Wednesday 20 April 2005

Useless doctor quota

Brett has had some troubles with doctors. I recently had my useless doctor quota filled at a bulk billing medical centre, too.
I wanted to check on what I had previously thought were two calluses on my foot, but that I had come to suspect may be warts. The doctor, a young timid indian woman, was useless beyond confirming that they were plantar warts.
I asked her what she recommended I do; she said that most people would ask to have them surgically removed; I said I didn't care what most people asked for, I wanted to know what a qualified (I use that term lightly) doctor recommended I should do. I said they weren't causing me any discomfit; she said I could leave it be if I wanted. I said I was concerned about spreading them, given that I do kendo; she said she didn't think that was a problem. I said I'd read that they were contagious and as such there was a small chance of spreading them. She didn't answer my question and instead agreed that normal warts were contagious, when obviously I don't care about normal warts, just plantar warts.
I stopped in exasperation, and flat out asked her "what do you think I should do?". Her answer, which was no answer at all, was that I could do what I liked and if I chose to have them removed I had to make an appointment.
Gah, utterly useless, I still don't know what to do. Ordinarily I'm a very easy going person and don't fault someone for being timid at all. But I think that a doctor cannot afford to be that indecisive. It's one thing to not know the answer; that's perfectly fine, admit it and go find out the answer. It's another thing entirely to try to avoid giving one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

thursday, 21 april, 2005 12:10 MAT

yeah! a blog post from nick.

that sounds like the dr i had from that place. she would ask me, "well, what do YOU want to do about it?" like i was supposed to be prepared to self medicate myself and she would just write a script for whatever i wanted that i thought would fix the problem.

i had a much better dr yesterday. she even spoke english! i could understand her. what she told me, i wasn't too impresssed about, but that's not really her fault. she just told me what was needed to fix the ailments. that's what she's supposed to do.

*sigh* chicken... i'll eat it anyways.