Is There a Doctor in the Gym?

As some of you already know, I have been having some irksome new medical problems over the last couple of months. The pain and discomfort from this new problem became so bad recently that I thought it was time to bite the bullet and go see a doctor. Yes, doctors sometimes have to go see other doctors. I know that this is a shock to you. I'll give you a little time to process this fact before I go on. Go ahead. I'll wait right here.




OK, we're back. Now, as I was saying, I called my family doctor and discussed my concerns. I then remembered a nice fellow who practices in a specialty that I figured was the right one to address what ailed me, a fellow I have known for almost thirty years since I rotated through his clinic as a medical student many years ago. I called his office, secured an appointment, and went to see him this past Wednesday. I had typed up an explanatory note about my new problem, nicely dovetailed onto a brief medical history, my allergies, current medications and other items that I thought might help him to help me. He listened attentively, asked me questions, and examined me (yes, parts of the examination did indeed cause some pain, for you masochists out there). From there he sent me around the corner and down another hallway in his office to see the nice lady who drew many, many tubes of blood from my arm and proceeded to inflict more pain by x-raying the parts of my body that were already hurting just fine, thank you, without her telling me to move them into unnatural angles and hold my breath. All this being done, I was very nicely checked out, given a return appointment for a month, and sent on my way. I had looked forward to this appointment very much, as I was really in pain and not used to being in that state for extended periods of time. I was treated kindly, with compassion, professionally, and was made to feel that the staff there, from the receptionist to the doctor, all cared about helping to make me feel better as soon as possible.

That was all good, but that's not the point of this post. The doctor told me in the office that he would call me as soon as he had a chance to review the studies obtained on Wednesday. Now, I figured that he might call on Thursday, maybe on Friday, but I didn't hold my breath. I'm a doctor, too, remember? We get busy. We get behind. We forget. We have good intentions, but sometimes we fall short of our own self-imposed goals. When I didn't get a call by the close of business on Friday, I kept taking my Tylenol Arthritis and soldiered on, knowing that he would call me when he could. After making rounds of my own today, I headed to the gym to walk on the treadmill for an hour to work the kinks out.

Eight minutes before I was to stop my workout, I looked up from a particularly loud, rocking REM song to see my doctor standing by my treadmill, dressed like me in shorts and a t-shirt. "We need to talk", he said, mincing no words. My first reaction was, of course, that he was so concerned about my lab and x-rays that he knew I was going to die soon and he had tracked me down at the gym to tell me in person, fearing that I might expire in the car on the way home and deprive him of that opportunity to personally bring me the bad tidings. Of course, that was not the case. We walked down the hall together, and he reviewed from memory my lab values, findings on film, and then reviewed treatment options. "I had your chart at home, and I was going to try to call you at home tonight, but hey, here we are."

Although I do have a problem that I will have to deal with, the fact that my doctor saw me at the gym and took the time out of his own down time to pull me aside, tell me about the tests, allay my fears, and craft a mutually acceptable plan was, well, just remarkable in this day and age. Too many people talk about how medicine is no longer personal, that doctors don't care about their patients, and that once we go home, we never think about you or your problems again until we just have to. Obviously in my case today, this was not true. I came away from this encounter knowing that my doctor cares about me and my suffering, is trying his best to figure out what is wrong with me and how he can help me, and has my best interest at heart when he makes treatment recommendations.

After my experience this week, do you think I will refer people to this man for help when they need it? You bet.

Have you had similar experiences when a healthcare provider went the extra mile to show you they cared?