When I moved to Portland, I brought my job with me but I had to switch health care plans. The folks here in Oregon all have to use Kaiser Permanente for insurance. I’d heard terrible things about Kaiser, so I went in with a bad attitude. Even given my negative intentions though, my experiences there have been ghastly.

To start things off, before I could even go in for an appointment for anything, I had to select a primary care physician. Fine. I’ve had to do that before. So I called member services and had them help me find someone who would be good for my station in life and who was close to my house. It wasn’t until I got to my first annual exam that I realized they’d partnered me up with a physician’s assistant. Call me a snob, but I’d really prefer that the person I’m seeing for all of my health care needs be someone who went to medical school. But I figured I’d give her a shot.

The appointment with my P.A. went fine, I guess. She had to ask me twice if I have a family history of breast or cervical cancer. Mostly though, I heard about her life. Her dog, her husband, her three kids. She didn’t ask me many questions about my health and when I asked her specific questions, she answered, sort of, by telling me more personal stories about herself.

First pap smear came back abnormal. I got a phone call from my nurse telling me I had some infection I’d never heard of before, with symptoms I didn’t have, that is usually contracted doing things I hadn’t been doing (sex without condoms, with multiple partners). I didn’t believe them, but after talking to my friend Laura–who helped me coin a new name for my disease: dirtywhoreitis–I agreed to take antibiotics.

I went to the DMV of pharmacy waiting rooms and pushed the button that gave me a number at least 25 digits higher than the one they were currently “serving.” When it was finally my turn, I went to the counter and handed over my prescription. The tech looks at it, goes to the computer, goes to the back to talk to someone, goes back to the computer, and finally returns to tell me that my “doctor” has prescribed amoxicillin, which I’m allergic to, which my chart clearly states. The tech gave me something else–a pill that prohibits me from drinking or having sex for at least ten days. Oh, and, I later find out, makes me feel like complete crap. All for something I am SURE I never had in the first place.

Fast forward a year, it’s time for my annual exam again. This time though, I have questions I need answered. For one, I’ve decided to go off the pill. (Before you get too excited, please know that we are not planning to be in the family way anytime soon. We’ll be using other forms of birth control, for a while anyway.) This is scary for a few reasons: A. I don’t want to get pregnant right away, so I wanted to talk about options. B. I’ve been on the pill for more than half my life. I don’t even know what I’m like when I’m not all hormoned up. I can’t remember what actual ovulation feels like. C. In case I do get pregnant, I wanted to know if I should start taking prenatals. D. I also wanted to talk to her about how FAT I am and I can’t figure out what I’m doing differently. Is this just my body’s normal roller coaster? Is this just what being over 30 is like? Do I have a thyroid problem?

Here were her some of her responses:

A. Her: “Condoms are only 80% effective. But you have other options.” Me: “OK, can we discuss those?” Her: “Well, when I decided I was done taking the pill, I had already had all my kids, so I had my husband have a vasectomy.”

Not helpful.

C. “Yeah, you can start taking prenatal vitamins now if you want. Do you take a multivitamin? If you do, go ahead and finish that bottle and then start prenatals. I never did. But you can if you want to.”

Um, OK.

D. “I’ve found that the key to weight loss is to expend more calories than you’re consuming. Do you belong to a gym?” Me: “Yes.” Her: “Sometimes they have personal trainers who can help you.”

Apparently, I look that stupid.

I spend almost 45 minutes with her, but I learn virtually nothing about my own health. I do learn that her dog is afraid of lightening storms and that her new neighbors (who keep a perfectly annoyingly manicured yard) don’t help out when he gets his head stuck in their shared fence like her old neighbors used to; that she biked to work that morning; that she spent a combined total of nine hours in labor with her three kids; that she is about to be promoted to a family care practitioner, which means she’ll get to start doing procedures like IUD insertions, and that she likes IUD insertions, and that she used to practice them all the time on the plastic vagina that she later lost, and that she wishes she hadn’t lost it; that she assisted in her husband’s vasectomy procedure; that when she went off the pill, her doctor told her that the best way to get pregnant was to “go home and screw like bunnies,”; that she was adopted but got to meet her birth mother before she started having babies.

And once again, she has to ask me twice if I have a family history of breast or cervical cancer.

Yesterday evening, GTB informed me that there was a message on our voice mail from my doctor’s office. A phone message is not a good sign. A good sign is the postcard arriving in your mailbox two weeks after your appointment telling you your pap was normal. My mind reeled. I wasn’t scared that I had another abnormal pap or that there was anything seriously wrong. What I was more anxious about was the invented disease my P.A. had found, what crazy junglefruit antibiotic she wanted me to take to get rid of it and the debilitating side effects it would likely have. Mostly though, I was confident I’d have to spend the morning figuring out a way to find a new doctor without getting charged crazy amounts of money.

This morning, as I was driving GTB to the airport for his trip to Boston, I half listened to NPR. Until I heard Steve say something about a new study about chatty doctors and how much of their patients’ time they waste. I perked right up and listened intently to the rest of the story. GTB said, “I smell a blog post.”

When I got to work this morning, I called my clinic and, after waiting on hold for ten minutes and being transferred twice, I learn that my “doctor” thinks I have a yeast infection. Now, I’ve never had a yeast infection before, despite a family history of generations of women who suffer from them, but I hear they are terribly uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure I’d know if I had one. And I don’t.

I know that after seeing this, I’m going to feel fortunate that I have health insurance at all (maybe), but right now I’m disgruntled.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 10:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.