Ode To My Doctor
Who knew that my GP leaving town would have such an impact.
I found out earlier this week that my doctor is leaving.
They bought a house down country and they move next week. And I get it. Auckland is expensive as hell, especially with a young family. It takes forever to get from home to work and back. And the city is all bustle, very little hustle. If I could go somewhere picturesque and work from home, I probably would.
The news made me sad though.
While I am happy for them personally, I’ve been seeing my doctor for nine years. We’ve been through a lot together. They are the first GP I’ve had where I actually had a doctor-patient relationship over an extended period; in years past, I had always just booked with whoever was available. I’ll miss them high-fiving me when I hit a blood sugar target. I’ll miss them asking about my family. I’ll miss having a medical professional who knows me and understands me, who doesn’t constantly tell me I just need to lose some weight.
I’ll miss the comfort of knowing that they have my best interests at heart.
My doctor saved my marriage back in 2017, and probably my life, if I’m honest.
I’ve written before about what happened that year, so I won’t rehash it much: my work situation changed for the worse after a difficult first year with two young kids in the house and it broke me. I became depressed. I became angry and took it out on my family. I went through periods of thinking about abandoning the people I love and suicidal ideation; it never got as far as actually planning anything but I did ponder if everyone would be better off without me. I’ve lived with an underlying sense of shame and guilt, feeling like I had come here for a flash job and subsequently let everyone down. I needed help.
By November, my wife was at her wits end and suggested I see the person who would become my doctor; she had seen them several times, were impressed, and believed they would be the right person to speak to.
So I booked in and headed in. I told them everything, brutally oversharing where my head had been for the past six months. They didn’t judge; they jumped straight into action. We discussed medication options. They referred me for counselling, which was a life changing experience. They suggested groups I could look into, and they booked me in for follow-ups.
It was one of those moments where I felt like part of something bigger, like there were people out there, outside of my family, who I could turn to for help.
They saved me.
My doctor made me rethink some of my opinions of COVID-19.
Okay, that’s a loaded statement so let me be clear: I think the New Zealand government - led by Jacinda Ardern - did the right thing in locking down the country the way they did, and I think that approach saved an immeasurable number of lives. I think they did the best they could in adopting international trends around vaccinations, mandates and passports. I also think some poor decisions were made around who could open up and when, and how widely we opened up the country even though COVID-19 is still out there.
I would also acknowledge that a lot of that is disappointment at the wider state of the world; shown a better way forward, and shown the positive effects of lower vehicle use, less pollution, people working from home, we’ve kind of collectively decided to disregard all of that.
Back in late 2021, my doctor became the subject of a public shaming campaign after they made a post on their personal social media that was shared to a local journalist who was writing every week about people who were spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation. This journalist went on to post about my doctor, sharing their full name, their place of work, their history, and applying a number of beliefs to them - that they were against vaccination, that they were promoting debunked treatments to patients, that they didn’t believe the pandemic was real.
Up to that point, I was following this journalist’s work and cheering along every time they shared a new discovery. But I knew none of this was true: I’d spoken to my doctor several times about it. We also spoke about the post they had made: they were trying to make a point about coverage of the pandemic and why alternative treatments weren’t being checked.
Afterward, I got to thinking: if the journalist was so wrong about my doctor, couldn’t they have been wrong about other people they had written about? And how small could an infraction be for this journalist to go after it?
I started viewing all of the news reporting with a more sceptical eye, and I stopped reading so much opinion about the pandemic. And I trusted my doctor slightly more than I did before all of this.
My doctor has been a fantastic health coach too. Over the last couple of years, I’ve taken a more active role in trying to monitor my physical self - checking blood sugars and cholesterol, especially as I teetered close to diabetes.
My doctor has been a friend through all of this, providing wise counsel, teaching me new strategies, answering a ton of questions from me, celebrating with me when I get good results, offering me holistic solutions instead of just chastising me for my size and offering medication.
All of this came after eight years of appointments, eight years of chats, eight years of prescription updates and rashes and a weird lump I thought was a melanoma and the one time they injected me in the heel and a hundred mental health questionnaires and a dozen referrals for all sorts of things.
They’ve been in my corner all the way through my ongoing health journey.
I’m going to miss them.
For all of you, I encourage you to get close to your doctor too; personal health is no joke so make sure you see a doctor who you feel comfortable with, who you can confide in about any subject, who acts in your best interests, takes your concerns seriously. And while I’m not looking forward to the search for someone new, I’ve got a great example of what to look for.
All the best, doc, if you’re reading this.
Chris