Getting Good Medical Care in Retirement

The key to good medical care in retirement is a family doctor. Most people reaching retirement age will have had a physician of their own for years, and will have developed a strong and loyal attachment to him. By earning the family’s confidence, the doctor will serve as a trusted advisor capable of treating and preventing disease, and of mobilizing all the health resources that a community has to offer.

If a family has no doctor, one can be selected by seeking rec¬ommendations from the county medical society or local health department, or even from a friend. Prolonged shopping around for a family doctor is usually not a good idea. It is hard to build a good relationship if both the family and the doctor realize that next time another physician will be called.

The trusted family doctor can also do much to prevent disease, particularly through the mechanism of the regular checkup. Many of the illnesses common in the later years develop so slowly that the individual doesn’t realize something is wrong until the disease is well advanced. High blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes and chronic glaucoma are examples, and it is diseases like these for which the doctor will look during his examination. It is no secret that if such diseases can be caught early they can often be cured or at least better controlled, while if they are neglected they can be fatal or disabling.

At the time of the checkup the doctor can also determine the importance of various symptoms. Some which seem the most irritat¬ing and frightening turn out to be due only to minor and easily corrected causes. The mental relief that comes from finding this out is obvious. The regular examination also provides the doctor with information that can be very important at a time of illness. More rapid and accurate diagnosis may be possible, and treatment may be more quickly started if time-consuming tests do not have to be repeated.

While the value of the regular checkup cannot be overemphasized, symptoms which develop in between examinations should not be neglected. Every doctor can tell of the tragic consequences to patients who diagnosed and treated their ailments themselves, only to find that in the meantime a serious disease had gotten an un¬manageable foothold.