You know you’re too old when the “Good Old Days” appear, in your mind, to be infinitely better than the BS we encounter nowadays.
Example at hand: Today my son is dragging me out to the Mayo Clinic for some sort of annoying consultation with one of their quacks. Nothing was said to me about this until THIS MORNING. So now I have to clean myself up and get dressed and figure out what on EARTH to say to the quack of the day (no two are ever the same out there). I have no idea why this appointment was made, and exactly no desire to waste a third to half the day driving halfway to Timbuktu, sitting around their waiting room, mumbling on to some doctor who neither knows nor cares what (if anything) ails me, and then trudging all the way back across the Valley to get home.
In the “Good Old Days,” the Mayo Clinic was right up the road from our neighborhood. It was a ten-minute drive to get to their parking lot, and a five-minute stroll into the building. Now we have to traipse to east Scottsdale for a consult.
The doctors there weren’t a lot less patronizing than the ones we now encounter on the far east side of Scottsdale. But my good old “Doctor in the Wild” (as the Mayo set calls doctors who work elsewhere) has moved to Sun City, of all things. So he’s lost me. Because…
a) Sun City is halfway to California from here. If I have to drive an hour each way, it’s gonna be…yeah…to a Mayo doctor, not to some guy practicing “in the wild.”
b) My son thinks the Mayo quacks can do no wrong. So…whatever they say — no matter how far out in left field — elicits no argument from his precincts. That…I suppose…is a good thing.
c) And in my (horrific!!!) experience, doctors who practice in Sun City can do no right.
The horror show that visited my mother when my parents’ bastardly, incompetent Sun City doctors attended her through her (hypochondriacal, we were told) death throes….oh, my! I wouldn’t go near another doctor who practices out there: not even the beloved Young Dr. Kildare.
At any rate: back to the Mayo. I cannot think of anything I’d LESS rather do than traipse all the way across the Valley (a 45-minute drive each way) to sit there and try to communicate with a doctor who assumes I’m a nit-wit.
Seriously: any which way you turn, it’s damned hard to find a doctor who is
a) competent;
b) humane;
c) not patronizing;
d) willing to pay attention to you;
e) can actually hear what you say;
f) and practices within reasonable driving distance of where you live.
And these are the reasons I’ve learned to loathe going to doctors. They don’t like women; they don’t like educated women; and they especially don’t like older women.