While Americans are parsing their historic legislation on health care, I’ve been thinking, I really ought to see a doctor.
In May it will be six years since I last consulted a physician.
Don’t get me wrong. I can see my GP any time I want and it won’t cost me a penny. No insurance forms to fill out, no co-pay, nothing. But the sign in the waiting room that says an appointment lasts for 10 minutes, and is for one complaint, is putting me off. If I have more than one complaint I am advised to inform the receptionist.
It doesn’t tell me what to do if I don’t have any complaints at all.
I know I should be glad, but instead I think, I’m 56 years old. I should see a doctor! I could be dying! How would I know?
I am the worried well.
And maybe I should be worried: I have never had my cholesterol checked. My blood pressure hasn’t been taken for years. Colonoscopy? You must be kidding. (Apparently I should be grateful that you are kidding, because I hear they aren’t very pleasant.)
Government policy means women over 50 get a mammogram every three years, so I have not been entirely without medical attention. I have had two of these examinations, carried out by specialist technicians in a trailer that visits my GP’s car park. A card is sent through the post summoning me, and on the day and time prescribed I climb into the trailer and am immediately directed to undress to the waist behind a curtain. The technician manipulates the steel plates, pushes buttons, retreats behind a screen, and we are done. She hands me a pamphlet explaining that I will get a letter within a fortnight with results. The next woman is already waiting as I descend the trailer’s steps. I look at my watch: five minutes max. Not that I needed more – it was a model of efficiency.
Nevertheless, I have been thinking that six years is a long time at my age to be doctor-less. It’s possible that my GP thinks I have already died, and I begin to consider what problem I might bring before her (one at a time, of course) so she knows I haven’t (but might!).
The list of possibilities isn’t promising: My right foot has itched for most of those six years, but I never thought it was worth bothering her about that. My right ear itches too, but I already tried that one on her, without affect, 10 or 15 years ago. I can’t turn my head far enough to ride my bike safely, but a mirror on the helmet gave me a non pharmaceutical solution to what I guess is degenerative arthritis. I’ve got through menapause. Everything else I can think of that’s wrong with me I know damn well would be a lot better if I drank less, slept more and weren’t a bloody hermit.
But yesterday the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Alistair Darling, since you ask) stood up in Parliament to deliver the annual Budget speech and solved my dilemma.
The Budget is when the Chancellor declares his master plan for the economy. How much the government will take in, how much it will spend, how it will spend it.
In the Budget speech the Chancellor reveals the income tax we are going to be paying next year (a lot), but that’s only the start. He gets to decide what’s spent on filling potholes in the road. How many university places for 18 year olds will be on offer. How fast the government will pay its bills. How much more petrol, wine, beer and fags (or anything he likes) will cost from the moment he sits down (or any moment he chooses). I will never forget the year the then Chancellor decreed that from midnight Value Added Tax would be levied on all takeaway food heated above the ambient air temperature, as long as it was ordinarily expected that the food would be consumed before it cooled. At the stroke of twelve the price of fish and chips went up by 17.5%, but not bread from a bakery (because, though some like it hot, it only got that way en passant – if you see what the Chancellor meant).
That’s how much power our Alistair has.
So yesterday, while I was listening to him wittering on about how he was going to fund apprenticeships to solve the problem of young persons not in education, employment or training (in the UK Neets are the new Yuppies), and how he was going to save money by making 15,000 civil servants move out of London to, say, Luton, my ears suddenly pricked up when I heard the Chancellor say that he intended to allocate sufficient funds so that everyone over 40 could have a health check every five years.
A check up for the middle-aged every five years! That makes me one year overdue.
It’s just what the doctor ordered.
Please proceed immediately to the doctor.
Comment by Old Woman — March 25, 2010 @ 2:51 pm
You should get a check up. So should I. I’ve had so many car-accident medical appointments over the last four years … but never one to check on general health like blood pressure and cholesterol. I almost think I don’t want to know ….
Comment by Twenty Four At Heart — March 25, 2010 @ 6:18 pm
I’m very prompt with all my checkups but I prefer yearly as I’m one of those “worry warts” and between my dermatologist, breast doc, GYN, dentist, and GP, I’m pretty well covered.
