The Case of the Mystery Ailment(s)
Someone needs to write a guide for me. Two guides, actually: 1. How to gauge the badness of pain 2. When to go to the doctor My experiences with medical doctors has been generally good. (I'm not going to talk about insurance here. I've had the whole range of experiences with that, being a US citizen in a time of healthcare transition. That can be a top for another time.) Most of my life has been spent with the same doctor--a family practitioner in Portland who treats every member of my immediate family--which makes me very fortunate, because she is an amazing doctor AND knows all of my hereditary red flags because she is extremely well acquainted with my family history. As a kid, I was lucky enough to pretty much never need a doctor. I can remember only one instance that required a doctor visit, outside of physicals and booster shots, and that one instance was cutting the tip of my thumb off. (It reattached). The downside to being healthy and hardy as a kid is...