When The Healthcare System Is Bad For Your Health

It’s 2020, and I’ve accidentally changed counties. As ridiculous as it sounds, that means my doctor who has been treating me for years is legally no longer allowed to, as the office only takes the Medi-Cal low-income free health insurance associated with [County #1].

After extensive calling around, I get a phone intake (no one is really doing in-person appointments in late March 2020). The doctor asks me personal questions for over an hour, for what was supposed to be a half-hour appointment.

I’m just scared about a lapse in my vital medications, so I’m trying to just bear it, but I have to go to work.

He calls me to finish the intake on a Sunday, on his own time, and asks me personal questions about my childhood and trauma for another hour and a half.

Eventually, I start begging him to refill my medications, offering to send a plethora of documentation. He refuses the documentation, accuses me of being medication-seeking, and says that he has to evaluate me himself to decide what meds I should be on.

He is the only doctor I could get an appointment with, so I am trying desperately to hold my tongue.

Me: “Can I suggest we go over what medications I’ve been on and why, just so you have a comprehensive history?”

Doctor: “I can agree to fill some of them, but not [specific medication]. You’re too fat for it.”

I am speechless for a bit.

Me: “How?”

Doctor: “It’s my discretion and—”

Me: *Interrupting* “Do you know much I weigh?”

Doctor: “Tell me.”

Me: “No.”

Doctor: “That just confirms it; since you don’t want to tell me, you must be fat.”

Me: “I weigh 157 pounds. I’m 5’7″ and I’ve been working out so much lately that I might actually be underweight.”

I shouldn’t have said that because he switches tactics.

Doctor: “You can’t have [specific medication] if you’re underweight.”

Me: “How much am I supposed to weigh, and how do you expect me to prove this?”

Doctor: “If you don’t stop being non-compliant, I won’t fill any of your meds.”

So, I shut up, even though that’s not really what non-compliant means.

I called his office to complain, and the receptionist said that she knows him well, that he is very nice, and that he would never do that, and then she hung up on me.

It actually got worse.

He put me on a new medication, threatened to stop treating me if I didn’t start taking it, and then wouldn’t listen to my complaints. My complaint was that it made me irritable to the point that the smallest thing would actually enrage me. I then snapped at him on the phone, and he started screaming at me. I pointed out that he was the professional, not me, so he screamed more, and my housemate had to remind me to de-escalate.

I had to keep sucking up to that guy for months, with increasingly bad health due to not having all of my medications, until I finally used my old address to re-enroll in my old county. I really hope he no longer practices medicine.