Annabel, I fear your doctor travails are what we, here in the states, are in for as socialized health care continues it's relentless match forward. I've had good luck with my doctors over the years, but since going on Medicare, I've noticed a marked drop in the quality of the care I was used to.

CK

Lisa Lou,

I had one a few years ago!, I remember it well. Feeling very uncomfortable in the waiting room and being the only male there I might add!. I kept telling myself just get through it. After the test, which was not tumors but the start of breast buds I was relieved. But then my new set of concerns started, how can I stop it. After going to see my doc he prescribes massive amounts of Testosterone!. Long story short, I shelved that after a few months and here I am!

I understand your concerns and hope you get them addressed!

I hope all goes well Patti. I -finally- got to see a locum urologist yesterday, and it looks as if a start to breaking up my stones will be made within the foreseeable future. Mind you, he was dead set on 'reaming out' my prostate at the same time. I said no. I didn't reckon that my prostate could be much of a restriction to flow if a stone 14mm x 10mm x 7mm could sail through it at top speed and only jam -suddenly- at the extreme outer exit. Since that's the only stone I've passed for a considerable time, though smaller ones used to be frequent, I suspect that the remainder are larger. Once the stones are gone, maybe I can consider the reaming again, but when my long time doctor up to 2009 first sent me to a urologist he said "Don't let them get their knives on your prostate" which sounded to me like good advice, at least in the absence of anything sinister. I don't believe that BPH is any longer a real problem for me, with testicles that are probably non-functional and what I suspect are beneficial effects from PM. What I didn't get from him and definitely wanted was a requisition for hormone tests, particularly T.

As for mammograms, they have caused us, or at least my wife, a fair amount of grief. About 25 years ago, she had a routine mammogram, and the next time she saw her then doctor about six months later having heard nothing about the results, she said that she assumed that all was OK. He looked in his file and said "Oh, they say they wanted you to go back for a biopsy". As it turned out the biopsy showed nothing untoward, but she never went back to that doctor! On her first visit to the doctor who took over our old doctor's practice at the beginning of 2010, she said that perhaps she ought to mention a callous on a rib just below one breast (probably caused by a defective bra under wire). He immediately sent her for a mammogram although she queried whether a mammogram could possibly 'see' something on a rib. When the result came back negative, she again queried whether the callous could have been seen on the mammogram, and he said "I tell you you don't have breast cancer. You don't trust me. I don't want you as a patient any longer." When almost immediately afterwards he gave me a prescription that looked to me dubious, and the pharmacist said to me that with the other things I was taking, if I took those I shouldn't venture far from a hospital, the relationship was at an end. But perhaps he was better than our next doctor; she effectively chemically castrated me. I'm still in two minds though as to whether that might not have been a good thing.

Have you read DR hooda clark ?

Annabel, I fear your doctor travails are what we, here in the states, are in for as socialized health care continues it's relentless match forward. I've had good luck with my doctors over the years, but since going on Medicare, I've noticed a marked drop in the quality of the care I was used to.

CK

Having never experienced other than basically socialized health care, and while not wanting to get into a political discussion, I don't think that socialized health care need generally be regarded as undesirable. The British NHS has had and continues to have its problems, but I never had major problems with it except for an unnecessary and badly botched tonsillectomy in 1949. I've no idea whether the NHS should be saddled with any of the blame for that, but my mother certainly (much later) took the line that if it had happened 'these days' she would have sued. Many Canadians are proud of their health care system, and cite its 'universality'. Universal it may be, but it is basically very limited and as an immigrant I was shocked by its lack of comprehensiveness. In the first province in which I resided, it worked reasonably well within its limitations. The first mammogram incident I mentioned was I think just an isolated incident of negligence by a single doctor, but since we moved to my present province on retirement I think we have been seeing the system at its worst. It is badly organized and administered, very expensive to run for a poor province, which spends more on health care per capita than most other provinces for worse outcomes. It is full of problems that militate against good healthcare and seems unable to retain adequate numbers of either GPs or specialists to make its system as organized work properly' although on paper the numbers should be adequate. I haven't even touched on my province's new scheme for mandatory pharmacare, an inadequate 'el cheapo' scheme which appears to represent very much the same problems raised by critics of 'Obamacare', and saddles most of the cost on those wicked enough to have incomes more than $50k.

At the other end of the scale, France seems to have an excellent system. As a result it had become so popular with residents of other EEC countries that they had to impose quite severe restrictions on non-residents..

Sorry for the OT rant but I couldn't resist the opportunity.

So, Annabel, would you say, the, in your experience, that the problems, where they exist, are caused not by "socialized" healthcare per se, but rather with specific variations in how it is implemented?

So, Annabel, would you say, the, in your experience, that the problems, where they exist, are caused not by "socialized" healthcare per se, but rather with specific variations in how it is implemented?

Yes. I think a lot of blame for health care woes lies with politicians in general, of whatever stripe. In the particular case of my province, there is simply too small a population (750,000) to sustain a viable provincial government or produce sufficient competent politicians (the incompetents are always with us). This is aggravated by its being the only officially bilingual provincial government, which leads to a great deal of unnecessary duplication, not least in health care with separate English and French authorities competing for resources. Very low population densities have led to a proliferation of small local hospitals whose number is politically very difficult to reduce. Such problems apply to an extent to all of the Atlantic provinces, none of which is really large enough to support an efficient provincial government, but the obvious solution of amalgamation is again not politically viable (what politician would vote to abolish the government of which he/she was a member?).

Thanks, Annabel! That is about along the lines of what I expected. Sigh...
To quote an old friend...
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain

Thanks, Annabel! That is about along the lines of what I expected. Sigh...
To quote an old friend...
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain

I do believe that Mark Twain was the epitome of the 'grouchy old man'. He needed PM worse than I do.

CK

Yeah, but he was a funny "grouchy old man"

Yeah, but he was a funny "grouchy old man"

I never read him as grouchy, just smart and trying to alert us!