10:18 p.m. | 2005-07-11 Generally Speaking, Extortion Gets My Attention. Yeah. So my doctor � whom I haven�t visited for several years � retired and I was placed with a new MD. One that wouldn�t renew my prescriptions without an office visit. If you don�t suffer from an ongoing medical problem, you probably don�t appreciate the love/hate relationships that you develop with the medical community. You probably also don�t understand how futile doctor visits can be. Oh, and frustrating. To say the least. Anyway, one of my main meds was held hostage late last week in order to force me to visit my new doctor. I played along and missed a bunch of work today to get it all straightened out. My new doctor is young and doesn�t have a lot of patients. Hence, I was able to have an actual conversation with her. Yup, the honeymoon phase. That�s when they really listen and constructively participate in your own personal medical care. And, we�ve made some medication changes� changes I�ve wanted to do for awhile. Which, of course, means that I�ll be going through withdrawals and experiencing new side effects once again. I haven�t had to go through that for a while so we�ll see what happens. This new doctor has a cute, young male nurse. That�s new for me. Well, and somewhat distracting. Funny too. He asked me how tall I am and I said 4�11�� and then I had to correct him when he wrote down 5�11� on my chart. Noticeable discrepancy there. And, I think I insulted him when, after climbing up on the table, I knocked my purse to the floor and I asked him if he could pick it up for me. That was kind of embarrassing actually. I don�t know. He looked surprised at my request, but I thought it was much easier for him to grab it than for me to get all the way down and then climb back up onto the table. It�s a bit of a reach for me. Overall, I think it was a good result. I hope the new medication will work better. I still have to have some tests run, but fortunately, I can do that on Saturday. And frankly, it�s about time that I went to the doctor�s office. Frustrating as it might be for me, it is a necessary and prudent thing to do. your thoughts? seed flower