doctor's appointment

I had not met with this particular doctor before and at first I was hopeful because her whole skit seemed to be efficient professionalism, and there are worse things a doctor can be. 

Events had moved on since I had made the appointment the week before, and I had decided just to run a few things past her. Maybe she could offer some useful advice. The doubt that was going to happen rose fairly quickly. As I talked, giving snappy bits of information about what had happened in my family recently, she got up and went and messed with her printer. It's always disconcerting when the person you are talking to randomly gets up to go and do something else. When someone talks to me, even if they are full of shit, generally I like to do them a service by not only listening, but showing them that I am listening. It helps a person more than anything you could say.   

It turned out that she wasn't randomly messing with her printer, but getting a piece of paper from the printer's drawer. My snappy pitch had got her attention and she was going to take notes. My relief was only dented by the fact that grabbing paper out of the printer drawer was something I would do, and a doctor could reasonably be expected to have a notepad on her desk, but I tried not to judge.

She then fired so many questions at me, some of them nonsensical, and made so many notes, that eventually I had to ask what she had in mind. She was clearly designing a Plan of Action. 

When she announced her Plan I was underwhelmed. It was only what I have heard a dozen times before, none of it worked then and it wasn't going to work now. However, the fact that I might know more about my own family and what was best for it was superseded by the fact that she was a "doctor". I did try, twice I think, to explain why this Plan hadn't worked before and what was needed now, but she went to the trouble of interrupting me so that she could explain her brilliant Plan some more. She even put herself out to explain how her Plan would help with problems that don't even exist in my family. Clearly sitting before her was some generic version of a mother, rather than an individual person.

But she meant well. And ultimately it's her time she's wasting. She said she would phone me either "later today or next week" to confirm the Action she had taken and what the Plan was now, and I knew then I would not get a phone call until next week because that's what always happens when people say that. As stirred-up as she was to "save" my family (by sending a life boat to a burning house) it was a Friday before a Bank Holiday and any reasonable person accepts and understands that patients must wait until Tuesday for their crisis become significant again.     

Patients must also understand when the consultation is over, and she made that clear by looking me in the eye, nodding, and sitting with her mouth tightly shut. If she had nothing else to say, then obviously it was time for me to leave.

As experiences with professionals go this was 3/5.