In a place where family doctors are in high demand right now, and have been for years, I was very glad to find out, a few years back, that my parents had managed to find a new doctor after being without one for so long, and that this doctor (who for the sake of this article shall be called Dr. G) was also willing to take me on as a patient also. What I didn't know is that this doctor would end up, through the course of treating me, lower my self-esteem and make me feel worthless, ignore complaints, and act so incredibly unprofessional that I wondered at times why I even bothered to see her.

I didn't have much of a choice, mind. It was her or nobody at all.

When I first saw her, the very first appointment, Dr. G was remarkably nice, treating me very well, listening to me, all the stuff that doctors are supposed to do. My second appointment with her didn't go as well. She was rushed, irritable, and in a foul mood. I chalked that one up to the fact that she was working on Christmas Eve. I would be kind of cranky about that too. But that second visit may as well have continued for the rest of the time she was my doctor.

For a long time, I had breathing problems, sometimes escalating to the point of me having to go to the hospital because my lips would start to turn blue-ish. (At least according to those around me, and to be honest, I don't doubt them.) I would be given a round of Ventolin to open up my lungs, given the remainer of the canister of meds, and sent on my way. When I asked my doctor about this, knowing that Ventolin was commonly used to treat asthma, she said that no, I didn't have asthma. I just had repeated lung infections.

Which, interestingly, she didn't seem that concerned about.

It was an ER doctor who finally diagnosed me with asthma and gave me a presciption for the medications I'd need to help keep it under control. My next appointmentwith Dr. G contained the words, "So it looks like you've got a touch of asthma, hmm?"

Yes, a touch. A touch that would send me up to the hospital about once a month for a few months, that you denied even existed.

Much later on, also, after she repeatedly refused to give me refills on my asthma medication, she also had the audacity to ask me why I'd had so many trips to the ER. I told her flat out that it was because I'd run out of asthma medication and couldn't always make an appointment with her every month to get more, so I'd try to stretch it as long as I could. Sometimes it didn't work as planned. Interestingly enough, she started giving me refills after that.

I got the feeling that she had actually been questioned by hospital doctors as to why I kept going there instead of seeing her, and that was the only reason why she bothered to ask me.

Most after-hours clinics in this area have a policy of dealing with only one complaint at a time. This is to ensure that as many patients can be seen as possible, to keep apointment times as close as they could be. This, I think, is an efficient way to run a clinic where the majority of people are there because they have the flu and need a sick note, or to get a refill on simple medications. However, Dr. G had the same policy in her office, making it impossible for me to go to her and get a refill on my asthma medication as well as talk to her about my weight issues, for example. She would refuse to deal with the second problem. On one occasion where I tried to bring up a related but technically separate issue, she walked out of the office while I was in the middle of a sentence, ignoring whatever I had to say.

She was good at scheduling appointments, I'll give her that. Very rarely can you find doctors who can fit you into their schedule for the very next day. However, this benefit came with one major drawback: she would quite often cancel those appointments. More than once I arrived at her office for a morning appointment to find it closed. Thinking she was running a little late, I'd wait around. After an hour on one such occasion, I gave up and went home to find a message on my answering machine from her, timed about 20 minutes before my scheduled appointment, saying that she wouldn't be in her office that day.

On one memorable occasion, there was a crowd of about 10 patients waiting outside her office for appointments. She hadn't bothered to let any of them know their appointments had been cancelled. She just didn't show up.

Her secretary, who was the mother of an old friend of mine, once passed along an interesting bit of trivia that Dr. G would call in sick to work, complaining of kidney stones or the flu, when she just didn't want to go in that day. I can neither confirm nor deny this, but to be perfectly honest, that behaviour fits well with what I know of her personality.

Whenever she saw me, she looked annoyed. I couldn't tell if this was some personal grudge against me, or if she looked that way with all of her patients, but it certainly made me feel uncomfortable. After a while, I didn't want to have anything to do with her. I was tired of being treated as though I was little more but another name on her list that she could use to get a fat paycheque. Some problems, however, required that I see her, because there were no other doctors in the city that would take new patients.

After much coaxing by my roommate, I went to talk to her about depression. I was understandably nervous. I'd suffered from untreated depression for about 7 years by that point, and it had reached a state where it was, well, more than a little disruptive to my life. So I gathered my courage and told her that I thought I was depressed. She adked what made me think that way. I described my emotional state to her, stereotypical signs of depression. Giving a list took all of 30 seconds.

"But you're not suicidal, right?" was her response. I told her that actually, I have been. She wrote me a prescription. "Take these for three years," she said, and walked out of the room.

That was it. Clinical, to the point, no elaboration or clarification beyond asking if I was suicidal, then just a script that I'm told to take for 3 years. Not even, "Take these for a few months and then come back and we'll see where to go from there," as I've heard is typical from other doctors who have depressed patients. No even a sympathetic expression. In, have some meds, out.

