On Healthcare

“So…have you been particularly stressed or depressed lately?”

It’s the one question that has the potential to set me into a mouth-frothing blood spurting homicidal rage.

Because the intended meaning of the physician’s inquiry is absolutely positively doctorspeak for: Are you sure you are not just making these symptoms up just to get attention?  Are you sure you do not suffer from auto-Munchausen disorder or from bored housewife hypochondria?

The healthcare provider is deflecting blame.

What really is going on here is that the physician either can’t be bothered or is not sharp-minded enough to explore inches beyond a self-serving compartmentalized parochial scope of knowledge.

For all their ego bound intellect, many physicians are mere medical automatons—no more special than an assembly line worker at General Motors.

Thinking is not a requirement in their job description.

The added insult is that by asking the aforementioned question physicians trivialize those who actually do suffer from anxiety and depression—as if anxiety and depression is an illness patients wish for---as if those who are anxiety –filled and/or depressed waved their arms in the air and said Pick me!! Pick me!! when the disease Gods  issued out maladies.

The bottom line is: Unengaged dismissive physicians are nothing that either the democrats or republicans can cure with some legislation.

It’s the lack of health care by health care providers that peeves me—not so much the system itself—even with its own  distinctive flaws.

And despite having all these cogent thoughts surge through my neurons whenever the Are you stressed or depressed question is asked—I never reveal them.

To do so would be self-defeating.

The unengaged dismissive physician will simply check the box that says stressed and depressed if I permit my diatribe to escape—which would be an incorrect diagnosis.

And so I have no resource but to smile, put a muzzle on the sarcasm and say “no—not at all ”--and seek out the rare skilled health care provider who welcomes the opportunity to exercise their brain.