Have you ever lied to your doctor???

I don’t recall when I began enjoying having thyroid, but for three weeks now, I am over myself with joy. A week before that, I thought I would die, the emergency doc of Welcare hospital having scared me shitless. I am going to die, I thought, but what about the list of things-to-do-before-I die? I mean, I was nowhere close to the 100 things I had planned, and then there was this thyroid promising to spoil everything.


I was upset.

Then someone recommended Him. Dr ZG (no full names)

So to Dr ZG (specialist endocrinologist) I went on a Saturday morning, with a long face, hoping he would tell me that I wasn’t going to die in the next few months. I so wanted to finish trekking Kokoda in PNG and if I had to leave this world, I would do it in a blaze of glory etc.

ZG scanned my reports. No change of expression. He ordered me to sit down, checked my glands, reflexes, skin, asking me a thousand questions and promptly ordering another round of tests, I think there were at least a hundred.

And changed my medication right away.

Dr ZG was one of those docs you wish you have as your personal medic. You don’t want to share him with anyone. He is the kind of guy that makes you glad you are sick, because you know you are in good hands and if he told you that you would live to be a hundred, you believed him unconditionally. You wish he asks you a zillion questions so that you can stay a little longer, studying his face, his voice, measure the length of his fingers (meaning stealing glances at the ring finger!) the cut of his suit, the colour of his tie, (if possible his shoes), going over the reports, asking him the reasons for disorder_ understanding nothing, trying to look intelligent and innocently curious at the same time anything to engage his time.

Okay, so that was my first appointment. The next was 28 days later.

Cut to 28 days later

In the meantime, my health and my mood improved (I think closer to the appointment time!). The medicines were clearly working.

Dr ZG looked the same I suppose, but I appeared different. Result of chopping off my hair and losing some of the bloated, hippo look I had developed. Thank God for that, for one didn’t want to look unhealthy to a doc so determined to get you better.

When the nurse checked me, I was doing great, having lost weight and vital signs all rosy and nice, but that changed soon.

Having to wait 35 extra minutes (because the earlier patient too, I suppose, engaged the good doc in the ask-me-a zillion-question-routine) my mood changed, I was positively livid. The nurse disappeared after depositing me in the “treatment room” and I was ready to barge in to the doc’s room when he appeared.

Sorry to keep you waiting, he said like a good gentleman, letting me walk ahead of him into his room.

He hadn’t changed, I had. I felt anger dissipate, but what was I going to do with the heartbeat?

I suggested a blood pressure test. (The zillion-question-routine)

Something was wrong. In the last 35 minutes I had managed to get my BP soaring.

I suppose you were upset over waiting, he said with a smile that only doctors could manage.

I agreed. He walked me through the results. Nothing but a miracle, he said, studying them. Naturally, I couldn’t have done anything but get better, seeing that I was safely in ZG’s hands.

There was only one little worry and he soon addressed it, warning me about the immediate side effects.

Whatever you say, I thought happily. Ten minutes after our conversation on my job, trek, family, eating habits later, I suggested another BP check. Normal. I caught him smile. I looked at him sheepishly and all I could see was a medical curiosity in his eyes. ZG was playing it close to his heart.

The next day I woke up feeling very much in love! Okay, it’s not something I take seriously and no one should either, for ‘feeling-like-in-love’ is a frequent occurrence in my life, not lasting beyond a day or worse, two.

But I simply had to speak to him.

When I was connected to him, I repeated the symptoms he had warned me I would have (but didn’t) and played it up a little, hoping to be called in for an ‘emergency consultation’.

He suggested a different med. He would leave the prescription with the nurse, he said. I could collect it any time I wanted.

Never lie to your doc, I told myself severely. Your doc expects you to show some responsibility with explaining your symptoms, expect you to be intelligent enough to understand yourself and the limitation of your body, to treat your body with respect.

But seeing that I had no choice, I collected the prescription. Of course I changed my mind when I saw the enormous cost and wondered if I could “try out the original med for a few days, you know, sort of giving my body time to adjust etc, before switching. The pharmacist didn’t care one way or the other.

I am on the same med he gave me, with no symptoms of my body adjusting to the new drug. Oh, I suppose I am built like a horse, I could walk though jungles, climb mountains, but for my heart, I would even lie to my Doc.

I hope ZG doesn’t find out!