Sometimes when my mom and I are in conversation and the topic of health comes up, she regularly references Dr. Oz. If you aren’t aware of Dr. Oz, you probably do not watch Oprah. I don’t blame you. Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon and award-winning author is a frequent guest on Oprah’s couch. He answers medical questions, give advice and insight to all aspects of health.

In short, he’s pretty awesome. He founded a non-profit organization called HealthCorps which pays college graduates a stipend to spend two years mentoring high school students about health, nutrition and fitness. He also serves as a director of Siga Technologies, a company whose goal is to create countermeasure to prevent and treat serious infectious diseases. He’s written a number of books, one of which was a NY Times bestseller.

He obviously has a great passion for what he does and is proactive in trying to really accomplish his responsibilities as part of the medical field. I really wish he was my doctor.

I haven’t had a lot of luck with them, probably since I was a teenager. To this day, I haven’t been able to find a doctor who was willing to take the time to listen to my problems and offer constructive advice.

I watch a show called “Mystery Diagnosis” on TLCWRWE and it’s so disheartening to hear about these people who knew something was wrong with them and every time they went to a doctor they were shut down, called crazy or misdiagnosed. It usually takes visits with dozens of different doctors to finally come across one that is determined and happy to help solve your problem

With that said, I don’t know what has happened in the field of medicine in the last five to 10 years or so and pardon me for saying this, but doctors are absolute and utter crap these days.

Case in point, I have a problem with constipation. I admit it and I’m talking candidly about it, because if Dooce can, so can I. When it got to a point where I really realized I had a problem, I went to see my doctor and tried to explain that I would love to hear her ideas on what I should be doing to open the gates of my digestive system.

The first question she asked me is if I experienced major discomfort while going to the bathroom. And the truth was, I didn’t. Not enough to notice.

“Then you’re perfectly fine!” she said. “Someone can not go to the bathroom for a week, and if it doesn’t cause them discomfort, then it’s perfectly normal!”

I was slightly dumbfounded, but she kept pressing on.

“In fact, if you don’t go to the bathroom for a month and you don’t feel any pain, then that’s completely ok! Everyone is different!”

At this point, I wanted to call whatever medical school this woman had finished in and have them rebuke the M.D. after her name. She kept babbling on about how everyone goes at their own pace and if you don’t know for one week, one month or you know, for whatever long period of time, that does not mean something is wrong with you.

Moving on, I tried to point out the excruciating pain in my upper left shoulder I had been experiencing for quite a while now, so much so that that part of my body felt really numb. She felt my back and agreed that something was wrong, yet her only response was that it wasn’t anything “that a good massage couldn’t fix!”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I could have come in with chicken pox and this woman would probably have prescribed me acne medication and told me not to worry.

And since we’re on the topic of acne, I brought that up too. The only thing she did was prescribe me a ridiculously expensive prescription acne medication that had a lower amount of benzoyl peroxide than the regular cream I used and bought at the super market.

I really felt like I was taking crazy pills.

I left her office baffled. I never went back to her again. Luckily, she quit her practice and went to pursue a career in the pharmaceutical industry before I could.

My most recent doctor (the one who thought I was happy to have a pap smear because she confused my nervous laughter with enjoying the moment), is no where near the stupidity of “if you shit once a year, then count yourself lucky”, but still, there are things that irk me about her, and it’s not just her, it’s about how the medical field has evolved in general.

In the same episode as the pap smear, I had also gone in for a general checkup. This was my chance, or so I thought, to explain my absence in the bathroom, acne at 23 and inability to lose weight to her. She’d understand, I thought. She’ll listen to me, ask me intuitive questions, give me great advice and not try to just prescribe me pills to solve my problem.

You can guess what happened. I didn’t even get a chance to tell her anything beyond the pimple problem because she rushed me so horribly and didn’t let me talk. The entire appointment, which I waited almost 45 minutes for took 10 minutes, perhaps even eight. In and out – no time to listen to patients, or show a genuine interest that you care for them.

I was so disappointed. I went home confused. How come no one cared? Why were people becoming doctors if they didn’t honestly care about the well being of their patients. Even the offices of a doctor in a great hospital had turned into a business.

I wish I had the luxury of going to a doctor who had a private practice and specialized in alternative medicine. I feel like these are the only ones left who aren’t tainted with their military style of seeing patients and making judgment calls in the first two minutes of a meeting.

The truth is, I think doctors have lost their sense of responsibility – they see their profession only as a business. What happened to that Hippocratic Oath you took? I mean there used to be a time when doctors would be on house call and would willingly travel to people’s houses in the middle of the night to treat them. Where are those doctors?

I hate to bring up Grey’s Anatomy in all of this, because it is, well, fictional, but you see it in the show too. So much so that when the Chief of Surgery found out that Seattle Grace Hospital had come 12th in the list of best teaching hospitals this season, he restructured the entire program to make sure they move up. And then there’s Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), hell bent on scrubbing in on surgeries, not necessarily because she cares about a patient’s chance of survival, but the fact of slicing and dicing and sewing up and taking out organs, tumors and what not in the human body is what she lives for. Her passion is in surgery of the patient, not the well being of him or her.

Just this past week my uncle was telling me about how he went in for an annual checkup and the doctor tried to prescribe him anti-depressants even though he was clearly not depressed and didn’t ask for a prescription. What is wrong with you people?

I actually read an article in SELF magazine about a doctor who refused to give a woman who had just been raped the morning after pill because it was “against his religion.” In an homage to Grey’s Anatomy, seriously?

New York magazine writer Robert Kolker interviewed a panel of anonymous physicians in June 2007 about a variety of very interesting issues. Though the article is seven pages long, it is a fascinating read. This doctor seemed to mirror what I have been saying all along:

The way we used to train physicians is that you worked all the time. You were on call all the time. Medicine was holy work—a calling. It was a privilege and an honor—you should sacrifice everything. Everything else came second. It didn’t matter if you didn’t eat during the day, it didn’t matter if you didn’t sleep. Now, the thinking is, if people don’t sleep they make mistakes, and if they make mistakes it’s bad for the hospital. So residents are being taught medicine as a career choice as opposed to a profession, a calling. They’re being taught as shift workers, which I think is a huge problem. When that clock hits a certain time, they have to leave the hospital. They can’t go to the library and read about the patient. They cannot go to the pathology lab and look up their patient’s pathology on microscope.

While I do agree, that half the job to receiving great care is up to the patient, as well as the doctor, I think a little effort goes a long way. I remember when Henry had his luxating patella surgery in the summer, and I received a follow up call from his surgeon and his regular veterinarian inquiring about how he was and it made all the difference in the world. So, I’m not asking you to be in a relationship with me and I realize that you have other patients to see, but don’t make me feel like a number. Don’t make me wait 45 minutes to see you and only give me long enough to tell you one of my problems. Most importantly, do not tell me that having one bowel movement in a week is perfectly fine. I may not have a medical degree, but I’m not stupid. Constipated people of the world, unite!