Patient Zero

One of the most commonly uttered phrases to me is “You should REALLY go to the doctor”. Every year, I develop a chronic cough that just doesn’t stop for months. My current treatment is just to continuously suck on a extra strength halls menthol drop.

Well, enough about me, what I want to talk about is the whole hospital going experience. The general method of seeing a doctor is to set up an appointment, often times weeks in advance, and then when the doctor finally sees you, he makes a good guess on what your ailments are. I think doctors can be equated to auto mechanics for the body. You give them a symptom (such as there’s a rattle on the front driver’s side or it hurts when I bend my arm like that) and they make a diagnosis and try out a solution. Sure, doctors (and I’m sure car mechanics) have a wide wealth of information, but at the same time, there is a whole metric tonload of stuff that can go wrong.

I’ve decided that my new strategy of seeing the doctor is to play the numbers game. Instead of making an appointment 3 weeks out, I’m going to just go to the urgent care ward every time. My theory is that the more visits I have, the more solutions I can try. The more solutions, the quicker the chances are that I will find the correct one. I won’t need to worry about clearing my schedule, and most urgent care wards are open during the evenings and weekends so it fits my schedule perfectly.

The down side is that my doctor can change every time. I think that may be okay though. Just like I don’t need the same mechanic working on my car, I can have a different doctors working on my body.