This was one of those days that I dread … dread … dread. I not only had one doctor’s appointment, I had two. I’m a little bashful about being too “out there” with this sort of thing, but I have such wise readers, that I thought I may be able to glean a bit of advice from both sides of the medical fence - those in the profession, and those who may be able to relate to a bit of what I’m experiencing …

Those of you who are long time readers probably know that I have a bit of a panic problem when I find myself nose to nose with someone in a white coat … or who could be wearing a white coat, if he isn’t. It kept me from seeing a physician all but once in 16 years … until about 3 years ago, when I was diagnosed with kidney failure, severe hypertension … and other secondary problems. For about 2 years afterward, I sometimes wondered why I bothered going home - I was in one office or another … or one hospital or another … so darn often.

Anyway, over the last year I’ve distanced myself as much as possible from the situation. That’s been both good and bad, as you might imagine. I’ve continued to see my nephrologist every four months, but went for more than a year without seeing my PCP … until his office called me late this spring and wanted me to make an appointment to come in. Reluctantly, I did. To make a long story short, they found that my blood pressure was elevated enough for concern (over 200 systolic) … and had me coming in to have it checked repeatedly. Always high.

Well, something very revealing happened today … something I’ve suspected for a long time now.

This was the day I had to see my nephrologist. He took my blood pressure standing and sitting, and it was great! Sitting was under 150 systolic, standing was super! Although I’m not comfortable enough to be really open with him, he’s a quiet fellow, and the 4 month visits with him are pretty stress free. I know what he’s going to do … I know what he’s going to say. There aren’t any surprises. He’s pretty laid back. We even exchanged a bit of small talk about the direction primary care seems to be taking.

I had a few hours between that appointment, and my next one … so I came home, relaxed, and did some school work, then headed back out the door. Once there, his nurse came out to get me, brought me into the exam room, and took my blood pressure first thing. That’s what I was there for - again. The systolic was 178. Not really all that high, but much higher than it had been all day. I looked at her, shook my head and said: “Robin, it’s this office. I just can’t come into this office.” I told her about my visit to the nephrologist earlier in the day. She went and spoke to my PCP, and to my amazement (and relief,) I was out the door in about 5 minutes. I guess they didn’t want to be responsible for a stroke … *cough* …

Now, I like my PCP. I’ve liked him since I first met him. This may not be the problem, but his style is vastly different from the nephrologist’s style: my PCP is a bit “fidgety,” and usually has a string of rapid fire questions that I’m not well prepared to answer. I find it completely impossible to just chat with him, although I can say practically anything I want to him by email, or on paper, and have in the past. I’m certain that if I met this fellow outside of his profession, that I would really like him a lot, and see him as a fun, humorous sort of person to be around. In this setting however, I’m at sea.

Today proved it to me. My poor PCP gives me HTN!

I know that the elevated HTN is from some sort of emotional/psychological reaction - otherwise it makes no sense. But I have absolutely no idea what it could be - or why. It appears that just stepping through the door causes it to rise a good 20 to 30 points, if not more. The first time I ever went there, it was 280/160 … although I admit there were more medical reasons for that sort of reaction back then.

Now, this old lady isn’t getting any younger, and I’ve got ongoing problems that I just sit on because the thought of going in to see him makes me so nervous. Even when things get so bad that I give in and go, we get nowhere because I can’t express myself. My fault - not my PCP’s … and that part, at least, would be a problem anywhere I went.

So … my wise readers … what would you do? Would you try to stick it out and work on it? If so - how? I’m all ears! Would you look for someone else? No guarantee that I’ll do any better anyplace else, though … and I’m not good in that venue even under the best of circumstances. Also, having to start over with someone new would be stressful in itself.

Depending on the advice you all give me, I may cut and paste this post and the replies into an email …

It’s been a bit of a stretch, but I’m still here.

The day the blogs crashed, I was beginning a new course, and dealing with a new crisis in my extended family. The week only went downhill from there … and even included an automotive breakdown in a distant town … with the subsequent lack of transportation for several days.

