Although it was some time ago that I had the misfortune to visit the medical practice of Dr…read more Gorokhov, I have realized that I really need to warn people--especially other women--about this physician.
I noticed something odd when I first arrived at his practice. It had been listed on the Blue Cross website as being the office for him and his wife Tatyana, also a doctor. But her name had obviously been recently removed from the exterior sign and all the interior signage. I didn't think much about that at the time, but on reflection, it may have been a warning of what was to come.
Maybe it wasn't the staff's fault that the tiny waiting room was filled with screaming children hitting each other with no parental supervision in sight. The office staff seemed to feel that the waiting room was not under their control and whatever happened there was none of their business. Wait at your own risk!
When I was seen by Dr. Gorokhov, I was struck by his melancholic attitude. This worsened as I tried to explain my medical situation to him. Still, I was amazed when, before I had finished, he shouted, "You're lying, aren't you?" I explained that I was not but he continued to assert throughout the interview that I was lying and that his guesses at my medical situation were more accurate than my own decades of experience with it. In retrospect, I should have left then.
His abrasive attitude continued as he asked me if I knew what an allergy to gluten was (although I have never had any symptoms of gluten allergy, he claimed that was what was really the matter with everyone). I said, "Yes, it's an allergy to wheat." "No!" he bellowed. "How can you be so ignorant? Don't you know you can look it up on the internet?" So how was I so wrong? It was, he informed me, an allergy to wheat *and* bulgar. I suppose I should have been more specific!
So the office visit was a waste of time and money. He put me through several expensive tests even though I told him that they had been done within the past few months by my previous doctor in South Georgia and that all he had to do was request the results from her. (But then he couldn't have made any money from them, could he?) However, my biggest shock was when I received the results (yes, he sent them by mail) of the blood test.
When he decided to do the blood test rather than get the results from the one my previous doctor in Statesboro had done only a couple of months before, he asked if I had eaten recently. I told him I had just eaten lunch. "Well," he said, "That won't matter." Was I surprised when I got the results! He sent the normal results for a fasting blood sugar test--for which the patient is not to have eaten or drunk anything but water for ten hours previously--and compared them to my results right after lunch so he could claim I had a new "serious medical condition" for which, of course, I would need to have extensive expensive treatment by him with a side order of abuse. My only medical training is working as a medical transcriptionist for some years, but even I know that you need to be fasting for the results of a fasting blood sugar test to be valid! Could he really not know this?
After I found a much better doctor, I realized that his accusatory and malicious attitude, at least, might have been caused by a recent acrimonious separation or divorce from his wife Tatyana. He seemed determined to take it out on all middle-aged women. Perhaps he would be more polite to a man, but really, do you need a doctor who doesn't know the difference between fasting blood sugar and feasting blood sugar? Save your health, save your self-respect, and avoid this one at all (his very high) costs!
