Holla! (Vol. 1)

This is the part of my blog where I give big shout-outs to people who help me manage my disease.

I'm going to start with my doctor, David Rubin.

I first met Dr. Rubin when I came to U of C oh so many years ago and the student care center randomly assigned me a GI specialist to go and visit. All the GI docs at U of C are great, but I still think I got super lucky when I got Dr. Rubin. From the beginning he has always provided me with excellent medical care, but seemed genuinely interested in me as a person, too. Maybe he's just really good at faking it, but it's always nice not to feel rushed out of the doctor's office.

Anyhow, Dr. Rubin has done many wonderful things for me, and I will just give you the highlights, because it would take up way too much space otherwise.

1) Anytime I start feeling a little flare-y or need a refill on my prescription, I can get a new script from Dr. Rubin very quickly (this point doubles as a shout out to Linda, his awesome nurse. You rule, Linda!).
2) One time I had a really nasty bacterial overgrowth in my GI tract and because I'm a guy I thought it would just go away. It didn't and the pain got borderline unbearable (I'm being a little dramatic here), so I called up the GI offices and Dr. Rubin saw me half an hour later. One course of Metronidazole and a couple days later I was good as new. Whew!
3) He got me started with GIRF, so they can thank (or perhaps more appropriately, blame) him for having me around. But I got a good deal out of that one.
4) He always does awesome patient outreach/education stuff where we can learn more about IBD. Learning + food + drinks = fun with a purpose!
5) I haven't flared in a while.
6) OK, this one is maybe a little fluff, but Eileen had secretly been coveting this Dean and Deluca spice rack for years, and he got it for us for our wedding. You could chalk this up to random coincidence, but it just goes to show you how well he knows his patients--he even knows what their spouses like!
6a) I actually have to amend the last point. I really think that the present was the result of Dr. Rubin's incredibly wonderful and beautiful and funny wife, Becky. But we know Becky because of David, so he still kinda gets props for the whole thing.
7) David was on Good Morning America talking about Ulcerative Colitis (another form of IBD). I tried finding a video on YouTube, but apparently it isn't available. Darn.

Whoa! Did you see me change from calling him Dr. Rubin to David? This has been a difficult transition for me. When I first met David, I was in my early 20s and my parents always raised me to never call people older than me by their first name. I called him Dr. Rubin for a long time. Now I'm almost 30, and I consider David to be a friend in addition to being my physician (plus I'm in grad school where we call everyone by their first name), so calling him Dr. Rubin feels a little weird. But I'm not really comfortable with David--something vestigial from my upbringing, I guess. I have solved the problem by just not calling him anything when we see each other (eye contact is very effective in letting someone know you are talking to them), and addressing emails to DTR (his initials)...that seems kinda cool, right? But I'm getting better because now I refer to him in the 3rd person as David. I think part of my hang-up might be that I am going to go back to medschool and I will have to call him Dr. Rubin again, anyway. So I might as well not get too comfortable.

Anyhow, David, Dr. Rubin, my #1 doctor--thank you for keeping me healthy! Holla!