Family Practice

I was reminded Tuesday morning why I like having the doctor we currently see.

We have always had a doctor for our kids, but Laura and I have not always been the best about our own medical care. When Kyle came to live with us I was working at Virginia Mason, and I had some medical insurance through them and found a pediatrician.

That worked well enough for a long time. Kyle’s pediatrician became August’s pediatrician and so on. The pediatrician went on to do other things, and another one took his place and we liked him even more. As we got more kids things were fine, we could take all the kids in to get seen at once even if only one was on the schedule.

It was a pain to get to the pediatrician, but it was worth it because he was so accommodating. The clinic moved a few years ago and suddenly parking got more bothersome. Not only that, it wasn’t that much closer, only a couple of blocks, so it was still quite a bit of trouble to get over there.

So we switched.

Of course that job at Virginia Mason dried up a long ago, and we had to get private insurance. We always maintained consistent care for the kids, but it wasn’t until relatively recently that Laura and I got our own regular physicians. The insurance we had allowed us to keep the pediatrician we had to maintain the consistency of care, which we felt was important. But after having a lot of kids, well, having the pediatrician closer was more important.

When Laura and I were picking our doctor, we wound up picking the same one. A family physician. We figured as the kids got older and stopped seeing their pediatrician they would still need a doctor. When it got to be too inconvenient and bothersome to take the kids to their pediatrician we decided to migrate them to our doctor.

Now all of us, the whole family, we are seeing the same doctor. Tuesday as I took Tevye to his 9 month checkup I asked the doctor about an related to my own personal care. It was a small matter, but one that needed addressing, but also did not necessitate my making an appointment. 45 seconds later it was taken care of. This was what I liked about our previous pediatrician, being able to have kids seen because of proximity not because of schedule. Now we can all benefit from this.