By Terri Andersen
So many times, when we’re faced with a medical dilemma, we’re advised to get a second opinion. But what happens when the second opinion is completely different from the first one? Is the second necessarily better? Suppose you went to the second doctor first? How is a patient supposed to know which doctor is right? (Which one graduated the head of his class and which one at the bottom?) If two opinions are different, do you look for a third doctor to match either opinion number one or opinion number two? And what if your number three's opinion is completely opposed to numbers one and two? Will the insurance company cover all these opinions? frankly, the word “opinion” makes me a little uncomfortable. Is that an “educated guess?”) I’ve been to doctors who told me they didn’t know what it was that I had, yet they charged me for an office visit anyway. Is that fair? One the doctors I visited (how do you like that word? We go for a "visit” and we get charged for it. My friends never charged me to visit them. When I visit a department store and they don’t have what I want, they don’t charge me for coming for a visit. Maybe doctors ought to call it something else.) To get back to my unfinished sentence, one of the doctors I “visited” asked me if I ever had the problem I came to him with before. When I said yes I did but it went away before I could get an appointment (like six weeks down the line), he told me to wait a few days and if the problem persisted, to come back and see him again. (Was he going to know something in a few days that he didn’t know then?)
I figured I’d solve the dilemma by getting a medical self-help book and educating myself. Hah! Either my complaints can turn out to be symptoms of a dozen different ailments, or I’m a lot sicker than I thought. (Read a few medical books and you’ve got only six months to live.) And almost all the remedies in the medical books end their last paragraph with “if problem persists, see your physician.”
Terri Andersen is a contributing writer for The New Milford Times.
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