Doctor Dilemma

One of the things that I have been really pleased with since we moved to Ontario has been the level of healthcare my family has received. This started even before we had a doctor. When Janelle broke her arm last summer, I took her to a clinic where she was diagnosed in under five minutes, an x-ray clinic where we waited about 15 minutes, and London Children's Hospital, where we may have waited about 45 minutes to see a doctor. All in all, including driving and having a cast put on, we were home within three hours of her accident. Not bad. I hate to say it, but in Fredericton this probably would have been an all day ordeal.

I was even happier with our healthcare when we met our new doctor. I found her on a "London Academy of Medicine" website, and it took a few months to get in to her, but she is wonderful. She is extremely thorough, never rushed, and so kind and helpful. Such a contrast to my very gruff, impatient, always in a hurry, and often insensitive family doctor in Fredericton. He wasn't a nightmare of a doctor like some of my friends have described, but he certainly never put me at ease. The day I met my doctor here I immediately felt "cared for" in a way I never had with my old doctor. She immediately set up appointments for Janelle's arm to be reassessed, Connor's hearing to be checked, and for Chris and I to have long-awaited full check-ups. Every time I've been in her office she has not left without asking if there is anything else she can do for me. She's wonderful! I love her! But at my check-up in February she gave me some bad news.

Not the kind of bad news you expect in a doctor's office. I don't have some frightening rare disease. Or a more frightening common disease for that matter! My children are fine. I'm healthy and (according to my doctor) young for my age (see why I love her?) No, none of the usual doctor's office bad stuff. But terrible just the same.

My doctor is moving away.

She assured me that we would still be cared for, that we will still have a doctor and that if it takes some time for the office to hire a new doctor the others in the practice would pick up the slack. Still, I felt awful. I finally found a wonderful, caring doctor, and she's leaving me! But then a month later I got a letter in the mail that made me feel worse.

The letter explained that my doctor would be moving because her husband had found employment in another city and that attempts would be made to replace her, but she could not guarantee a new doctor would be found. Therefore, she suggested, we should begin our search for a new family doctor. AGAIN! WHAT? I just did that last year! I was very happy with the result, and I don't want to do it again!

I've gone back to the same website I found our current doctor on, but the only doctor taking patients is in a town quite a distance from here. There is one doctor accepting adult patients up until next week, and a pediatrician accepting children, but they are both at the opposite end of the city and I had really hoped we'd all be able to have the same doctor. There is also a service that I can register for where we will be assigned a doctor on a random basis, and we could all end up with different ones, but we don't even qualify for that service until after our doctor has moved. My next option is to just start calling doctor's offices. Chris suggested I look for recommendations, but seriously? In this part of the world, as in NB, "you get what you get and you don't get upset". Otherwise I would have left my doc in Freddy a long time ago!

So maybe I should call the adult doc and the pediatrician. Or maybe I should just start making phone calls. Or maybe I should wait and pray that the clinic where my doctor works is able to replace her after all. It's a dilemma, and one I had really hoped I wouldn't have to deal with again for a long time! Meanwhile, the walk-in clinic around the corner is very quick and the doctor (who is about 102 years old) is a sweet old fellow. Maybe I should just stick with him!