Old Age Demands Equal Time

I’m coming to a realization. Maybe it’s more like an admission, because I’m not going willingly. I was in the locker room at the gym this morning, and I couldn’t help but overhear a senior citizen on the phone arranging yet another diagnostic test, to be followed by yet another doctor’s appointment. This is what it’s become. The ‘Health’ industry loves to overload you with tests and appointments with specialists. They keep lowering the bar on things like cholesterol and blood pressure. You have to wonder if it’s as much to sell more drugs as a consideration for your well-being. Well, I wonder – ‘cuz that’s what I do. I’m just cynical enough to question the core of their motives.

But our poor senior citizen, distracted by this intrusive doctor phone call in the locker room, demonstrates the same problem so many of us have nowadays – Doctors and medical tests take up as much or more of our time as our exercise regimens. I’m not kidding. It’s pissing me off. Hmm, I bet that really surprises you.

Truly, it’s gotten ridiculous and, while I have a few conditions being monitored, there’s nothing serious. What’s it like for those with real issues? How can they possibly have time for anything else, or get away from always having to think about their ‘condition’? These medical people just love to dominate your time. It’s wrong!

In the last few weeks I’ve had to find online medical histories, historical blood work files and the like from one provider and transfer it to another. It all has to be done digitally or online – gaining access, creating accounts, scanning, copying, changing to compatible file types, attaching, downloading and uploading, emailing, sending notifications – it’s endless.

Then there’s trying to schedule various appointments and tests – everybody has to order a test to justify their existence and maximize company revenue. And God forbid you should be able to use results for the exact same tests, that may be two or three weeks old, from one doctor for another. In the last four weeks I have had seven tests, seven doctor appointments and had to schedule for eight other medical-related appointments. I exercise five times a week. Count it up – they’re about equal. And I’m just being monitored. What happens if something really goes wrong? It’s messed up!

Add to all that the inaccessibility to doctors. Dermatologists schedule out four to six months; other docs are usually two or three. Seeing someone in less than a month takes some real storytelling or an act of God.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Barack Obama and Congress for passing ObamaCare. They’re the ones who exacerbated this whole caregiver shortage with their government mandated healthcare. It’s been proven around the world that the more government inserts its nose in regulating or providing healthcare, the worse the care gets and the less available it becomes. Look at Canada, look at Britain. People die before getting needed operations or treatment for disease or cancer. Happens every day. That’s where we’re headed if we don’t wake up.

Now the insurance companies, United HealthCare for example, are hiring their own doctors and telling them how and what they should diagnose. With seniors, they maximize billings to Medicare by ordering tons of tests and prescribing everything they can think of. How is any of this productive? It’s BS. I’m thinking of opting out.

I’ve started seeing a Naturopath again. Both my wife and her health-conscious cousin see one. She’s good, I like her. She spends time with you, explains everything, asks you where you want to take this, what you want out of it. It’s like an old country doctor back in the day. I actually feel like somebody who has or can gain control of my health instead of ceding it to others who mostly don’t talk to you because it takes time and there’s a lot of gibberish involved. And that’s from a guy who spends a fair amount of time reading about these things, looking up the strange words and drug names they banter about.

I also have a chiropractor who doesn’t practice traditional chiropractic; a masseuse who does all kinds of things besides swedish and deep tissue massage; a real Japanese acupuncturist. These days, I’m trying as best I can to ignore the traditional doctor types. There’s more alternate stuff yet to try and experience. I only deal with the traditional medical types to help baseline what my body’s trying to tell me. I go to the other doctors trying to learn how to listen to my body and to understand how I can make that work for me.

But all that costs money. Money the all-knowing Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans typically don’t cover very well. They want to lock you into the traditional system. I liken today’s Healthcare system to the Military Industrial Complex; this is the Medical Pharmaceutical Complex. We’ve become big on those industrial complexes. I think I’m having a complex.

Soon I’ll be out of town, where they can’t get to me. Doing fun things like driving around Western Canada and the northwestern states to ski, and heading to warm desert oases for golf, hiking, biking and lounging about – maybe even something that old people do, like pickleball. And I’m only talking to doctors if they’re retired.

I’m starting to feel better already. Hang up the phone from that doctor of yours, get out here and join me!