Just Another Specialist

It started yesterday as a fairly routine visit with my Primary, going over my lab results. All in the OK range, except he's planning to dink around with increasing my thyroid meds levels. Yep, this from the guy who can't do enough simple math to figure out how to convert x-many-pills-per-week into this-many-pills-per-prescription. So that'll be fun.

Before I left, however, I had him check out this little lump. He decided, for reasons that make no sense to me, that the lump was in the skin, not under it, and I needed a referral to a dermatologist.

OK, whatever.

I'm used to getting a referral one day and an actual appointment a couple months later, so it was with great surprise that I got a call from my new doctor's staff before I was two miles down the road to set up an appointment for the following day, i.e., Friday. I can't get my cardiologist to respond that quickly. If there's a cardiac issue, it's a trip to the ER for attention. But I got over the shock, made the appointment, and showed up early for the usual half hour of new-patient paperwork.

The lump was completely insignificant, although she assured me that it could be removed if it bothered me. You know, vanity about the only (ahem) imperfection in my youthful skin. Or something. I opted to continue ignoring it now that I had an expert opinion that is was as harmless as I'd thought it was for the half year or so I'd been consciously ignoring it.

But since I was already there, there was this weird little patch of flaking skin on my lip.... She cheerfully checked it out, and decided a couple of sprays of liquid nitrogen were in order. It was something with potential to become somewhat less than harmless. Not yet, but a definite maybe.

Yes, it hurt. On a scale of 1 to 10, about a 1.2 or so. Somehow I managed to make it through. She'll look at it again when I return next month for a long overdue full body inspection for possible hinky spots. (That's a technical term, "hinky", doncha know.) They take photos too, for comparison later with whatever might have changed.

I'm sure they'll be tactful about cellulite levels, stretch marks, wrinkles, and all those other proofs of  having lived for a few years and taken this old covering for granted. I mean, if they laugh at cellulite, why would anybody come back? Look at mammograms, for example. It's bad enough that they work as hard as they can to mash your boobs as flat as possible and make you stand still while they leave the room, take the film, check out it didn't blur, and then walk back in to reposition the equipment for another angle, then do the same to the other boob. If they laughed at what those boobs looked like, or indicated in any way how strongly they hoped in another 30 years that their own never ever looked like that, who on earth would ever come back for another mammogram? Cancer be damned!

So now, besides the dermatologist: a math-challenged primary physician who -I discovered online - lists his real area of practice not as internal medicine but gerontology, an allergist who can't find anything wrong other than evidence that everything is, a cardiologist whom I actually like and trust,  a pulmonologist who can actually make a diagnosis but wants to take no action, an eye surgeon (optho..whatsit) who wants return visits long after everything has been fixed, a urologist who also wants return visits whether I get another kidney stone or not and who can wait for that visit until climate change affects hell with glaciation....

I could almost start to feel ... old.

Hey, at least I'm still young enough to list all of them under "Dr. _____" in my cell directory because I know I can't remember their names without that prod but may still need to make a call, and can still go straight to the "D"s to sort it all out. I won't own up to being old until I can no longer remember which name goes with which specialty and in which state.

But you know, my very favorite internist ever left that practice to go into gerontology, back in Minnesota. Maybe I could see her again now if I needed somebody back there.... What the heck was her name?