Vicious Circle

Back in the day, you had a family doctor. He (in my case) was your physician for everything. My doctor back then treated me for various ailments, delivered my son, did surgery on my tailbone, removed John's tonsils.

Then, somewhere along the line, family doctors quit doing surgery. They sent you to a surgeon instead.

Later, still, family doctors now do only the most generic stuff. For everything else, they refer you to a specialist. Or if you condition isn't serious enough for them, perhaps they send you to a nurse practitioner screen you to decide if you really need to see the doctor.

Clinics used to have their own labs. A doctor's visit would end at the lab for the tests the physician (or nurse practitioner) ordered. Now, in Wabash, at least, you have to go to the hospital for lab tests, which might mean another visit to the clinic for a follow-up visit. (Our hospital is now part of a large medical conglomerate rather than being local).

Please don't take these criticisms as implying that I don't like my doctor because that would be the farthest thing from the truth. Fact is, I love her. It is the system that I hate.

I recently had experience with this frustrating cycle. I fell and the trauma caused my eyes to bleed. I would wake up in the morning with bright red blood blobs on my eyeball. I wasn't sure whether to see my family doctor or my eye doctor. I went to the doctor's office and they recommended that I start with the eye doctor. I have declined treatment for cancer and congestive heart failure but everything I love depends on my vision so off I went to the Retinal Specialist as my eye doctor said I should.

The Retinal Specialist evaluated my situation and said I needed laser surgery to stop the substantial bleeding in my right eye. That surgery was scheduled. It did stop the bleeding and they set me up for a follow up visit to check my left eye.

At that time, the RS  was very concerned about my sugar levels and said he couldn't do anything for me until we saw if my they were stable. I'm now blind in my right eye (due to scar tissue) but there was a surgery that might be able to be done though the outcome was iffy.

So I went to see the nurse practitioner and she ordered the lab tests to check if my sugar was fluctuating.

I had been wearing reading glasses, which were almost useless. So I went to the eye doctor to ask if she could do anything to help my vision in my left eye.

Nope. She agreed she'd have to see the results of my lab tests first. She also said when they came back, I needed to see the Retinal Specialist again before I came back to see her. Then, and only then, would she write me a prescription for new glasses (which she said would improve my vision considerably).

I didn't really think I had problems with sugar. My doctor had taken me off all diabetes meds and my sugar hadn't been running high for a long time. When the labs came back, my A1C (I think that's what its called) registered 5.2, which isn't even high enough to be considered diabetic.

So I went to the Retinal Specialist again, test results in hand. He was very pleased. I asked him if he would recommend the surgery.

He said, "well, if I knew your prognosis...."

I said, "well, you don't and neither do I and I don't want to know so for the sake of argument, let's say its a year, would you advise it if it was a year?"

He said no and explained that it was a difficult surgery. More, hypodermics in the eyeball - oh, God! Then try to pull off the scar tissue and insert a gas bubble in your eye to re-inflate the retina. Maybe I'd get some vision back or perhaps not. Long recovery time.

Well, that settled that.

I have an appointment with the eye doctor next week and maybe I'll finally get a prescription for glasses that will help me see a little better.

In all, I have had eleven appointments with eye doctors, nurse practitioners, labs, retinal specialists and I still can't see.

I miss the old days and the old ways.