As loyal readers will know, I've been battling some stomach problems for the past week and a half. This past Monday I finally caved in to my husband and went to the doctor. I couldn't get in to see my usual guy, but Jack was able to get an appointment for me with his doctor, who also works in the same group as mine.

I have to backtrack ever so slightly to a phone call I received from my sister, who commented on my symptoms and suggested that it could possibly be my gall bladder, and it might be prudent to have it checked out. (My sister, by the way, is a doctor, and her husband is a doctor.)

Cut back to the doctor visit. The nurse came in and took my vitals and asked me what was wrong, at which time I gave my 20 second precis of what I'd been going through with my stomach, and then added that I thought that it might be my gall bladder.

A few minutes later the doctor walks in and says, "So, it's Doctor Rowland now?"

It threw me for a minute, and I said something like, "Uh, no, my sister is Sherry." Then he did a bit of a doubletake and said, "Wait, your sister really is a doctor?"

And that's when I began to realize that his first statement to me was meant to be a crack about me "self-diagnosing" by suggesting the gall bladder bit. However, I was still somewhat taken aback, and didn't really get a chance to form a suitable response as he then dove into the examination. Finally he sat at the table typing something into the computer, and I said,"This is bothering me mostly because I just don't have stomach problems."

And he turned to look at me and said, "Well, you do now."

It wasn't until he left the room that I began to get mad. What kind of arrogant... Oh, never mind. He's a dick, and the more I tell people about what happened, the more weird stories I hear about this guy that confirm my intent to never ever return to that practice.

At any rate, though, Dr. Dickhead did order a blood test and an ultrasound, and when I was finally able to get the results of those (after repeated phone calls over the course of three days) it was determined that my gall bladder seemed to be in pretty decent shape.

Meanwhile, I'm still hurting in the mornings and evenings, and my sister managed to get an appointment for me with a different internist who, she assured me, would be "wonderful."

And she was right. I had to drive to Slidell, but I was finally able to talk to a doctor about all of the crap I've been going through and for how long, and we had a decent dialogue about what some of the possibilities were. He ordered some more bloodwork, referred me to a gastroenterologist (good god.. spelling?), gave me some mega-antacids, and told me to come back in a week. Anyway, at the very least I felt like he was taking me seriously. I don't go to the doctor very often--I know that there ain't a damn thing that they can do for viruses, and I don't generally get sick in non-virusy ways. And I like to think I'm not a wimp, so if I'm crying from pain, it's probably pretty intense. And even if all of this stomach shit turns out to be nothing, at least I'll feel better knowing that I had it checked out. After all, I'm getting up into that age where things stop working for inexplicable reasons.