I feel like I’m irrationally angry about this…
February 10, 2017, 4:00 PM
I am currently am experiencing a bout of tendonitis in my left wrist and hand. For someone that blogs as much as I do, it happens, and so you deal with it. It started on Tuesday, and by Wednesday, it was bad enough that I decided to go to an urgent care facility to get it looked at. I went to Patient First in Rockville. There, after they took all of my vitals, the doctor came in and looked at my hand. Turned out that it was tendonitis, and the doctor recommended that I take Advil for it, and gave me this wrist brace:
They also told me to schedule an appointment with my regular doctor, which is already set for next month. They then gave me my discharge paperwork, and sent me on my way.
Two days later, I’m still annoyed about that visit. I could have told them that it was tendonitis, because I’ve had it before and know the symptoms. I could have just gone to CVS and bought Advil and a brace and skipped the doctor. I went to the doctor with the intention of getting a prescription for some drugs that would knock out the pain and/or inflammation. Specifically, I wanted prescription-grade naproxen, i.e. something that I couldn’t get on my own because it requires a prescription. However, I didn’t ask for a prescription. I let the doctor do his thing, feeling that it was untoward to directly ask for a specific prescription drug, and he didn’t prescribe me anything. And now I’m annoyed that I didn’t get the drugs that I didn’t ask for, that I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t know already, and that I could have self-diagnosed, skipped the co-pay, and gotten the same result from a trip to CVS.
I have mixed feelings about this whole experience. The question remains unanswered: is it considered acceptable to ask a doctor for specific prescription medications, or is it considered untoward? And does it matter whether the desired meds are brand or generic? I think that it is a bit untoward to ask for brand name drugs based on seeing a commercial for something on television, but is it similarly untoward to directly ask for generic drugs? Add to it that when I went to a different urgent care facility in 2011 for an unrelated ailment, I did ask for a specific prescription drug – meloxicam in that case – and I got exactly what I asked for. Did I cross a line then? Sometimes it’s better to go in with a plan, present it, and then get permission to execute it. Clearly, I had a plan before I came in, but I never presented it in order to get permission to move on it. As such, I feel like I shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t get what I wanted, because I never indicated to the doctor about what I wanted. But it also feels untoward to push someone around who has years of formal training in medicine, when I have no formal training in that field. I think about how I would react if the doctor tried to tell me how to operate a subway train. It would probably be something along the lines of telling him to take a long walk off of a short pier.
All in all, I suppose that I’m torn over what is proper and what isn’t in that case. What do you think? Leave a comment below, and let’s have a discussion.
Categories: Personal health