My First Online Doctor Visit

The end of February I came down with a cold, allergies, something. It was horrible and after a few days of suffering, I decided it was finally time to see a doctor. Being the internet loving nerd that I am I figured I’d try out one of those new online doctor apps called, Teledoc.

I made an appointment for 10PM and went through all their settings to make sure my computer would be able to connect, and at about five till I logged in and waited for the doctor to arrive. Just after 10PM I heard someone come on but apparently, they couldn’t hear or see me, but I could hear them, just not see.

At around 10:30 the doctor finally called my cell phone and we did the consultation that way. It was like I was talking to a call center, the doctor had a foreign accent that I couldn’t understand, and all they did was give me some cough medicine and tell me to take some Claritin-D.

Flash forward four weeks since then I am still not better and after attempting to ride my bike yesterday and having a horrific coughing fit I decided to see my local doctor.

I ended up having fluid on my ears, stuff in my chest, a red and swollen throat, and I got a shot plus four different types of medicine to get this junk out of my system.

All because I wanted to save time I ended up suffering and probably get worse with each passing day. Now that I’m on all this medicine they say it’ll still be another five days before I’m fully back.

What is weird is that I have friends that have used the same online service and rave about it, I don’t know if I just did it at the wrong time, got the wrong doctor, or what, but it was not a great first experience and I doubt I’ll do that again. I’d rather take an hour off work and see a real doctor who can actually make a diagnosis of my symptoms.