I hope you get a check up soon, just for the peace of mind.
Comment by Midlife Slices — March 25, 2010 @ 7:01 pm
I hate going to doctors. I go about every five years, and that’s with free medicare.
Comment by Lavenderbay — March 26, 2010 @ 5:42 am
I have a check-up and a mammogram every year, even though I’m vulgarly healthy. But I figure it’s preventive maintenance, just like getting my car lubed, oiled and filtered. And, unlike the car check-up, it’s free. Because of close family history, I am also under doctor’s orders to have an annual endoscopy and a five-yearly colonoscopy (and you’re right, Duchess, it’s not pleasant!).
Listen to your mother, Duchess – get thee to a doctor. Better safe than sorry. (Btw, a chronically itchy ear might be an allergic reaction, like itchy eyes or sneezing, so you may have some relatively mild form of hay fever.)
Comment by Tessa — March 26, 2010 @ 6:54 am
In one’s 65th year, Medicare pays for a grandslam health exam. That’s how my husband’s colon cancer was discovered. I think our new and improved health care will pay for more than that.
Comment by Jane Gassner — March 26, 2010 @ 12:58 pm
I’ve only gone to the doctor once a year to get my meds filled, and for drugs every time I get pnuemonia (twice in the last six years). When I get my med review he takes my blood pressure and does a reading on my cholesterol. Both are always okay. Then he charges me a hundred and twenty five dollars, always out of pocket because I only have catastrophic health insurance. Don’t even get me started about the obgyn, haven’t been in about ten years, same for mammo. I used to want to go all the time for reassurance, now I just want to stay away. So, you see, you are better than me! In regard to your hermit behavior, you know I have a solution for that, but you have to come back.
Comment by deeb — March 26, 2010 @ 6:00 pm
I loathe the mammogram and the pelvic exam. Last week, I got to have a surprise pelvic exam. I prefer my surprises to come wrapped with lovely pink bows, not specula and swabs. Thanks for visiting my blog. I am adding you to my reader!
Comment by middle-aged-woman — March 27, 2010 @ 8:36 am
I think we all hate going to the doctor. (Well, there is this one guy I know, a real hypochondriac, but that’s another story … )
Personally, I hate going because I am always terrified they are going to find something horribly wrong. So far, they haven’t, but maybe next time I won’t be so long. And of course whether I go or not, the horribly wrong will still exist.
But in spite of my fears, I try to be adult about all this and go anyway, on cue (as you say, one year for this, five years for that, etc.)
I think in some ways it boils down to the age-old dilemma — is it better knowing or not knowing? Carol
Comment by Carol Lake — March 27, 2010 @ 9:06 am
Is there any way you can have a colonoscopy west of the pond the next time you’re over? They’re not unpleasant at all — you get zonked on lovely drugs and don’t feel a thing — and I as a colorectal cancer vet have had a bunch of them over the years.
Possibly austere-minded Britain is less generous with the drugs. I remember one time making the doc and nurse both laugh about ten seconds after the needle went into my arm, because I said “Mmmmmm.” It was as if every anxiety and dread I had felt from the age of six had all, blissfully, dissolved into a beneficent nothingness. I also remember thinking later “I’m glad I didn’t know about these drugs when I was twenty — I would have wanted some every day.” (All this is, you understand, my sideways way of saying it’s a procedure you really shouldn’t put off.)
All chancellors of the exchequer have chancellor-of-the-exchequer-sounding names. The best, still, was Sir Stafford Cripps.
Comment by T P — March 28, 2010 @ 7:46 am
If I hadn’t gone for my annual MOT – with a little extra impetus from my GP – I wouldn’t have known about my current situation. And it would have moved beyond the curable/treatable spectrum. As you chaps over the water say – go figure…
Comment by Dick — March 28, 2010 @ 10:31 pm
Get a colonoscopy immediately, Duchess. Too many of my friends have had colon cancer, which is usually slow growing — but it needs to be detected first. Honestly, the test isn’t bad. Mind your mother!
Comment by Ruth Pennebaker — March 29, 2010 @ 9:46 am