Lung Doctors! And what to avoid!

The city that I was living in is a little on the small side, somewhere around 80,000 people, and it had only one pneumonology group with three doctors. I made an appointment to see one and had to wait a month, the appointment was for the second Friday of May. I already related that we weren't too impressed with this guy, and when I got sick the following week, we found out that he was out for two weeks.

I don't begrudge a person taking vacation. Doctors certainly earn it. But we got some "I don't think this guy is what we're looking for" vibes from our initial meeting, and they quickly ramped up in amplitude.

He looked at the x-rays by holding them up to an overhead light, not by using a light table, and shuffled through them quickly. This did not inspire confidence. Then, despite the signs throughout the building and our exam rooms asking people to turn off their cell phones, he took two calls during my time with him. Respect goes both ways: if you want us to turn off our phones, you should turn off yours. Now, I fully respect that some people have to leave theirs on, and a doctor certainly falls in to that category. I was frequently on call and had to be reachable, so when I was at movies I'd leave my phone on vibrate and hang it around my neck. And if I ever had to take a call where people had an expectation of not being disturbed by cells, I left the room.

He didn't. Both calls did not seem medical-related, which greatly added to my wife's frustration with this guy. Still, we respected his opinion and followed his advice, picking up a nebulizer and another couple fistfuls of meds.

He was brusque, he interrupted us constantly as we're trying to explain things, and he kept steering the diagnosis towards severe asthma rather than pneumonia. And I will admit that the meds did improve my condition for the third and fourth pneumonias, so obviously asthma did have something to do with it.

But we didn't stay with this turkey long.

As I said, the third pneumonia started possibly the day after I saw this guy and I couldn't see him. When I had my fourth pneumonia, my regular doctor told me to either see my lung doctor or go to the emergency room. That was more than a little frightening, so we called the doctor to see why he wanted the ER involved as I was feeling a little better, it was nothing more than he'd gotten the radiologist report back on the x-rays and wanted a confirmation. So he wanted it verified either by my lung doctor or the ER.

I call the lung doctor and am told I can't see him this week as he's at the hospital. I ask if I can see one of the other two doctors in the practice. And this is the point at which we fired him: I was told that to see one of the other doctors that it would be a new patient intake and it would take a month to see one of them.

They have three doctors in one practice. And they don't share patients between them.

Bye bye, don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.

I canceled my follow-up appointment with him and will never set foot in that office again.


We went to the ER, explained to them that we needed a confirming examination. They did blood work and a CT scan and confirmed my pneumonia, all to the tune of a lot more money than we would have liked to spend. They also agreed with my doctor saying that having a bronchoscopy would be a logical next step.


A little more background info. At that time, I was living in Las Cruces, NM. The next closest bigger city is El Paso, TX, about 40-50 miles east. I look up lung practices on my insurance plan's web site and find one that has an office off the interstate on the west side of town, which is very convenient for coming from Las Cruces. I call them and go through my history of four pneumonias and that I probably need a bronchoscopy, and I cap it all off by asking what's the soonest I could get in and see anyone? The say "How about tomorrow morning at 9:30?"

I was gobsmacked. Needless to say, I took the appointment.


The next day I drove to El Paso and met the doctor. Unfortunately the imaging center that did my previous x-rays mis-filed mine, so I had no images to show him, but I did have copies of all of my blood work. He shot another pair of x-rays (front and side) and confirmed that I still had pneumonia. Apparently pneumonia that doesn't put you in the hospital takes about a week to clear to the point that you're reasonably functional, at least that's been my case in these four bouts. But it actually takes around six weeks(!) to completely clear! (Which, upon reflection, means that my fourth pneumonia overlapped with my third: the third had not completely cleared before the fourth hit)

He is an excellent doctor and actually discusses things with you, very different diagnostic approach. In the end he agreed that a bronchoscopy was the next logical step. I asked him how soon we could do it, and he replied "How about tomorrow morning?"

Cue gobsmacking music.

I could not believe this! Either I was the luckiest twit in the world and had fallen in to a scheduling hole that permitted this, or I had finally found a practice that was properly staffed that they could see people and help them promptly.

Sadly I could not do the bronchoscopy the next day. This procedure requires what they call conscious sedation, and I could not drive afterwards. My wife was out of town and wouldn't be back until the following week, so we scheduled it for then.

Conscious sedation is a bit of a misnomer. It isn't as deep a sedation as if you were having major abdominal surgery or hip replacement or something, but you're not really conscious for the procedure. For all practical purposes, you're fully sedated.


If you ever find yourself needing a lung doctor in El Paso, drop me an email and I'll be quite happy to recommend this guy to you.


That's enough for now, more later.