Are we buying a car or going to the Doctor?

Friday, May 30, 2008

This last Wednesday we went back to the doctor for our monthly check up and I am happy to report that the bun in the oven is baking just fine... It was a very unusual doctors appointment though. The appointment reminded me a lot of the kind of high pressure salesmanship you seem to only see in the movies with some greasy car salesman who has a handle bar mustache and a bad polyester suit.

For those of you who don't know, Christy's doctor passed away this last month. His passing was sudden and unexpected and our hearts truly go out to his family. Christy heard the news through a woman at work and later that day she called the Doctors office to confirm the bad news. After reaching the receptionist at the Doctor's office, she explained that she had an appointment on the 28th and asked who would be there to take care of her. The receptionist explained that the other Doctors in the office were going to be covering the appointments. They asked her if she had a preference on which Doctor she would like to see, to be honest she didn't care, and replied "whoever is available". They scheduled her with Doctor Smith and we went about the next few weeks without thinking too much of it. When we arrived on the 28th we went through the normal "your pregnant" routine; pee in a cup, stand on a scale, and tell them about the recent gymnastics your baby is performing. After the nurse had put Christy through the routine we were escorted to a waiting room for Dr. Tanner to perform our Ultrasound [for those of you who haven't read all our posts, we have had a terrible time confirming that we are having a girl when we go to the Doctors office. We confirmed it at Fetal Fotos months ago, but our baby is very modest when we are in the Doctor's office, so they gave us a third ultrasound to finally confirm the gender. I had to catch myself a few times to keep from saying "she" or "her" or "Kate" during the appointments]. So after Dr. Tanner told us we were having a girl he asked, "so do you know who you would like to start going to?" Of course we could go with either Dr. Tanner or Dr. Smith, or we could decide to go to a Doctor in a completely different office. Christy remembered that she already had an appointment with Dr. Smith but was trying to be polite and not say anything. While we were walking back towards the front of the office Dr. Tanner accompanied us (he's never done that before) and he said multiple times that he would be happy to take us on as patients. When we arrived at the nurses station he made a big announcement that we needed to figure out which Doctor we were going to see in the future and started shuffling papers matter-of-factly as he repeated that we didn't appear to be signed up under any Doctor and that we really needed to pick one. So there we were standing in front of no less than 6 people who were all staring at us if we were about to perform some magic trick. When we didn't immediately declare our testimony of Dr. Tanner he made some off handed remark that if we needed to fast and pray about it we could wait. As we stood there silent as a mouse he must have become bored with us and he walked away. Immediately after he left one of the nurses we have seen a few times pulled us aside and appologized. I really had felt that he was about to declare that if we signed up with him as our Doctor TODAY, he would throw in a the set of steak knives and a subscription to the Jelly of the month club.

Since Dr. Smith is younger and we plan on having more than 1 kid (unless this first one puts us in a mental institution), we decided to go to Dr. Smith. I'm sure things would have gone fine either way, but after the high pressure sales pitch we received I think I'm even more content with our choice. I really never thought that the Medical profession would ever try to "sell" thier services (especially a OBGYN), but I guess a buck is a buck and he saw it as a golden opportunity to swoop in and pick us off while were were ripe for the picking. This whole experience goes to show that although someone may have a ton of experience and schooling at the end of the day we all put our pants on one leg at a time.