I sat in the office of a new family doctor for my daughter and me filling out the pages of forms. Halfway down one sheet come the questions we all hate to answer truthfully. You know the ones:
What do you weigh?
Do you smoke? Have you ever? When did you quit?
Do you drink?
Do you exercise?
Do you take recreational drugs?
I found myself hesitating over the ‘Do you exercise?’ one. You see I consider it exercise to get up in the morning, or clean the house, or run all over town doing errands. Do I put on Richard Simmons’ Golden Oldies and rock to the beat? Nope. Do I Zumba? Nope. How about following that guy that gets results in 15 minutes? Nope. Why? Because, darn it, I’m lazy when it comes to a set schedule of exercises or walking, or jogging, or breathing hard. But was I willing to admit that to the good doctor?
The struggle to come up with the right answer should have been a non-entity in that doctor’s office. Why? That person who is supposed to help you with your medical issues cannot do the job sufficiently if you and I don’t provide truthful information.
What if I say, “Sure, I jog three miles four times a week.”? First of all, the doc has to be a complete moron if she thinks these rolls around my waist came from jogging, so she already knows I lie like a rug. However, she is also a professional and, more than likely, a politically correct one who won’t call me out of my huge fabrication (no pun intended). She is also loathe to put me on ‘additional’ exercise if she knows I’m already refusing to do it on my own. Chances are her order would be ignored.
The same goes with smoking. Oh, I know you only have a couple per day. In fact you had one just before you entered the doctor’s office. You put a Listerine tab melt in your mouth afterward, so the doc will never know. Funny person! Your whole body smells like the nicotine and tar laden weed. She knows the strong ‘NO’ to that question is as counterfeit as a three-dollar bill.
The question regarding recreational drugs is extremely important since those drugs may interact badly with some prescriptions causing a patient’s early demise.
What it comes down to is we are hurting ourselves by lying to the one person we trust to help us. Those lies come back to bite us eventually unless the doctor is like the one I had in my twenties. Not only would he dress his patients down for fibbing big time, he would then lay a sermon on them about the damage they were doing to the whole doctor/patient relationship. He came very close to tossing a couple of folks out who refused to confess their sins. He felt they were wasting his time. And he was right.
The information you give to the doctor is confidential. Although someone might question him about your mental problems if you run around committing all sorts of crimes, for the most part no one will know you weigh in at 205 instead 195 pounds. He’s not going to volunteer that you sneak those couple of cigs. He may, however, offer ways to help you stop the nasty habit.
Giving the wrong information on medical forms may be detrimental to your health. Maybe that is a warning that should be printed at the top of each one you fill out. Or maybe today’s doctors should be like the one in my youth and refuse to offer their services to those they know are lying through their teeth. Why not save them the trouble and work on saving your own life instead.