What the Health on Netflix

Wow. Now I have to avoid eating meat for sure. Even white meat. Apparently diabetes comes from that more than from sugar or carbs. My mom recommended watching this Netflix doc. Pretty persuasive. Check it out. Youtube's version won't let it embed, but here is the link to copy-paste https://youtu.be/y_Y5-u5u1DQ

DayMinder found

Sure enough, I looked up today's date and confirmed that there is no indication of a doctor's appointment for this morning. 9 am came and went and I was still at work because I couldn't very well impose upon my night guard at the last minute and ask him to stay awake three more hours. This was the appointment I got a "courtesy call" about late yesterday afternoon from ditzy Helene.

Sure if I want to take responsibility for myself 100 percent I could say that I could have kept better care of the business card the next appointment was written on or I could have immdiately reached into my bag and coppied the information into the DayMinder and then made a point of opening it and using it more frequently. But whatever I do I know this about myself: any appointment with a doctor or a dentist will sneak up on me and I won't be ready for it unless I get that week's notice.

I wonder how Helene decided on ONE days' notice. I know last time I complained that leaving a voice-mail on the Friday afternoon before a Monday morning wouldn't help me much in guaranteeing that someone can fill the morning part of my shift. I can tell myself that the week's notice is also a better way to lower blood sugar and weight just before getting weighed and having my fluids taken. But realistically I know I don't take much advantage of that aspect. What I need is the time and some kind of system that respects Murphy's Law, especially the municipal me-centered bi-law regarding choice of "courtesy" reminder time.

I don't know who it is who decided that everybody likes to get their one reminder the day before as opposed to a week before an appointment. If a poll was being taken I would choose 1 week;s notice. In fact, upon starting as someone's patient, I think we should get that choice in writing, right around the place where it asks if you have any additional medical considerations. I would say that I am an idiot savant prone to misplacing and not recording doctor's appointments or forgetting about them when they roll around three months later and that I require a week's reminder notice instead of one day.

In fact, as I said on the phone win my final conversation with Helene, the 24 hours notice required of me to cancel an appointment can't logically be met under the circumstances. And the interesting thing is that she works for a specialist in Diabetes wherein many of the patients might have such quirks and memory problems and might be on a lot of the same medications and under the same spaced-out stress that I am.

Considering the ballpark in which she works (I didn't actually say this to her) she is is a very special league of mediocrity - dangerous mediocrity and indifference to serving the interest of patients. I might even want to write that as a letter to the doctor but it might go through the gatekeeper in his outer office and go missing if my name is on it.

doctors and their assistants

I pop about 9 pills in the morning. Should be 10 except that the prescription ran out on that one. It was one that, fair enough, my diabetes doctor felt that my GP should prescribe. That another I haven't run out of yet. My last GP I had for 9 years and in the last couple of years he began to get twitchy. His staff was excellent and I never had any problem with them, but he used words like "us" to include his whole office when there was actually just a problem with him. For a year he kept saying, "we'll look into that," and variations of reassurance when there were no results on file for a barium enema and sygmoidscopic-something up my ass and x-rays I endured at the end of 2004. 2005 was a lot of patience and my last stretch of trust in doctors, capped by a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. In january I jad to phone around back and forth from the Rudd Clinic and that doctor's office. Nothing. But even with that collossal cluster-fuck, I stayed with that doctor out of sheer inertia. Come June just before my father passed away this doctor snapped at me perhaps provoked by an ancient letter on my file to not renew prescriptions over the phone, due to a miscommunication at Shoppers. During a regular appointment I then made the mistake of mentioning more than one ache or malady (still in the nostalgic headspace of those days when doctors were more holistic and felt one symptom might reflect an overall problem). He freaked out ranting about paying rent in downtown Toronto and not make money. This was the first I had heard of the rule that medical complaints had to be spread over several visits since the doctor gets paid per visit. Since he always had a packed waiting room, it's hard to see where those extra visits fit in and make a difference but I suppose they do. THEN he wanted to take my blood pressure. I waited until after Father's Day which was a couple of days before my father passed, and the funeral, before sending off my e-mail about these issues. I wish I had thought back then to go straight to OHIP and ask to see whether the procedures were paid for. But years later when I finally went through that process I found that whatever record of my tests there were some items that were never processed and must have been mishandled at the clinic. But considering a lot of communication that happens "as a courtesy" it is amazing that anyone ever getes well. What if I am somewhat addled by medication(s)? Like maybe 9 or 10 pills in the morning and a couple more later on? What if I was mentally challenged, worse than I am? Does that mean I just miss a lot of appointments?

Years pass, and I haven't gone through the mundane chore of resolving the issue of a new GP. Four years have passed. Four and a half sans family doctor. Some prescriptions I got from walk-ins, others from my diabetes doctor.

I don't want to disparage my diabetes doctor, and he knows what he is doing, but unfortunately his assistant manages to be more scatterbrained than myself.
I have been clear that if she was going to give me a "courtesy" reminder of an appoitntment it shouldn't be last minute or the day before because I have to advise a colleage at my jobsite and get the okay that I can be late. If not, I'll still need a couple of days to get someone else enough notice to fill in. And I am aware of my own shortcomings to put them forward: I will forget any appointment booked three months in advance or lose the card, as per Murphy's Law. I am not the one consulting a ledger every day. (And yes, that includes the Daytimer I actually have which may or may not have the upcoming appointment transferred into it and which is mostly used as a folder to stuff insane screenplay scrawlings and monologues and Mel Gibson defences which may never get typed up.

I never had any problem until this doctor moved to another hospital and a terrible assistant.

I don't know how that fits in to a questionaire about the state of my health and how it is coming along, but it will throw off my diabetes program as I look for a new doctor (in addition to a GP).

I have been thinking today about how I usually feel great for a few weeks when I have let my prescriptions run out and my thinking is clearer and I am more productive. I wasted this past weekend surfing the net, listening to a DVD commentary on The Thing, and generally catching up on illegally uploaded TV shows.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to just fast or something. If there's nothing wrong with the doctor, it's the lead-assed assistant giving a "reminder" at 3:56 the afternoon before a 9am appointment. If it's not a week before I can't gear up for it. Also, if I went in this time it would ruin my pattern of weightloss. In small incriments each time I have been there I have lost a few kilos. I'm not confident I have stayed on that course. Three months go by fast.