Yes ... I apologize for saying that all the time. I mostly repeat what my doctors have told me in the past.

I lived very near to and worked at a large university hospital in a relatively small town in a rural state in the Midwest. I had easy access and knew many of my doctors before I saw them as a patient. My primary care doctor was my neighbor. I actually worked with my rheumatologist occasionally and she would stop and ask me how I was doing whenever we crossed paths. My ophthalmologist had kids who were on the same tennis team in high school as my kids. My doctors were more than that ... I considered them to be my friends too.

My first rheumatologist and I didn't get along very well because of how much Prednisone I was taking. I didn't seek a new rheumatologist but the one I ended up with stepped in at one of my visits. She requested that I stop taking Prednisone for a few days so she could evaluate me. There were at least 15 other rheumatologists in the rheumatology department that I could have seen.