Back to the grind of writing about medical mishaps and my medical stories with a brand new topic. My primary care doctor is retiring! Oh no!

It was probably about time. The poor man was 74 years old, and although I only met him once, it had been hard for me not to notice that he had a tendency to repeat himself. I thought he was great, though: He gave me the prescriptions for antibiotics and other simple medications I need to stay healthy and alive. Besides performing that task he talked mainly about his favorite camping places here in the Hells’ Canyon area.

You are saying: “Ok great where is the meat of this article”. Read on.

I am new to this area, a sleepy, economically flatlined place: great to live in if you do not have to make a serious living. After deciding to settle here I had to find a new doctor. Bring on the stick and pony routine!

My first attempt involved a 45 minute interview with a physicians’ assistant intern followed by three minutes with the MD himself. They were both relatively young, and I suppose the model for the visit that they were following is what will be the new model office visit: something developed in anticipation of the massive influx of new patients which will follow implementation of Obamacare.

It seems like a good model to follow considering the realities of the market environment. I remember reading that 50% of patients who go to a primary care physician have no business being there: They are bored, lonely, have illnesses that have no medical treatment, or symptoms that are too vague to diagnose successfully. I have no problems with what I think of as the new treatment model.

Here is what I have a problem with: I noticed during the long interview with the PA that She seemed mainly interested in the conditions I had that would involve interventions that would be covered by my insurance. Since I am over 50 there are also tests, some of them invasive, automatically paid for by insurance, that are just par for the course. If you are over 50 they just want to do them to you.

It was easy to tell where her interest lied by noticing the pattern of her questions: Insured conditions I admited to resulted in a long series of follow-up questions: Like my right ear problem. My right ear has been semi deaf and ringing since I was 13, the result of a bad ear infection. You could see the gears working in her head, Audiologist, hearing aid fitting, more office visits, maybe even surgery. It was wild: suddenly I felt glad that I was old and cynical. She was a very pretty girl. Hard to say no to her need to "help me"!

It went on like that for 45 minutes and it left me feeling this strange combination of enuie and bile. Here’s why: She had deliberatly elected to ignore the 600 pound gorilla in the room, the reason I made the appointment, my most serious medical condition but the one for which I will not accept any major intervention.

I don’t want to belabor this, and please, no sympathy: but I have a chronic infection in what is left of my sternum, (breastbone), which will eventually be fatal. It isn’t that bad really, I have to stay on antibiotics, watch what I do and with luck I could last for 10 years or so. New advancements in medicine could extend my life indefinitely. I could also be dead in two weeks. Learning to live with it is what I did.

Here’s the thing, I, the patient, don’t care about the ringing in my right ear, or a worthless prostate cancer test, or a Proctological examination of doubtful diagnostic value to detect colorectal cancer . On those topics modern medicine can just please get out of my face. I, the patient, have had just about enough of their kind ministrations.

What did I do? First-I never even had the chance to ask for the refills of the prescriptions I needed. I have been around, even around more than my share of doctors, unfortunately, and the primary care doctor I saw for a whole three minutes impressed me as being a real stiff. He should have been an investment banker, but you have to go to one of the right schools to really score in that field. Perhaps he just wasn’t good enough, (or well connected enough), to get into one of the right schools. So I said nothing, left without scheduling another appointment for the next month, and resolved to try again with another MD.

I was lucky the second time around! The next MD I found was a grizzled veteran of the medicine business. He had no use for nonsense, or for impressing his superiors with his overwhelming enthusiasm for being a real “team player” (and therefore eligible for advancement) by maximizing their organizational revenue stream. He took care of me. Now this doctor has retired but he gave me a years worth of refills, buying me time. Thank you, Doctor.

I am going to have to hang back on these articles for a while. I began this series as a way to sharpen my writing skills: my goal being to use those skills for merchandising things online. I picked out this topic because I have some strong feelings and opinions about it, (no-you’re joshing!), not because It would be an easy topic to merchandise.

I own this domain for at least a year though, and will continue to write articles, manage the site so people can find it,and, if I’m lucky perhaps I provide help to someone out there who might be concerned that their perceptions are squewed because they thought they were going to see a doctor but left their appointment feeling like they had been just been hustled by a traveling home improvements salesperson.

Not done yet Harryc