New Doc Search

The time has come. I must search for a new primary care physician. I had hoped to avoid doing this, thinking that I could find a way to make things work with my current PCP but after our visit on Thursday I've decided  it's better to just find a new one.

I have been frustrated with her for a while now. She enters the room with her little laptop and a fully formed agenda that usually centers around giving me more pills. She spends the entire time typing furiously and quickly darts away leaving me angry that I haven't been listened to and unconvinced about the plan she has dictated to me. I keep trying to have a conversation with her about this stuff but she just isn't hearing me.

I want to stop taking one of my meds. I told her I wanted to stop because it isn't helping, it interferes with my sleep and it adds to my dry mouth. Her solution was to double my dose. I told her I didn't want to double my dose because it's already making sleeping more difficult than it was already. She said fine but I'm not taking you off it. Then we talked about the new preventative med my headache specialist from Mayo put me on. She asked if it was working and I explained that I have only been on it for 3 weeks and only 1 week at full dosage so it's too early to know if it will work or not. But it is a bp med and my bp was 90/70 so I'm not exactly feeling great. She told me I should cut the dosage in half and start taking a baby aspirin every day. I told her that I wasn't comfortable doing that since this was the recommendation of the headache specialist. She again dismissed it and said well, we can give it another month if you want and then cut it in half and take an aspirin.

I see my job in all of this is to listen to my body and communicate that with my physician. Since she just won't listen there isn't much here to work with. Time to move on. I don't really feel the need to have a conversation with her about this, she won't hear me anyway. After the holidays I'll just have to spend some time researching new docs. I hate this whole process. The searching, the testing out, the paperwork, the time it takes to really establish a relationship. It's just a lot of work, a necessary evil.