I think a good rule of thumb is that when your doctor won’t return your calls it’s time to get yourself a new doctor.
What do you think?
People will no doubt ask: How long will he not return your calls for? How long has this been going on?
Honestly, it’s been weeks and multiple unreturned phone calls: but I’d say if at least your doctor’s office doesn’t get back to you within 48 hours, it’s time to go someplace else. In other words, I’m not saying that your doctor necessarily has to be the one you hear from…as far as I’m concerned it could be somebody from the doctor’s office/organization. But, SOMEBODY from there needs to call you within 48 hours. I stand by that. If not, don’t even deliberate and stress-out and get all tortured over what you should do. Simply get a new doctor.
It’s with some sadness that I reach this conclusion because this particular doctor…I always thought of him as a good old guy and he helped me tremendously with my life and the catastrophe that was my spinal column etc. But, if you don’t call me back…yea, I can’t have a doctor who doesn’t respond to me!
By the way, as a side note, the same thing goes for lawyers. Save yourself tremendous grief and learn from my mistakes. A lawyer should return your calls. Period. Now, use common sense here. You shouldn’t be constantly calling for frivolous reasons. I’m assuming that my readers here aren’t idiots.
And, I’m saying if you call your lawyer once in a bit when you have good, legitimate questions and your lawyer routinely doesn’t get back to you within a couple days and you find yourself carefully wording email responses and carefully thinking what you’ll say etc. Forget all that bullshit. Fire him. Hire one who wants to be your lawyer. Do not waste your time with all the hand-wringing and tortured inner-dialogues about what you should do.
I’d take it even a step further: get anybody out of your life who doesn’t respond to you. I think this could probably be an axiomatic principal that’s in an individual’s best interest.