What would your thoughts be on this new doctor?

The situation with his mouth is off putting considering his profession. Perhaps he is in the midst of some procedures to rectify the situation. Frankly, I would have a tough time avoiding the topic, since it MUST impact on his patients. The teeth plus the haircut? Do you think he’s a bachelor? Would a wife let him out of the house looking like that?

He sounds like he just started from being an unpaid intern and is short of cash. Or he would have gotten his teeth fixed. I wouldn’t care what he looks like as long as he is a good doctor.

I thought you were talking about The Doctor.

I would agree with that, @RedDeerGuy1, but his questions about “how” I got sick kind of threw me off.

Anyway, you should check if his degree is real, or if he is just a huckster.

I just found where he has “over 20 years experience in rural healthcare…He has three children, four grandchildren and another grandchild on the way.” (To give an idea of his age.)

I had an odd doctor once when I had to pick a new one by throwing a dart at the insurance company list of approved providers.

He was old (60+) and had lots of dandruff and weird thick yellow fingernails like a homeless guy.

The story I concocted in my head is he’s an old drunk or drug addict, barely hanging on to his license, and they give him to patients like me who say, “I don’t care” or “I don’t know” which doctor I want to see.

It was for a perfunctory physical or something minor, I don’t remember. If I had a real medical need I would have looked into his credentials.

Anyway, for your guy, I would guess he’s off the boat from Africa, the Caribbean or South America. Not many Americans who can afford med school grow up without regular dental care.

Even if he’s an American kid sprung from poverty on full ride scholarships, I would think his university had a dental program where he could get free work done.

No, he had no accent. But yeah, those are the same questions I would have @Call_Me_Jay. BTW, you may have missed my comment, Here

Okay, help me to understand what the first five paragraphs have to do with the doctor’s questions.

Perhaps there was a misunderstanding between the two of you regarding any illness in the jail while you were teaching there. Did you ask for clarification? Was there a reasonable diagnosis?

If you are concerned about his track record and credentials, then ask for them. There is also the option of changing doctors. Otherwise,why not explain your concerns? It’s often a lot easier to to do this than change doctors.

Maybe he’s an imposter doc.

@Pied_Pfeffer the only correlation is that aside from his physical appearance, it was concerning to me that he could think that I would have any idea where I could have picked up the bacteria that made me sick, if it was a bacteria. A lot of things can cause pneumonia. It’s not like small pox or typhoid where you can point to people around you, or someone you encountered, that had it.

I don’t understand your question “Was there a reasonable diagnosis?”.

A friend is checking out his credentials as we speak.

No, he had no accent

He’s a grandpa. Plenty of time to lose the accent. (Plenty of time to fix his teeth though, too.) I have no idea. I’m just enjoying the mystery.

K. Yeah, if you work hard enough you really can lose any accent, or make it almost undetectable.

Well, he is a doctor and you are not so there might be some helpful info he could have gained. Maybe he saw a person the day before you that worked in the same place with the same problem. It only took a minute to ask and it might have helped for some reason we can’t comprehend.

Regarding his teeth. My sisters ex husband just has shitty teeth through no fault of his own. A lot of them have just crumbled due to genetics. Maybe he doesn’t give a shit and fake teeth are uncomfortable and those implants they advertise on CNN all day are crazy expensive. Maybe he wants to save the cash so he can send his kids to med school.

Some people just have bad teeth. Maybe he was in a car accident or was mugged and lost his teeth that way, through no fault of his own.

…It was 4 years ago that I was sick. I brought it up because there is now some permanent scarring and damage, and I was warned that if it happened again it could be even more serious, and I needed to stay on top of it. So I wanted my new doc to know, plus I had some concerns about the way I was feeling.

@Seek Yes, but as a doctor for at least the last 20 years, he had to have insurance. If not insurance, he should have the money to pay outright to fix them.

My bet is that he’s legitimate & perfectly fine. Imagine someone of his description attempting to impersonate a doctor!

The grandkids say that he must be beyond his early 40s. If he is now your regular doc, you’re bound to discover more. My guess is that the tooth thing will be rectified next time you see him.

Yeah, I don’t think he’s impersonating a doctor. Maybe he just doesn’t care? I don’t know if it will be fixed, @stanleybmanly. I hope so. But the unkempt hair bothered me a little too.

Oh, and being a grandfather wouldn’t necessarily put him beyond his early 40’s. My first grandchild showed up when I was 35.

@Dutchess_III – Money isn’t everything. If he didn’t have sufficient healthy bone in his jaws, he couldn’t get implants no matter how much money he had to throw at it.

I would wager that if he plays doctor in the deepest depths of rural redneckistan, he could get away with being a fake doctor for decades.

