Friday, October 14, 2022. One of the reasons Jeff and I moved to this area from the Outer Banks was for the great medical care all around the Triangle. When I needed a primary care doctor, I asked a few neighbors for recommendations, but their doctors weren’t taking any more patients. So I did what we always do nowadays, I Googled it. I found a practice with UNC that sounded good and read reviews of some of their doctors. Some of the doctors included a short bio and one in particular stood out, but she had no reviews. Still I called the office to make an appointment only to be told that the first few doctors weren’t taking patients. They started reading off a list of available doctors and I thought I recognized a name so I said I’d go with that one. I wasn’t really sure who it was but I had to start somewhere. Turns out I remembered the name because she was the one who wrote such a nice bio. My first meeting with her was very memorable because I was in the beginning of my struggles with ME/CFS and for some reason thought I could manage walking up six flights to her office. (I could have easily done that before this illness.) I hate elevators because of my claustrophobia plus we were in the middle of Covid, but it was definitely a mistake to take the stairs. Within a few minutes of sitting down, I couldn’t move. I was alone in the office waiting for her and kept hoping it would be better by the time she got there, but it wasn’t. All I could do was raise a finger indicating I needed a minute. She was patient, kind, and listened to me intently when I could finally speak. I saw her several times after that before I found out she was still a resident and was hoping to get a permanent position nearby. I was hoping that, too, because I thought very highly of her by then. (She got the position, by the way.) She ran through every test possible for me and stayed in close communication which is such a rare thing these days. And by communication, I mean she actually picks up the phone and calls me herself. It was never more important to me than this last week when I was waiting for the results of the bronchoscopy. I kept seeing results coming in but they were so full of medical jargon I couldn’t really understand them. She called me yesterday afternoon because she was worried no one had contacted me about the results so far, and she was right. Even though all the tests aren’t back, she explained that it’s looking very likely that what I have is some type of infection, and there is no indication of cancer so far. She’s pretty confident from what she’s seen that there won’t be. I was so happy to hear that, but I was incredibly touched that she took the time to call. It’s the pulmonologist who will ultimately give me the final results since he’s the one who ordered the test so it wasn’t really her responsibility to call me, but she did it because she cares. Finding a doctor who cares, who goes out of their way to communicate with you; it’s so hard to find and it’s worth everything. You know where I found God yesterday? In a good doctor who’s worth her weight in gold.
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