Doctor, Doctor!

Most of the time after I’ve been to the doctor, I say to myself, “Why did I bother?” I’ve usually got a pretty good idea what the diagnosis is before I go, but I can’t do my own medical tests to be certain, and I can’t prescribe pharmaceuticals. So sometimes there’s not much choice; I have to go to the doctor.

After waiting a long time in the well-named WAITING ROOM, I went to an examining room and waited some more, then saw the doctor, then waited some more for the nurse to come and do an EKG, then waited some more for the doctor to look at the EKG and come back in to give me the diagnosis.

Thankfully, the EKG was normal. (See, sometimes I’m normal!)

That left my original self-diagnosis of costal chondritis. The doctor decided to prescribe some medication to help the chest wall pain and inflammation. When I got out of the office and looked at the prescription, I just laughed.

Seriously, it was a joke.

The doctor prescribed Naprosyn 500mg, 1 tablet twice daily. Naprosyn is Naproxin is Aleve. The only difference is that Aleve only has 220mg per tablet.

Here’s the thing -- I already chunk down 3 Aleve at a time on a regular basis. Unless my math skills totally fail me, that’s 660mg, which is more than the 500mg tablet the doctor prescribed. So if that much Aleve isn’t relieving the pain, why bother with the prescribed Naprosyn?

My answer is… I’m not.

If I’d went to the doctor with the idea of getting pain relief, it would have been a total waste of time, effort and money. However, I’ve been that route so many times, I didn’t delude myself thinking there was any chance of that. No, my goal was to make sure there wasn’t any heart problem.

So, mission accomplished, and that’s about as good as it gets.