In Sickness and in Health... But mainly Sickness...

Doctors suck.

I don't say this in an off the cuff, blase kind of way, no, I say it vehemently. And loudly. Possibly coinciding with some sort of kicking tantrum.

I didn't really think a lot about doctors before I had children. I probably averaged going about once a year, so I had no need to think about them. I went, they gave me goods and / or services to attempt to make me feel better, I left. It was splendid.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm sitting in a doctors waiting room at least once a month.

First on my sucky list, is the Health-lines that you can call.

What is their purpose? To "assess your health needs, and give information and advice to help you decide on the best level of care".

This is usually information that you already know 'cause you've been googling symptoms for the last half hour. They always end the call by saying "If you are concerned at all, go and see your doctor." This completely negates any reassurance that they have given you, because it's obvious that they are just insuring that it's not gonna come back on them if they say you're child is fine and then everything turns to crap AND OF COURSE I'M CONCERNED OTHERWISE I WOULDN'T BE ON THE DAMN PHONE!!!!

So I make the call to the doctor.

Me: "I'd like to make an appointment with my child's doctor."

Receptionist: "I'm sorry, that doctor has no appointments available for the next 4 days, would you like to make an appointment for Thursday?"

Me: "Well, no. My child is sick now."

Receptionist: "You really need to book at least two days before your desired appointment date."

Me: "I didn't know two days ago that my child would need to see a doctor."

Receptionist: "Well, that's unfortunate. We do have an on-call doctor if you'd like to come in and wait for the foreseeable future until he's available."

Me: "That sounds spectacular. We're on our way."

Off to the doctors we go.

GP's are an important part of our society running smoothly. They preform the valuable task of evaluating the usually benign complaints of the germ-ridden, mucus-hacking masses that flock through their doors every day. They are educated, fairly intelligent, busy people, but some of them seriously need to get some fricken people skills.

I understand that they are trying to keep the appointments to a 15 minute maximum.

I understand that they have probably already seen this in 60 other children recently.

I understand that they may be answering question that have been previously asked.

I understand these things, I just don't care about them.

These are my children. I have been granted the privilege of raising them, which includes protecting them from harm until they are able to do so themselves, and since I am not formally trained in medicine, when they are sick that requires a qualified assessment.

However, handing over that responsibility - even momentarily - to a condescending doctor who rolls his eyes at my various enquiries is terrifying.

I have been told by one doctor, when I contradicted his advice, that perhaps I should "stop consulting Mr Internet" and leave it to the professionals.

Another refused to answer any of my questions, instead responding with various ways of saying "you're paranoid":

Me: "What symptoms should I be looking out for?"

Doctor: "There's no need to worry about that at the moment."

Me: "Well, you said if he gets worse, I should take him to the hospital, so what does "worse" actually entail?"

Doctor: "Don't jump to conclusions, I'm sure everything will be fine."

Me: "I'm not jumping anywhere, I'd just like to know what to look out for."

Doctor: "There's no need to panic, we'll cross that bridge if we come to it."

Me: "I'M NOT PANICKING (well, maybe a little bit now...) I JUST WANT YOU TO PROVIDE THE INFORMATION THAT YOU ARE APPARENTLY QUALIFIED TO PROVIDE!!! ARE YOU A PRETEND DOCTOR? DO YOU NOT KNOW THE ANSWERS? OR ARE YOU JUST BEING DELIBERATELY VAGUE TO ANTAGONIZE ME!!! AAHAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

And then I kicked him in the face. Well, no not really, there were children present after all.

I have learned something throughout all my enforced thinking about doctors. They are human. They have bad days. They get distracted. They make mistakes. And I'm painfully aware that when one of my boys has a medical problem, a doctor is more capable at diagnosing it than I am, but if they can't / wont even answer my questions, I'm left with very little confidence in their abilities - are they having an "off" day? Are they going to miss the real problem because our appointment has run into their coffee brake? Have they recently broken up with their significant other and have Celine Dions 'My heart will go on' stuck on repeat in their head?

I don't know. I am trusting them with the health of my children, and I have no idea if they are even concentrating. And that sucks.

I know that there are good doctors out there, in fact, the one my boys are actually registered with is awesome. We just never get to see him because he's always booked for days.

So, I think the only option is to add an extra class to doctor-school about how to get some people skills. It could be entitled: "How to compassionately interact with a terrified mother who thinks her child may expire at any moment, without acting like an ass."

If I was a doctor, I'd totally take that class.

xox

(Picture courtesy of Connah while we were waiting for eleventy billion hours to be seen by a doctor. Yes, those are guns in his hands, apparently he was pissed off too.)