Pretty recently moved to Fort Worth (little over six months at this point), and since I figure I’m not the healthiest person of all-time, I wanted to go get a physical. It’s actually pretty amazing how ridiculously hard it is to find a primary care / family health doctor in a new place when you don’t really have a friend base yet (the friend base would help with referrals, I’d suppose). You can Google, and you can use whoever your insurance provider is as a frame of reference (provided you have insurance, of course). I did both those things and still just came to a list of about 20 names with a couple of generic, overly-positive reviews on different websites. (“Great doctor wuld go bck!”) It’s kind of amazing that doctors make a lot of money (although that number has declined in the past 20 years) and are some of the cultural bastions of society in that they help people get over illness, and yet … the process to find the right one is essentially a needle in a fucking haystack.
Anyway, I connect with this guy who’s about a 15-minute walk from my office. The walk thing was important because my wife and I only have one car, and I didn’t want to take the car from her all day for this physical or check-up or whatever it is I’m doing here. So I pick this guy, he seems nice, online reviews are good, everything seems to check out; we even talk on the phone a little bit (maybe 3-4 minutes) beforehand. A week passes and I’m set to go over there on a Wednesday morning.
I get over there and I wait the requisite 20-30 minutes (doctors are always running behind, which is all good), and my man (the doctor) comes in and we start talking. He opens with:
So, how long have you had the problem?
I didn’t think I was in here to discuss a specific problem; I certainly hadn’t taken any tests or anything that maybe he would have numbers from.
What problem?
Low testosterone.
Did a little bit of a spit take on that one.
Excuse me?
Well, I typically work with Low-T patients.
Swallowed hard on that one. I’m 34 and I think I’m mostly fine in that area.
Well, can you do a physical?
Yes, I can, but again, typically I specialize in —
Right, low-testosterone patients. I understand. Could you have mentioned this when we talked on the phone?
Oh, I didn’t? That was an oversight…
Awkward silence. Stares. I instinctively touched near my dick a few times, as if to console it. Ultimately I said “Well, maybe this isn’t right…” and left. And so the process of finding a new doctor begins, with a pretty clear first question upon initial contact.
This is why it would be cool if it was easier to make friends over 30, because then I might catch a referral break in this process.
Well, at least you don’t have Low T. That would suck.
Isn’t this what Angie’s List is for? lol
Yelp would be better.