My Life With Doctors

When I complain about not having any time in my life, my younger sister (just turned 60) asks  why I’m so busy all the time. Just wait, I want to tell her. It seems that after 70, my body started to slowly come apart. First it was pain in my knees when I walked down the stairs, and then discs started separating in my spine, my fingers became too stiff to curl, the bones in my arms and legs weakened, and other medical problems too embarrassing to mention. The latest was a severely blocked artery that required a stent to keep my artery open so I won’t have a heart attack. Before this, I didn’t know that you could get a catheter through a small vein in the arm all the way to the heart, even drilling through the plaque. Amazing.

In the past year I’ve gotten an education about the medical world. For example, there are more specialists than generalists, and it can take three to six months to see a specialist. I have appointments with two rheumatologists, hoping I can see one before October. Somehow, I’ve acquired three neurologists (for different conditions), one dermatologist, one cardiologist, a pulmonologist, a rheumatologist, an optometrist and ophthalmologist, a gastroenterologist, endocrinologist, orthopedist, a wound care specialist and a primary care provider. I’m sure I’ll add to this list as I get older.

Each visit has engendered more visits and more work. My deteriorating body requires therapy—not to put it back together—but to keep it from getting worse. My chiropractor, spinal therapist and hand therapist have all given me exercises to do at home, which take up a good part of the evening. When I’m not exercising or visiting my health care providers, I’m replying to their constant texts, phone calls and emails wanting me to confirm the appointment. And the forms that need to be filled out: Do I have covid? Have I traveled in the last month? Did anyone in my family have cancer?  

I need to list all my medications and there’s a lot. My bathroom counter is spread with bottles of medicine, and I need to remember which ones I take in the morning, which in the afternoon and which at night. It’s a good practice for my memory, which is getting worse, by the way.

Because my doctors can’t figure out why my hands hurt, I’ve enlisted the help of alternative healers, including a naturopathic physician, an acupuncturist, a somatic healer and a rolfer. At this point, my poor memory can’t keep up with all the healers, the doctors and their assistants—and even why I’m seeing them. My calendar is stacked with so many appointments that I don’t have time to see friends.

It’s all gotten so complicated, tedious and time wasting that I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it. I know two people who have refused to go to doctors for most of their lives. Now in their 70s and 80s, they have no idea if something is seriously wrong with them. It’s entirely likely that sometime in the near future they will be struck with cancer or a stroke, and it will be too late to save them. But in some ways I envy them. We could keel over at the same time, but they would have avoided all the endless appointments and the constant anxiety of not knowing if their condition is serious or not. Best of all, by dodging all the medical appointments, they had more time—the one thing I want more than anything.    

In the meantime, I’m getting a crash course in how the body works, and in the process I’ve developed an appreciation for its complexity. Because my doctors can only give me a limited amount of time (and because my science education by nuns was rudimentary to nonexistent), I rely on Google to explain how the heart sends blood all over the body through an intricate system; and how the spinal cord stacks up with discs that can deteriorate over time, leaving your vertebrae vulnerable.  I’ve learned some medical language that I can throw around casually: my neuropathy might be idiopathic; my heart test is ambulatory.

These are things we learn as we age, and I would have been glad to have never discovered them. I was blissfully happy as a young person never suspecting that my body would betray me, especially since I treated it so well: hiked and bicycled, took yoga classes, ate the right foods, never smoked, drank moderately and kept my weight down. Now I’m wondering: Why did I bother? Should I have just indulged in large scoops of ice cream?