Meh, rather a toothless doctor than a cross-eyed dentist

Some people are extremely phobic about being seen and treated by dentists. They simply can’t. They succeed, perhaps excel, in other aspects of their lives, but the dentist is an insurmountable hurdle. This man might be one of those people.

I’d be a little thrown by his appearance, but then I think of my dad, science minded, PhD, worked in mental health, grew up in poverty, neglected as a child, not concerned with superficial or trivial things as he calls it. He doesn’t “see” when hair is a mess or furniture is torn. It just doesn’t register much. He can pretty much pull it together, because he has learned some of the superficial things people care about and look for. My mom also helps keep him together.

I don’t find his question about others in the jail being sick unusual at all. It’s not unusual for pneumonia to start with flu or a simple bronchitis that develops into more. If there was a large outbreak of illness they should tell you. School gets cancelled when 30%+ of the students have the flu. Sometimes they cancel for even lower percentages. It depends on the school district.

He’s a real doctor. I looked.

@JLeslie yes, but how would I know if one of my students or the guards had the flu or a cold? I mean, especially from 4 years ago? Further, what would it even matter? The docss at the time didn’t ask me about anyone around me having a cold, which could be a dozen people I encounter on any given day, every day, not just my students.

@Love_my_doggie that’s a good point, and based on that alone I could shrug it off. I just don’t know if I should be concerned about the questions he asked me about pneumonia. I guess he wanted to know how it happened…but he didn’t ask me if I knew. The doctors at the time told me it was probably due to smoking, but I didn’t mention that because he didn’t ask. I just answered the questions he had about my students. Then he said, “Surely they would have told you if anyone was sick.” Well, no. Why would they? Why would they tell me if so and so had a cold?
I’m just puzzled, not sure if I should continue on with him. But I rarely go to the doc, so I’ll give it at least one more try.

I figured he was, @Rarebear. Thanks.

You always seem to have a bias against someone who doesn’t see or do things exactly the way you do. I guess he assumed if you were visiting a prison, they would have told you if there were an outbreak of illness. Is that really so hard to fathom? On the other hand, it probably would have been useful to him if you told him you had smoked.

I would not send a doctor down the river for having a bad hair day especially since you described him as dressed well tells me he makes an effort to present himself well. The teeth issue is hit or miss as he is from my generation or slightly before where corrective dental procedures were pure luxury and affordable for most. My only red flag is his off comment about your pneumonia…could be just a backward way of trying to get your history to create a baseline for treating you going forward. I would search him out on Google as he should have some history of his tenure as a doctor. I have done this with all the doctors and dentists I rely on.

@Dutchess_III You were working in closed quarters. Illness must fly through prisons like wildfire. Just like cruise ships. Just like k-12 schools. In all those situations when an illness is infecting a lot of people, usually people are told so they can be extra conservative about exposing themselves. More Purell, more hand washing, less contact. On the cruise ships you can’t get your own food from the buffet the first 48 hours. As long as there has been no reported illness, people can serve themselves the rest of the cruise. When you disembark, before you reenter the ship you use Some sort of hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizers are by elevators too. It’s not perfect, but it probably helps a little.

He knows I smoke @janbb. It’s in my records and we discussed it. I just…it was odd. Any number of things can cause a person to come down with pneumonia. And it doesn’t have to be an “outbreak” of anything either. Just one person with a cold, catching me on a bad day. It could also have been some other external source, like black mold, or an allergic reaction to something. Pneumonia by itself is not a specific disease. It’s your own personal body’s way of reacting to something, any number of things. That’s why I ask why it would even matter. And if he wanted to know if I knew what caused it, why didn’t he ask me that? The doctors at the time attributed it to my smoking, but later, I, personally, came to suspect that it was black mold…but he didn’t ask me. And it didn’t occur to me at the time to think that that was really the underlying question he was asking.

@JLeslie No one was sick that I know of, not that I remember, and certainly not multiple people. And if they were sick and they thought it was serious, they wouldn’t have allowed them to come to class.

@Cruiser and there is that positive. He was really well dressed. His teeth and hair were at odds with it.

Just wondering what your thoughts would have been on the conflict. Getting a good doctor can really be a serious decision. The last doctor I had, for 4 years, should have caught the pneumonia long before it got as bad as it did. I’d gone to him twice in the month before I was hospitalized, with complaints of pain. He gave me muscle relaxers and pain pills.
Afterwards, I ditched him and went back to the clinic I’d used for years before.

I agree with Dutch. The teeth thing would be off putting to me too

The pneumonia thing is just a side note to me. Not a biggie. The teeth would bother me enough that I would change doctors. Call me shallow. So sue me.

Thanks. But I was really trying to overlook it @chyna. But the questions bothered me, because that speaks to how he thinks. He knew I smoked. He also knew that I lost most of my memory for the entire months of September and October, before I was hospitalized the following November, so I wouldn’t remember if anyone was sick, or if anyone told me if there was a concern about illness. So I couldn’t answer the question anyway.
And if he wanted to know the cause, he should have just asked me if I knew.

