(no subject)

[which_chick]

So I went to the one-week post op doc visit today.



There are still not pictures, damn it all, but he allowed as how, if I'd email him, he'd email me the pictures when he got them from the nice people at Medical Imaging or whatever. I remain hopeful and I have emailed him requesting same.

The doc visit was all about the "How are things working out for you?" line of inquiry. He wanted to know how things were going, physically and emotionally and shit. Emotionally I'm good -- fertility was never an issue for me. Physically I'm in pretty decent shape. I have good daily mobility and all the adjacent parts work as they should, so no worries there. All the swelling has gone down some, the incision looks nicer than I thought it would, and nothing hurts very much. If the largest complaints I can muster are about the insufficiently entertaining nature of percocet and the annoying persistance of the tape strips, it should be fairly obvious that things are going well.

I think we'd do ever so much better if I didn't immediately go into some kind of psychotic alpha mode around doctors. *sigh* Who's controlling this conversation? I am! I am! It's honestly not his fault. (The Doogie factor doesn't help matters on this front.)

While I was out, I also mailed off a book for not_your_real, bought a latte at the Sign of the Mermaid, and grocery shopped a little. I dropped off some moravian spice cookies at work and at grandma's. Also at the office, I got my yarn from the online yarn store that I had ordered from the other day. They're quite speedy, which is one of the reasons I shop with them. New yarn! YAY! Let the swatching commence!

Tonight: Mix up dough for sand tarts. Fix lemon butter spinach (with boiled potato for underneath) supper using leftover denuded lemon from sand tart recipe. Roll, cut, and bake remaining half batch of moravian spice cookies. Finish watching Rome episodes.

Comments

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Good point -- the doc is my employee, subject to some ethical concerns and good medical practice and legality and so forth. However, I kind of think that hiring a doc and then NOT DOING WHAT THE DOC SAYS is a waste of money.

Anytime I go to a doctor, I am paying for an expert-level opinion and skills that I do not, myself, possess... so I should be prepared to follow the advice I get. That's a large part of what I'm paying for. (It is also incumbant upon me, time permitting, to assemble the medical facts at hand and weigh the doc's advice against what appears to be good medical practice. I can do this via reading on the internets, by hiring a second opinion, by tracking down my cousin Betsy and asking her for advice, or by any other means I deem sufficient... but that's my own responsibility and not really the doc's job.)

On the caregiving level, I trust the doc I chose, follow his instructions, and listen to what he tells me. I just give him a fair amount of grief in the conversational flow because doctors are, in their own way, alpha mode critters and when you stick two unrepentantly alpha critters in a room, there's a pissing contest waiting to happen. *sigh* I kind of feel bad about it, but it's a visceral sort of thing and I don't seem to be able to avoid it. I've tried.

[feenicks.livejournal.com]

That's a sharp explanation of the dynamics of patient participation in health care! It should be on a poster at every doc's office. At some point I finally got the obvious-to-everyone-but-me idea that I wasted my money when I stubbornly refused my doctors' instructions instead of discussing my concerns until I was comfortable with their orders then getting off my butt and following them. Better late than never?

I still say that being the "pain-in-the-butt assertive patient" is nothing to feel bad about, as you are probably the reason those alpha doctors aren't sliding over the line and becoming arrogant asses. Though I gotta say, you seemed to have missed a few. ~_^