I was able to work on Dr. Engel’s blog a bit, but I’m nowhere near done getting his theme back up. I’ve heard from Eric, and will send him the addresses to the Word Press blog theme lists, since my Themes blog is now empty. We’ll be starting from scratch over there. Those 65 + themes represented nearly 6 months of work. We’ll also be pretty much starting from scratch on all of my other blogs too. During my two week vacation (which ended the night before the blogs crashed) I mentioned that I was going to need to go back to school so that I could rest up from my vacation. *cough* Vicious circle!

Anyway … this is just a short note to let everyone know I’m still here, and that you should see little dabs and dribbles coming from my direction in the next week or so.

My unread blogs are reaching critical mass … but I intend to catch all of my daily reads as soon as I can. I’ve started working my way through them, slow but sure.

By the way - Dr. Engel is also “out of commission” … I hadn’t heard from him since Friday, and I was beginning to get seriously worried, but I got a call from him this morning, and he’s fine … however, his computer isn’t. Must be something going around … ! Anyway, he will be back shortly.

Warned you! >;o)

Got up this morning to discover that the blogs wouldn’t come up … but that didn’t worry me. I knew they were going to move the servers to a new location.

Something wasn’t right though … one of my two blogsplot.net email addresses was working. It shouldn’t have been. If you have several lights on a power bar, and you turn off the power bar, everything without its own power source will go out. If my email and the blogs were down because the servers were still “en route” to their location, or not set back up yet, then … that one little email should not have been working.

I could feel a bit panic begin to build …

I opened a tech help ticket explaining my surmise … telling the techies we’re renting the server space from that I understood that things happen sometimes, even when we’re careful, and that if they were honest with me about what was really going on, I would be a grateful client.

In short order, I got a reply … yes, there was a problem, but they didn’t know the extent of it. My heart sank. I thought of my 5 blogs, Dr. Engel’s, Sarah’s several blogs, Eric’s blog, Wolfbaby’s blog … all of our posts … our time intensive themes …

… and then realized that this is also my first day back to school. Need to go to the hospital and interview someone in the HIT field, and need to some research, and analyze what I’ve found … besides my daily classroom postings.

Have you ever had that feeling that it was just going to be too much work?

After a few emails, the hosting company wrote back and informed me of the worst … well, the very next to the worst. The server had finally been made to come up, but when it did, it was empty. They managed to save our databases, so our posts, comments, links, etc., are all still here … but they lost everything else. All the themes, the pictures, etc..

So … some good - all the posts were still there. I could have gotten most of the posts back from Bloglines or another RSS feed, but this is nicer. But for those of you who know, the themes are where the real work comes in. Dr. Engel’s blog was practically done from scratch … and in a comment on someone’s blog a few days ago (I think it was Dr. Anon) I wrote something like: I’ve been wanting to change my theme for a long time now, but because I have so many gizmos in my sidebar, etc., every time I think about doing it I get an instant headache.

Ayuh.

Well, for now … we have “vanilla” default themes. I have to apply myself to my school work, and to another crisis which my extended family is going through right now, but the themes will be restored, a little at a time. We just won’t look so great until I can get around to making it happen.

My techno-savvy son, Dougie, and I just went through and restored all of the blogs … all 12 of them … one at a time. Poor Dr. Engel must have been beside himself, because he sounded pretty dismayed on the phone … and then when I emailed him that his was back up without a theme, he put several posts up so quickly that I think he was waiting to hear from me with his finger on the upload button! *grin* Now I’ve got to get over there to see what he wrote about!

I also noticed that Sarah has some of her themes back up …

I’m afraid I won’t be so quick - too much else is going on.

But … at least … we’re back. The blogs are basically intact … they just need to be built back up into “power blogs” again.