Thanks @Rarebear. Man, you would hope that as a doctor, if he didn’t have insurance, he would qualify for a loan to correct the problem. I think it’s kind of a big deal too. If he had a phobia about dentists, they could always do the work under anesthesia. They put me out to pull my wisdom teeth.
And it wouldn’t have to be implants. It could be dentures.

Wow. I found his full name and Googled it. I found this article.

Hmmmm. Not good.

Maybe not the doctor for you then.

It’s just charting. It’s not malpractice. But you seem bent on finding a reason to dislike him. Just find another doctor.

No, I’m bent on finding a way to like him. That clinic is….all the staff, is almost like family after all these years. That’s why this is such a hard decision to make, and why I’m asking for input.
But…my health comes first, before loyalty.

My original doctor was Dr. J. In the very, very rare occasions I went to the doctor, I went to his clinic for the first 12 years after I moved here. We knew each other well.
Then I left Dr. J for a couple of years, and went with another doctor, Doctor D, for a while, and his incompetence almost killed me with the pneumonia thing. I don’t think it would have happened under Dr. J’s watch.
Doctor D’s incompetence also led the death of a friend of my ex-bosses, when it didn’t have to happen. He was too busy to take the time to really take care of her. She went in on a Friday afternoon, complaining that her chest hurt. He was rushed, getting ready for the weekend, told her to come back Monday. She died that night, of a heart attack. Which left the opening for my job. :( All of this didn’t come out until after my hospitalization in 2012. I started hearing other horror stories about Dr. D after that, too, so I left Dr. D’s clinic immediately after my release and went back to Dr. J. Then he left in December, and Dr. Posey took his place.

I know it wasn’t a big, huge deal @chyna, but under certain circumstances I think it could be. The wrong doctor, in the wrong circumstances, can kill you. What if he’d left a vitally important note out? I mean, what excuse is there to not finishing your notes?

I think I need to find another, though. I have too many doubts about this one. I’m just not comfortable with the way things are adding up. And that latest bit of info, which I just found, didn’t help.

I guess it’s time to take a vote. Raise your hand if you would stay with that doctor? You know as much about him as I do.

Maybe he was really generous to a wealthy tooth fairy, who in turn paid his way through med school? ;-o

I’m with @chyna on this one. Exactly my thoughts when I was formulating my response. “Shallow” yes but I expect my doctor to look professional and that means caring somewhat about his appearance. I thought of a quote from one of my college professors: “It’s un-American to have bad teeth.” When I did CPS work, I had clients with bad teeth but honestly they were on the fringes of society.

The hair, too. I’d expect it to look neat, not messy.

I read the linked article. 500 bucks is not a bad fine, and for a doctor I would think it should have been very affordable. It’s more like a slap on the wrist punishment.

And that was the conflicting part @jca. The nice dress vs the physical and easily correctable appearance.

If it wasn’t for my middle class upbringing I would have had HORRIBLE teeth. Crooked like you can’t believe. But my parents had insurance and could afford braces, so I got ‘em. And because of it I ended up with a Farrah Faucett smile that was often commented and complimented on. I am thankful that I wasn’t fringe. And that’s what I don’t get. Maybe he was raised “fringe,” but he certainly hasn’t been fringe for the last two decades.

Thing is, I did try to overlook it, because it’s really his brain that counts. But our discussion on the pneumonia threw me, more than anything. For another example, when I told him what the procedure for the operation was (they inserted a tube through my back, and in between a couple of ribs and drained my lung—I jokingly called it an ‘oil change’,) he said, “OK, so they did a [insert medical term here.]”
I’m thinking, “Well, I just told you what they did so I guess they did do a [insert medical term here.]”
What I did was…just nod.

Don’t yell at me guys. I’ve made my decision, in part because of reaching out here, listening to you all, and in part because of other research tonight. I really don’t want to leave that clinic, but I’m going to. Shit. I was looking for an excuse to stay but…I just don’t see one.

Wah.

BTW, he did order a chest X-ray (Since 2012, I am turning into good friends with the X-ray gal at the clinic! She seems to know me better than anyone.), and after reviewing them said there was no evidence of a [insert medical term here] mass, but maybe bronchitis was looming so he prescribed 500 mg of CEPHALEXIN. An antibiotic.

Judging a book by its cover, eh? I personally have seen many professional and eccentric-looking doctors in my life. So what if he missed some teeth? That won’t affect his capacity to treat his patients. Doctors need official letter and approval from a related healthcare institution before they can practice on any patient so rest assured that this one is most likely qualified in his field despite his appearance. You can also get external information regarding his competence from receptionists or his other patients.

