My husband and son have been cycling through to see orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists on a regular basis for months. They both have played sports a lot, my husband's high activity is more in the past though the damage is making itself known in the present, and my son has just entered into the period that will probably be his highest activity, at least whenever he's uninjured. This is more than a hobby for them, it's a singular passion, and a vocation. Not quite true for me. So when I decided to see if my own limbs could handle some jogging and light aerobics again, and came up after a couple months with a sore foot, I didn't give it a lot of attention. When it didn't go away for a period of weeks and began to spread into my Achilles and ankle, I began to wonder what I had done...so today I made my own appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. I made this appointment for two reasons, and neither are because I think I'm seriously injured: 1) because I want some input on when and how much I can continue to work out because I was on a roll; 2) I want to get treatment from this tremendous physical therapist/masseur my son is going to and you can only see after you've seen the doctor and been recommended for treatment. (My shiatsu massages are great at getting rid of most kinks and aches, but they are not covered by insurance.) A bit of a game, to get this therapist covered by insurance, but I was going to play it guilt-free; I do have something going on with my foot.

I called the doctor's office, and gave all my information to the young woman who answered the phone so I could be "put in the system." So far, so good. The necessary first step. She then asked me what was the matter. I answered, I had pain in my foot. So she suggested I go get an X-ray; she'd put the order in for me if I just told her where I wanted to go.

Excuse me? Since when do appointment clerks prescribe x-rays? And do we all know the location of our handy x-ray lab, like we know the grocery store and the post office? I'm happy to say I don't know where the closest lab is to me. I told her I wasn't a big fan of x-rays (do any of us really know what the cumulative effect of such radiation is? no? but we know the dental technicians get way out of the room, and lead screen the rest of our bodies from the machine...makes sense to me to avoid them then when possible) and would rather see the doctor before making the decision to have x-rays. She said it's just quicker if you get the x-rays ahead of time; you don't have to wait. Quick, pleasant, efficient...just making things better for the patients, right?

Wrong, according to the article I just read in Reader's Digest, just one of a string of articles I've read pointing to the same facts. When it comes to health care, Americans are either under-treated, generally due to economic situations...or incredibly over-treated.  It's becoming quite clear, that "the more diagnostics tests, the better" is not an accurate statement. How would you like to be Scott Baio getting the news that the results of the "expanded newborn screening" done on his baby daughter that had determined she had a rare and potentially deadly disease—a fact the distraught new parents lived with for about two months—had been wrong! Several painful and involved tests on this little newborn later, they declared the initial results a false positive! The baby was actually perfectly fine.

Although our per capita health care spending is, I believe, one of the highest in the world, there are somewhere around 46 countries with statistically better health/longer life spans than ours. Yet our insurance costs are out of sight. Hmm, wonder why. I don't fault the lovely young woman I spoke to at the doctor's office; she's offering a service that I'm sure the large majority of patients truly appreciate.

Could this be the root of the problem? Disease and injury are NOT CONVENIENT. If you stop and think, is it a bit mind-boggling that our society continues to try and make it so?...when the very message we may need to hear is: Hey, slow down, take care of yourself, change some things, this lifestyle is heading you for trouble. Our health insurance system needs an overhaul? Our outlook needs an overhaul even more.