Tomorrow, I have a long-overdue doctors appointment, and Im wondering how to get through the dreaded experience like an adult. No secrets here
Ive taken lousy care of myself. Ive rationed my anti-hypertensive medication to delay getting weighed and tested, and I eat sweets almost daily in spite of having out-of-control diabetes.
On the positive side, I do like my dance exercise classes but have been only sporadically lately because of blood-pressure concerns. And, in an effort to make peace with food last year, I attended a workshop series on compulsive eating and saw a psychotherapist for a few months. They told me to learn to trust my body and eat ice cream everyday if I want to and to stop thinking of doctors as father figures. But Ive got scales and tests to worry about; so still, theres no peace.
Anyway, here I am, feeling that familiar terror that comes with visiting Dr. G. (It could be any internist, really. They all seem like the Wizard of Oz.) And Im, as always, a powerless disobedient child, bracing myself for punishment. He will tell me to come in for twice-monthly monitoring, recommend that I join his offices diet program, and perhaps this time will suggest surgical intervention. Dr. G is a kind, grandfatherly man, and all I can think of is how I have failed him once again. Ugh, Im sick of playing this familiar record.
So the question is How do you learn to get through your visits to the doctor with self-love and dignity? How do you manage to be the paying client that you are and a partner-in-care rather than a frightened, weepy child who cant get things right?
On the positive side, I do like my dance exercise classes but have been only sporadically lately because of blood-pressure concerns. And, in an effort to make peace with food last year, I attended a workshop series on compulsive eating and saw a psychotherapist for a few months. They told me to learn to trust my body and eat ice cream everyday if I want to and to stop thinking of doctors as father figures. But Ive got scales and tests to worry about; so still, theres no peace.
Anyway, here I am, feeling that familiar terror that comes with visiting Dr. G. (It could be any internist, really. They all seem like the Wizard of Oz.) And Im, as always, a powerless disobedient child, bracing myself for punishment. He will tell me to come in for twice-monthly monitoring, recommend that I join his offices diet program, and perhaps this time will suggest surgical intervention. Dr. G is a kind, grandfatherly man, and all I can think of is how I have failed him once again. Ugh, Im sick of playing this familiar record.
So the question is How do you learn to get through your visits to the doctor with self-love and dignity? How do you manage to be the paying client that you are and a partner-in-care rather than a frightened, weepy child who cant get things right?