If you’re not sure about the prescription he gave you can always go for a second doctor for an opinion.

@Dutchess_III I once went down to Florida on vacation where I had bronchitis and a sudden ear infection. My son also came down with an ear infection. I met this small (I think Korean) doctor there in a clinic. His english was poor and he asked me how often have I had bronchitis and if I remember when if first started was I around a lot of sick people. I told him about my work in daycare and people where always bringing in sick children. I thought it odd but he then asked how often have I gotten it over the last 2 years. I told him the antibiotics I had taken before didn’t seem very effective and he said they probably weren’t and that is why my bronchitis kept coming back so easily. He agreed that I probably never got over it because it was never properly treated. He then gave me an antibiotic that he said was a bit more costly and usually used for pneumonia and told me it should take care of my lungs and ear infection. My son was also given great antibiotics for his ear. Out of any doctor I have ever been too, he was a miracle worker. I’ve never had bronchitis since and that was over 12 years ago. Within 3 days, but I continued to take the medication like till it was gone. I felt years younger and full of energy because I finally had medication that could treat my bronchitis.

My point was I thought he was an odd little fellow and I thought of him like a discount doctor. He wasn’t dressed well and his clothes were wrinkly and his english was at times difficult to understand, and I thought he came to his diagnosis too quickly, but hell, he knew what he was doing. All I know is after 2 years of misery, I wanted to throw him a parade. I was so use to feeling under the weather that I didn’t realize I was probably still sick or my body was weak from trying to constantly keep the bronchitis at bay. All my former doctors looked so professional but all they did was give me a band aide when I needed more.

So I never care what my doctor looks like, sounds like or dresses like. I just want him to fix me when I need his professional advise. So many dress the part of doctor and should be working at a supermarket bagging groceries. No where near diagnosing people.

It’s also possible your doctor looks the way he does because he use to work in a poor neighborhood and he did a lot of clinic work. Some of your best doctors work in community clinics that hardly pay them enough to keep the doors open. Growing up I went to such a clinic and sometimes the doctors there would help with the cost of some of the medications out of their own pockets when they knew a patient couldn’t afford quality medication because medicade would only pay for a worthless generic type.

@Dutchess_III why did he give you a chest x-ray? Are you positive for TB exposure? Are they doing that now regularly for smokers?

I had a friend who recommended a GP/internist to me when I moved to TN and eventually I found out he does a chest X-ray on everyone every year at their physical. I dropped him like a hot potato. With your history though, maybe there is a specific reason why you had an X-ray ordered though.

I think go with your gut! Your impression of him was iffy, so switch to another doctor. You can always go back if you change your mind.

I’ve been thinking about it with the bad teeth issue and his messy appearance. I think I’d rather my doctor be in a nice clean tee shirt with a lab coat over it, hair looking neat and good teeth, rather than what your doctor had, @Dutchess_III (decent clothes but messy hair and missing teeth). I guess maybe it’s been ingrained in me since as long as I can remember, the importance of taking care of my teeth (and doing whatever has to be done for their appearance or replacement). Maybe because I live in an area where everyone has good teeth (except for those on the fringes, as I mentioned, and their bad teeth indicated that they were on the fringes). I don’t know, to me it just indicates some sort of a disconnect. Not that of course it’s not possible that someone is a terrific professional with a messy appearance, and everyone has examples of that, I know.

@JLeslie No, I was not exposed to TB. No, they don’t give regular chest X-rays to smokers. He gave me a chest X-ray to make sure pneumonia wasn’t re-occurring.

@jca. ”...Indicates some sort of disconnect.” Exactly. I’ll have to remember that phrase.

Anyway, now I need to find a new doctor.

@Pandora If he had diagnosed me with bronchitis or something yesterday, I could understand him asking questions to determine where I had picked it up so I could avoid that situation, if at all possible.
But this doctor was asking me about circumstances surrounding an event that happened over 3 years ago, and that I have no memory of.
What does it matter where I could have picked up a bug that made me sick over 3 years ago? It hasn’t reoccurred. I’m just taking preventative measures now. I’m really paranoid about it. It was very, very bad. I slipped into a coma for 3 days while I was in the hospital. I almost died. I don’t remember it, but my family sure as hell does.

@Dutchess_III Oh, I misunderstood. I didn’t know you were feeling sick.

I was feeling a little off, is all. Not something I would normally go to the doctor’s for before my incident. But since I can’t remember what I felt like when I was coming down with pneumonia, I’m not sure what to watch for. Apparently, whatever symptoms I was displaying weren’t enough to concern my husband or anyone else in the family, except my daughter. But what concerned her was not anything physical. I was slowly going nuts. She knew something was wrong, but she thought it was purely mental, like I was getting Alzheimers or something. She had no idea there could be a physical cause for it.

I’ve turned into a big weeny.