Aging and Doctors: When Your Social Life Is Mostly Medical

A long-time friend described her scary near-death hospital experience after having a Watchman inserted on her heart to prevent aFib. Unfortunately, the Watchman performed less like a watchman and more like the Fat Man* bomb—nearly exploding her heart and promoting her afib from a modest 0.1% to a highly ambitious 100%.

When facing potential doom, she cried and told the doctor, “I don’t want to die.”

His response: “You’re 80. Grow up.”

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She later said she thought, Well, that’s what I was hoping to do until this happened.

Wow. Her doctor made Dr. House sound like Mother Teresa.

One of my doctors wasn’t much better. After a pancreatitis attack, my gallbladder was removed. My primary care physician suggested I follow up with my gastroenterologist. He greeted me with a snarky, “So, if you already had your gallbladder removed, why did you come to see me?”

“Because my primary care doctor told me to follow up on the scan you did last month. “And under my breath: but I also thought you might want to know that the gallbladder sludge you noted on that scan almost killed me. Smart A##.

He’s no longer my gastroenterologist.

At our age, we face seemingly constant medical decisions and procedures. Our doctors are supposed to help us navigate the maze of possible choices. And we’ve grown to expect at least a bit of bedside manner.

I wondered if Marcus Welby, M.D. started a trend toward kinder doctors. But, apparently, this has been an issue for a few thousand years. Even Hippocrates advised physicians: “Be solicitous in your approach to the patient, not with head thrown back arrogantly or hesitantly with lowered glance, but with head inclined slightly as the art demands.”

Some of us fire arrogant or uncaring doctors—we want to be treated like humans. Others find comfort in a doctor’s brusque manner. “He must be such a genius; he has no time to spend on being nice.”

I’m guessing arrogance and expertise aren’t correlated. A doctor can have superior expertise yet be humble and kind. The opposite is also true.

At our age, discussing and recommending doctors is practically a hobby. Expertise is always the primary concern.

Even strangers bring up doctors when starting conversations. While waiting to be seated at a pizza place this week, a couple considering moving to Naples, their first question was, “How hard is it to find a doctor down here?” They didn't ask what most people would as when they are moving out of state: taxes traffic, housing, restaurants,o,r shopping. No. They asked about doctors.

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We told them that if you have senior issues—heart problems, bad joints, aging eyes—this is the place to be. We even have entire hospitals dedicated to orthopedics.

When people recommend their doctors you often hear phrases like, “one of the nation’s top specialists in…” Fill in the blank. But how do you really know?

Did the recommender use websites like Healthgrades or DocFind? Even Yelp rates doctors, We don’t trust Yelp for restaurants, so trusting it for doctors seems like a fantasy. And apparently, doctors can pay fees to be featured on some sites.

Notice it says sponsored results - they paid to be at the top

The websites help, to a point. Many ratings focus on things unrelated to medical outcomes: waiting time, distance, friendliness. Others matter more, like “listens carefully” or “explains conditions well.” Although one friend said her doctor explained her condition thoroughly—it just turned out she didn’t have that condition.

We seem to spend a lot of time choosing doctors and visiting doctors. My friend said, “This week was especially busy—a four-doctor-visit week. If it weren’t for doctor appointments, we wouldn’t get out much.”

In fact, our social calendars now read like medical charts.

“This is sad,” she said. “So much of our conversation is about doctors and procedures.”

Frankly, some of my doctors see me more regularly than my friends. We have to figure out where to fit our friends into the schedule.

“Are you free any day to go shopping?”

“Well, let’s see. I see the ophthalmologist on Monday, the orthopedic doctor on Tuesday, and have a blood draw on Wednesday morning for my primary care appointment on Friday. So it looks like I have time on Thursday. Oh no, wait—hubby has physical therapy Tuesday and Thursday and needs the car. So maybe Wednesday afternoon.”

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At our age, doctors become regular characters in our lives. We discuss them, compare them, and occasionally break up with them. We want brilliance, of course, but we also appreciate someone who doesn’t treat us like a poorly maintained antique.

In the end, you don’t really know how good they are—you just know whether you feel better or worse after seeing them, both physically and mentally.

And like my friend at the beginning, most of us are still hoping to continue to “grow up” for a while longer—and enjoy the process along the way.

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* Fat Man" was the codename for the nuclear bomb dropped by the US on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945