Weighing My Options

I would like to fire my doctor right now.  He isn't exactly my family doctor, but one of the physicians at the community health clinic where I am a patient.   He has been my regular doctor since I registered with the clinic three years ago.  We have generally enjoyed a good relationship but last week I found him rude, disrespectful and shaming.  I have been seeing him about four times a month for weight loss and maintenance.  Up till two years ago I was well on my way to obesity.  I have since lost up to forty pounds with perhaps thirty to go.  When we see each other he weighs me and takes my blood pressure.  When I was still trending towards fat my blood pressure reading was a bit high, but not dangerous.  Through careful diet and exercise and weight loss my blood pressure soon normalized. 

When I saw the doctor New Year's Eve my weight was up by four pounds and my blood pressure was  up a little.  There was a young intern present, an attractive woman and foolishly I consented to her sitting in on my appointment.  I am now convinced that the doctor was trying to impress her, to give the impression that he was in control of his recalcitrant patient.  Instead he came across as an absolute jerk.  He practically yelled at me for gaining weight, ignored my explanation that winter and Christmas are a time when almost everyone gains weight and even though my blood pressure was only modestly high for the first time in two years told me that if it was still high on my next appointment he was going to put me on medication.

The fact is I don't have to take the medication, or accept the prescription if I don't want to or don't believe it to be in my better interests.  I don't have to let him take my blood pressure or weigh me-I don't even have to see the old douchebag.  This much I know.  When I became homeless in 1998 I lost almost everything I owned, including my bathroom scale.  For years I couldn't afford to buy one and, unchecked, my weight skyrocketed.  I did not see a doctor for ten years.  When I made an appointment for a physical and blood tests at the clinic almost three years ago I weighed in at nearly a whopping two hundred fifty pounds.  I was even heavier before and had already successfully shed some weight, though to this day I do not know how much because I didn't have a bathroom scale.

I know I'm going to be okay.  I am not concerned really about the good doctor though I still might give him a good bitch-slapping when I see him in late February, just four days short of my trip to Colombia, or possibly speak to his clinical supervisor.  Or I might fire him outright.  It doesn't seem to matter now.  I am careful to get more exercise, watch my diet and already I've lost about a pound in the last ten days or so.  How do I know this?  Simple.  Later that day, following my unfortunate visit to the doctor, after work, I went into London Drugs where I bought me a bathroom scale.  I now weigh myself every morning.  I feel now that in every conceivable way I have taken back my life.