Before the first eye surgery I had to come in for a “physical examination” which turned out to involve a questionnaire (to which all the answers were “no”) and a blood pressure check. I was deeply annoyed at the requirement to travel all that way to repeat the farce this time. No, to my knowledge I STILL don’t have cancer, diabetes or any allergies.
The other thing that gets me about this process is that I seem to meet with somebody new every single time, and nobody will just read the records from the last time, so I keep answering the same stupid questions over and over. But in this case, for some reason it was an actual doctor who did an actual physical examination. Verdict? “You’re the healthiest person I’ll see today.”
He seemed to find it remarkable that at it’ll-be-sixty-next-month I don’t have any outstanding health problems or allergies, all my teeth, and – I’m actually quoting – “the heart rate and blood pressure of a serial killer.”
Which is funny, because when I lived in Socal I used to get scary blood pressure spikes, and the place drove me so nuts I occasionally considered becoming a serial killer.
Its a good thing you left California. Don’t you know that place causes cancer, health problems, and psychosis?
The repeated questions and exam is for their own sake and peace of mind – and should be for yours as well. They don’t like lawsuits where patients demand to know why they didn’t do/know whatever when mistakes happen. It is all too often because the last person didn’t write it down, or wrote it wrong.
And it’s worse than that a lot of times, trust me. Remember the cases where the wrong limb was amputated, things like that? The more questions they ask of the actual patient, at the time, on the spot – instead of trusting what someone else wrote before… fewer lawsuits, and fewer medical errors. Trust me, it’s worth the annoyance. Expect to get many of the same questions when you go in for the surgery. Just think of it as insurance. Do tell them about your diet and any medications or herbs you take. It can make a difference, sometimes a big difference. They do not need to know about the belt hardware, obviously. 🙂
I’m tickled (and not surprised) to learn that your health overall is good. I hope it will remain that way for a very long time.
Awesome news 😀
Good to hear your health is still good even if you are blind [/sarc]
Back in 2012 I had four major surgery’s within 9 months and has to do their pre-op thing before every one. Two of the surgery’s were within 6 weeks from the first one. Lucky for me a friend put me up in the city till I could make it back to the swamps.
If I lived in the “big city” prolly would be so bad, but it’s 45 miles one way just to get to the closest hospital. No doubt if the heart quits I’ll be found here in the swamps by some friends who drop in once a week checking on me.