t care to go see one.

With new insurance and a new year comes new reasons to make sure that I am healthy. It just so happened that both of these appointments were back to back with each other.

Primary Care Visit

First up was the Primary Care appointment. This was a new doctor, so of course I had to sit in the waiting room for 20 minutes filling out information. Apparently this place is a doctor’s office for a much older crowd. The average was probably about mid to late 70s. I was by far the youngest person and they were looking at me weird. It’s probably why the office staff was so nice to me, it was nice to see a younger person who isn’t so angry.

I really was happy with this doctor. The nurse was friendly and had a conversation with me. Asked me what I do for a living, where I was from (she knew my PA accent), where I went to college, kids, wife, etc. The doctor asked a lot of questions. A lot. But the main part, and the most important part to me, he allowed me to talk.

How I Handle Doctor Appointments

I handle my doctor appointments pretty much the same way that Eminem handled the final rap battle in 8 Mile. If you never saw the movie, he basically made fun of himself. He put everything out on the table about himself, so that when the other battle rapper was about to go, he would have nothing to say about Eminem.

That’s exactly how I handle my appointments.

I told the doctor that I know I am overweight. I know I need to lose about 60 pounds. That I don’t eat healthy all the time. I haven’t been to the gym in like 3-4 months. I don’t check my sugar as often as I should. I don’t rotate my shots as often as I should. I don’t go to the dentist or get my eyes checked regularly.

After I was done with all that, there wasn’t a lecture. In fact he said, “I’m not going to lecture you. You’re a grown man, you know what you need to do, you just need to do it.”

I think when it really sunk in was when he spent the next 5-7 minutes dictating it all into the computer. So, hearing him basically repeat everything that I just said was pretty surreal and an eye-opening experience. But I liked it, because I heard the doctor’s notes. I never know what is being put into those notes, but this time I did.

After that part of the appointment, they draw some labs right there and then it was off to my next appointment.

Endo Appointment

This one was my endo. Now, when I say endo, she’s not an endo, she’s a ARNP, CDE and something else (sorry I forget all the titles).

I didn’t have labs to review, but I had an agenda coming into the appointment.

The morning of the appointment, I received an email with a press release from Novo Nordisk about Fiasp. So, I wanted to talk Fiasp with her. She didn’t have samples at the time, but I picked up a few from her the other day, so I will be using it soon.

My other agenda item was to discuss with her my decision to go off of the pump and move to MDI and an insulin pump. I want to stress what I said here….. MY decision to do this. She is a huge proponent of insulin pump therapy. So, when I said what I wanted to do, she just asked me to justify the decision. I explained to her exactly why I wanted to and why I felt like it would be better for me.

5 minutes later, she was writing new prescriptions.

That appointment was primarily based on those discussions and also me admitting to her that I was in a bit of a funk towards the end of 2017. I wasn’t really myself. There were some personal issues holding me back, but I’ve been able to work through them.

I left the appointment feeling refreshed and motivated to move forward.

Both doctors recommended to me that I start a baby Aspirin and both said that they hope they see less of me next time.

Here’s to the journey.