After a while, I began to develop an odd twitch in my head, as well as sometimes blurting out odd sounds for no particular reason, which I tried to explain to her at one point. I'd done research, and I told her that it sounded to me as though I had Tourette'. She actually sneered at me when I said that, and told me to go see a neurologist.

I did. He diagnosed me with Tourette's, and he said he'd send the appropriate information to Dr. G.

Soon after that, Dr. G called me for an appointment. When I went in, I asked her if this was about the Tourette's that the neurologist had diagnosed me with. Again she sneered, said "no" like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and proceded to question me about something else.

I had made an appointment with her regarding high levels of fatigue and the fact that I was sleeping far more than I thought I should be, as well as having trouble understanding things that were said to me. I could hear just fine, I told her, but the sounds didn't always connect to actual meanings in my brain.

"Oh," she said. "You're depressed."

I told her she was already treating me for depression, and that I didn't think these problems were related as I was feeling a lot better with the depression treatment. "Well it's OBVIOUSLY not working if the symptoms haven't gone away," she scoffed.

I reminded her that the symptoms I was discussing weren't actually the ones I had when I came to her about depression in the first place. I refrained from reminding her that she hadn't even written any of my symptoms down in the first place. That seemed to stop her, though, and make her reconsider. She sent me for blood tests, which came back in a week or so.

She'd called me back for an appointment to discuss them, and she said they'd came back all normal. I asked her what the next step was. Her exact words? "With what?"

Uh, why do you think you sent me for blood tests?!

I thankfully found another doctor after that, as did my parents. She had treated them no better than she had treated me, and none of us were going to stand for it any longer.

It's not much of a wonder that I dreaded having to see her for any reason, to the point of putting off appointments for as long as I possibly could. Through her behaviour towards me and general lack of treatment, I began to fear doctors in general. To this day I'm not able to go a doctor's appointment without feeling a sinking feeling of dread that nobody's going to take me seriously, that they'll just ignore me and sneer at my thoughts of what might be wrong.

Doctors are supposed to be there to help the sick, and because of one outrageously idiotic one, I now fear that they're going to cause more harm to me than good, either through neglect or ignorance or a potentially serious misdiagnosis. If that ER doctor hadn't given me the asthma diagnosis, I could still be spending my life with supoosed "repeate lung infections" and getting minimal treatment at best. For all she knew, with that terribly sketchy "interview" regarding my depression, I just wanted meds to sell on the street. The citalopram she prescribed could have brought me a few hundred dollars at the time, I believe.

Because of her, I've spent years self-diagnosing and treating as best I can without the need of modern medicine, when I can get away with it. I make no compromises where my lungs are concerned, for example, but for a lot of illnesses and complaints now, I don't go to the doctor with them. The fear of open mockery and reprisal is too great.

I know that's something I need to get over. Not all doctors are that stupid, and I know this logically. But some part of me still fears. Iwonder what they aren't saying when they treat me, how much they think to themselves that I'm faking it, how much they feel annoyance when I give them the name of a condition I think I may have.

When I saw the neurologist about Tourette's, before he gave me the diagnosis, I said, "Now I know you doctors tend to hate self-diagnoses, but..." The neurologost assured me that he, at least, didn't, and was interested in hearing what I had to say. I wish he could have been my family doctor, or at least someone with a similar attitude.

I don't think it's too much to ask that physicians listen to their patients, don't sneer at them for diagnostic theories, don't treat them like they're a waste of time and resources. It really isn't too much to ask, is it?

As a side note, I find it interesting that not too long after I left her as a doctor, she had her medical license suspended and was facing charges of arson, drug trafficking, and uttering threats to patients. She was cleared of all three charges on a lack of evidence, mind, but none of that really surprised me.

Another thing I find interesting is that on the very helpful and convenient ratemds.com, her listing has a great number of negative reviews... and then 8 positive and glowing reviews, all posted on the same day and in the same writing style. I can't help but wonderif any of them were her, trying to boost her reputation again. Or a friend whom she told to do the same thing. In various news articles surrounding her trial, she admitted that she wasn't above getting friends to do things like that for her, whether it's calling some place for her or -- and I kid you not -- answering the phone and hanging up when it was the police or her own defemse lawyer calling. She admitted to lying numerous times about being away from the city when she just didn't want to talk to her lawyer.

Doctors are people, just as flawed as the rest of us. But would you really want your health in this person's hands? Would you trust her to care for you or your children, knowing this?

Though I know there are plenty of times where the only choice you may have is to have no family doctor or a potentially bad one, but I urge you, if you can, do something of abackground check on a new doctor before you sign the forms that say you'll be their patient. Look for news articles online, look on various doctor-rating sites to see what others have said, and determine if the doctor you're thinking about is actually right for you. Nobody should have to put up with "healthcare" like I did. Nobody.

And because of a lack of alternative choices and information, far too many people are.