Please, visit us anyway … just try to ignore our dust …

(Pssst! Dr. Anon! Got anything for blog-addicts who have been forcibly deblogged? *sniff!*)

I’ve just heard from our server hosting company … apparently, they’re moving their servers to a new physical location on Saturday, July 8, and during that time, all of Blogsplot’s blogs will be unreachable.

This includes:

If you’ve been given a private blog address from people who own any of the above blogs, then those blogs are also included in the outage list. During that time, no Blogsplot.net email addresses will be functional.

I will still be able to be reached at: DorisBallard@gmail.com.

They did not say exactly when the outage would occur, nor did they say how long it would last. I guess it’s hard for them to be more specific … but it would have been nice to know how much of a distance there is between the locations, and what sort of an estimate they could offer.

Hopefully it will be brief, and Blogsplot.net will be back up quickly!

Dr. Terry Bennett is a local physician - he practices less than 20 minutes away in an old house, which has been turned into a clinic. He calls it “The Clinic on the Common.” One of my sons sees him, and although this son finds fault with everyone, he likes Dr. Bennett.

What I’ve read about him has made me realize that he’s quite a character … really sensitive people should stay away! >;o)

For those who don’t know the story, Dr. Bennett has a habit of being blunt. Very blunt. During a consult with an obese patient, he made a comment which could be loosely paraphrased as: if you don’t lose your weight, and your husband dies, only [a certain race I won’t mention] men will want anything to do with you.

Yes, he could certainly have been more circumspect, but he’s known for not being too terribly polite, and I would imagine that his patients would know that better than anyone. His intent was to rattle his patient enough to shock her into behavior that would probably save her life. The lady went ballistic, and reported him. The board was embarrassed, but pursued the matter all the same. They wanted him to apologize to her … he wouldn’t.

Here are a few more articles besides the one I’ve provided:

Doctor Alleged Mocked Obese Woman
Judge strikes down rules requiring doctors to be respectful
Court says stop case against rude doctor *** good article - even has a picture

And here’s a few pieces from last year, when the hubbub first began:

Rochester Doctor’s Advice to Patient on Obesity Lands Him in Hot Water
Why is Terry Bennett Being Persecuted - Must read!

(Two articles directly above are from one of his patients, I believe. He made this website for him: Have Nots for Dr. Bennett … very interesting!)

And now, the article that appeared in our local paper this morning:

Court orders state to stop disciplinary case against Rochester doctor (Registration required)

By DAVID TIRRELL-WYSOCKI Associated Press Writer

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A judge has ordered the state Board of Medicine to stop disciplinary proceedings against a Rochester doctor accused by several patients of making offensive remarks.

Judge Edward Fitzgerald made it clear he did not condone remarks attributed to Dr. Terry Bennett, and found them unnecessary, but ruled Bennett had a right to speak bluntly.

“It is nonetheless important, as a general matter, to ensure that physicians and patients are free to discuss matters relating to health without fear of government reprisal, even if such discussions may sometimes be harsh, rude or offensive to the listener,” he concluded in a 17-page ruling released Thursday.

Fitzgerald also ruled the regulations under which the state investigated Bennett were so vague they violated his constitutional rights and that Bennett probably would have won his challenges before the board.

The complaints against Bennett included charges that he told a woman she was so obese she might only be attractive to black men, that he suggested that a woman recovering from brain surgery could shoot herself to end her suffering, and that he spoke harshly to a woman about how her son might have contracted hepatitis.

Bennett claimed victory.

“It’s pretty clear,” he said in a telephone interview. “The question now is: Will the board waste more of your and my tax dollars and appeal this, or accept done as done?”

Either way, he said the case is not over for him. If the board does not appeal, he said he plans to sue everyone involved for “malicious prosecution.”

If it does appeal, he said he will wait until the final outcome before acting.

“I am not inclined to be forgiving about it,” he said. “It’s been devastating and infuriating.”

Assistant Attorney General Elyse Alkalay, who represented the board in the court case, said she was reviewing the ruling and expected it would take several days to decide whether to appeal.