In my father's last years, I would try to get him to a doctor. He had medical complaints. They made absolutely no sense. That didn't mean he was healthy. The issue was that what seemed to be the real problems were ignored. I finally talked him into going to the doctor with me.
My father mostly talked about breathing. His complaint was dust from the vents. This was a serious issue to him. He would regularly hire people to clean the vents. He did this at his house. He did this at the retirement condo. As a non-medical observer, that made sense to me. It seemed extreme, but what was the harm of having clean vents?
The other issue he talked about was constipation. This was a serious issue to him. He regularly went to the doctor to complain about constipation according to his medical records. This complaint dominated our discussion when I went to the doctor with him.
The doctor told him to take Miralax and Metamucil. He said how much to take and said that if he needed to take more he could. These products, if taken in sufficient quantity, were going to do the job. He should try to take the same amount every day. There was a process for figuring out the right amount to take each day. Problem solved. Right? Actually, not.
I told you that my father's medical opinions made no sense. Here is an an example. Per my father, the air quality issues which were affecting his breathing were also causing the constipation. What was the expert opinion on that one? The doctor said it made absolutely no sense. As a retired teacher of middle school health, my father knew that, too. There is the GI tract. There is the respiratory tract. What is breathed into lungs will not cause constipation.
This doctor's appointment was the most drawn out visit I could imagine. It went over an hour. The visit approached two hours. We went through the entire medical record. This doctor was to soon retire and he might never see another patient, but he was going to treat us well. That, and he didn't want the next doctor to hear my father complain about constipation.
Toward the end of the visit, I pointed to my father's swollen legs.
"My wife is worried about that. Should his heart be checked? Those legs were even more swollen at Thanksgiving when he visited."
The prescription was TED socks. We found them at Walmart.
I feel this doctor was extraordinarily patient. What doctor spends 100 minutes with a patient? We went over every complaint in my father's history.
Aside from our two minute discussion, there were no complaints about circulation or swollen legs. My father's imagination conjured most of what we discussed, I believe. My father's father smoked and had asthma and would avoid pollen season via a trip to Texas. My father's mother died of a blockage associated with colon cancer. Breathing and constipation were issues to be taken seriously per my father's thought process. Everything else that happened to him medically was irrelevant. Circulatory issues were not to be acknowledged.
After we left the office, my father told me of his dreams about dust from the vent next to his bed. The dreams sounded like a horror film. He described these dreams as crazy. Psychological issues were certainly not to be discussed with professionals.
My wife, based on her hospital experience, also had theories about my father's medical issues. These theories were demonstrated as fact when my father died of heart issues a few months later. My father passed away following a significant number of years of vascular dementia.
I had tried to convey what I knew to the doctor. It would have taken a three hour appointment to do so as my father was in the room. It might have taken all day. No doctor has that much time.
I am sad that my father died in 2016 of causes that would have been better treated if he would have just acknowledged them.
I feel I am blaming the victim. He did live to be 85. He spoke as if he had lived long enough. He was a man who couldn't authentically ask for help. Maybe, he would have listened to his wife had she still been alive.
My father's death was a learning experience for me. When my wife tells me to see the doctor about an issue, I do so. She earned my respect on all things medical. I also learned that it is my responsibility to listen to my doctor, not so much vice versa. The doctor is the expert, not me. We need to rely on others as we get older. We need to rely on others all of our lives.
Do we benefit from the experts we have at our disposal?
Not all of us.
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