Choose Your Doctor Wisely

I have had many experiences, both good and bad, with my doctors.

 

The doctors referenced in this post are all from my previous living areas in New York and New Jersey. If I get to a point where my South Carolina doctors should be mentioned, for either good or bad, I will update this essay.

 

First there was Dr. Juffy, who made house calls on his way home to save my mother, who didn’t drive, from the experience of dragging her many kids to his office. He would often examine several of us on these calls. His was a dedication that is rarely seen these days!

 

My next memorable doctor, for other reasons was a doctor who was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. She seemed to have little sympathy for her patients, probably due to her life experience. I went to her for significant pain on my left side. After a cursory examination, she pronounced it shingles even though I didn’t have the telltale rash. She insisted that rash would soon appear. After nearly two weeks of not working at her direction, I decided to seek a second opinion.

 

The second opinion came from Dr. Canavan. The good doctor didn’t zero in on my side, instead he started asking lifestyle questions. When I told him that my job involved driving a lot, he asked me if I drove with the kick vent open, I replied yes, all the time. He said “close it.” I did and the pain was gone within a week! It was a cold winter and the cold air rushing past my left side caused that pain.  The story didn’t end there, I had to visit corporate medical to be approved to drive on company time again. When I did, they took blood samples and I got woozy. They decided I wasn’t well enough and sent me home for another week. They insisted that I leave my car in the corporate lot!

Dad benefited from that as he worked in corporate and had to take the rest of the day off to drive me home.

 

Dr. Canavan became my new GP and never disappointed me. He always looked at not only the patient but everything around that might have an impact. I even kept him after he was put in charge of a department at a Patterson, NJ hospital, driving over 30 minutes to downtown Patterson rather than see anyone else. The only patients he kept were his alcoholics as he was an expert in alcoholism and the hospital allowed him to see us on the premises. He was a doctor of great integrity as when he suggested new doctors for his patients, not one of them was from the 5 doctor practice he was leaving.

 

Incidentally, one of those other doctors had seen my ex-wife Sandy as a teenager when she had abdominal pain. He had plans of digging out his scalpel and removing an internal organ. Fortunately, Sandy’s mom thought “over my dead body” and took Sandy home to rest a few days which led to a full recovery.

 

Good things, and doctors, don’t last forever as was the case with Dr. Canavan. His skills were well known and the Governor of New Jersey tapped him to oversee the state’s doctors, ensuring competence among licensed physicians.

 

My next GP was also an expert in alcoholism and had worked with my brother, Bob, at Rockland State Hospital. Dr. Laitman was very straightforward and very competent. He took care of my wife Mary Ellen and I for about 30 years. When Mary Ellen was diagnosed with a fatal heart condition, Primary Pulmonary Hypertension, he dug through all the research on it and noticed a name that kept coming up was in charge of Cardiac Care at a Children’s Hospital in Harlem, NYC. He helped arrange a consultation with her and we began frequent day long visits to Babies Hospital. After months of visits and therapy in anticipation of Mary Ellen’s impending death, we were told by the specialist that her condition was downgraded to Secondary Pulmonary Hypertension, not Primary, and our cloud was lifted.

 

On another occasion, I asked Dr. Laitman to refer me to a specialist for my diabetes. He was reluctant but agreed to my request. The doctor he referred me to kept trying different new and expensive drugs including the one that is now the weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. After having a bad reaction to the last one, I realized that the specialist was more interested in pleasing the pharma reps that kept appearing with all kinds of goodies, often interrupting him during a patient visit. I went back to Dr. Laitman, tail between my legs, admitting that he was the best man for the job of taking care of my diabetes. I continued with his directions and had much better and less expensive results than with the supposed specialist.