From the Editor’s Desk: Good Results, Same Old Worries (Premium)

As I write this, we've been in Pennsylvania for about a month and a half, after spending four months in Mexico City. We weren't sure about how the rest of the year would unfold, but we just booked our return trip to Mexico for July 8, and we'll be there through the end of August. And then we'll be back in Pennsylvania for most of September, I guess, and then back to Mexico City for October and most of November. We'll figure that out later.

Stephanie and I planned to use our time here to get caught up with appointments, see friends and family here and in Boston, take a couple of small local trips, and do some things that are difficult or impossible in Mexico. I also went on a major work trip, to Seattle for Build, and had a few in-person meetings locally. Basic life stuff, in other words. And we've done pretty well on that note.

I have all kinds of goals and what I will call a mixed success rate. But the most important, perhaps, was to get caught up on all the health-related stuff in the form of blood work and a series of appointments with various doctors. I saw my optometrist and have no changes to my prescription, which is good, but still need to order new glasses. I can't see my dentist until we're away, so that was pushed back to September, which isn't ideal. And I've met my new primary care doctor, which was interesting.

A month ago, I provided an overdue but also incomplete health and fitness update. Long story short, I had seen my previous doctor in December and she convinced me, after two years of trying, to take the statin formerly known as Lipitor to lower my cholesterol. So I was looking forward to getting my blood work done when we came back to Pennsylvania to see how that went.

My doctor had also informed me she was moving to a new practice, so I was assigned a new doctor who I'd meet later. This transition was supposed to take place in March, but since we were heading to Mexico City in early January, I wouldn't have to deal with the new doctor until I got home. Or so I thought. In that article linked above, I described the horrific experience I had the week before our flight and the difficulty I had getting my prescriptions filled and then just getting anyone to respond to my increasingly frantic requests for help.

I later learned that my previous doctor had had to move to her new practice months earlier than expected, and the week she made that transition is when I got lost in the shuffle with regard to communications and prescriptions. But I was treated unprofessionally and, I think, unethically. And I went to Mexico looking forward to when I could set that right, in person, when we returned.

Well, we returned. My pre-scheduled first appointment with the new doctor was set for a day in early May that ended up being too early: We didn't originally have a return flight booked, and when we finally did book that, I had to move the appointment back by a week or so. And a few days after we got home, I headed over...