Aging and Doctors: When Your Social Life Is Mostly Medical
Updated: Oct 5
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.”
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.
We want medical expertise, of course, but most of us expect at least a bit of bedside manner. Then again, some people find comfort in a doctor’s brusque manner. “He must be such a genius; he has no time to spend on being nice.”
At our age, discussing and recommending doctors is practically a hobby.
Even strangers talk about them. While we were waiting to be seated at a pizza place, we met a couple considering moving to Naples. Their first question was, “How hard is it to find a doctor down here?”
Not taxes. Not traffic. Not housing, restaurants, or shopping.
Doctors. They asked about doctors.
We assured 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.
Of course, everyone seems to have “one of the nation's top specialists” in something. How do we know? We don't. We trade recommendations, read online reviews, and hope for the best. One friend said her doctor explained her condition thoroughly. Unfortunately, it turned out she didn't have that condition.
Maybe we talk about doctors so much because we see so much of them. At our age, medical appointments have a way of multiplying. One doctor sends you to another, who orders a test, which requires another appointment, followed by—you guessed it—a follow-up appointment.
A friend summed it up perfectly: “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.
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.”
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.
And like my friend at the beginning, most of us are still hoping to “grow up” for a while longer.
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* Fat Man" was the code name for the nuclear bomb dropped by the US on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945
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