Why I Didn’t See a Primary Care Doctor for Over Six Years

In college, I had to regularly get physical exams from my primary care provider to get cleared to compete as a cross-country runner. But I graduated from college six years ago, and in that time, I almost never saw a primary care provider. (PCP). I knew I should have, given the rule to see the PCP once a year, but I didn’t.

When I was being recruited by the Marine Judge Advocate Corps (JAG) earlier in 2025 (to potentially become a lawyer in the Marines Corps), I did see a physician’s assistant (PA). Although it was a standard physical that took my pulse and blood pressure, much of the examination was very particular to the Marines. The (very nice) PA measured the size of the scar on my forehead, which I had to write a long statement about. She also measured the length and width of my tattoo, so these were two potential areas of concern during recruitment.

I understood the purpose of this physical was a medical clearance for the Marine Corps, but for my own health, I had not seen a PCP in quite some time. I had not gotten blood work done since even prior to college. Ostensibly, someone could attribute this to arrogance — I am young at 28 years old and run marathons, so I seem to be healthier than most of the general population.

Thus, for prioritizing my own health, I had essentially not seen a PCP since I was 21 years old and put it off for seven years. I don’t say that in a bragging kind of way — I knew it was bad, and unlike a lot of Americans, as a teacher for most of this time, I had pretty good health insurance. But I could point to several reasons why I hadn’t seen a doctor:

Fear. Like a lot of people, I did used to Google symptoms I was experiencing, like a rash on my hand, and assume the worst possible outcome. What if I did have some sort of chronic illness or illness where I was going to die? There was a part of me that would rather live in blissful ignorance than well-informed knowledge of my ailments, and a part of me that also avoided doctor’s appointments as a result.
Time. I was too busy, and often could not find an appointment that fit my schedule. Unfortunately, doctors are people too, and most primary care doctors do not work on weekends. I found that primary care appointments had to be coordinated well in advance. I had time off, but I did not want to take it, so I could bank the time for future years and the end of my career as a teacher. Starting in 2022, I was a teacher during the day and going to law school at night, so I was very busy. This made coordinating my schedule and that of a potential PCP much more difficult than it should have been.
Logistics. I feel like I am a pretty tech-savvy person, and I had a form of BlueCross BlueShield as my insurance provider, which is considered very good insurance. But since I did not have a default PCP, I could not for the life of me figure out how to set up a new appointment. I tried — several times. There was no option to just select a doctor who was in network and set up an appointment on the portal. I found this confounding because I did not have the same experience with the dentist — some people in my teacher’s union recommended a dentist and then I just called their office to set up an appointment within minutes. I don’t know why this was so different for a PCP, but it was.

Throughout the years, I called several PCP offices — internal medicine doctors, family practice doctors, and nurse practitioners. Despite having the “Accepting New Patients?” box checked, many I called were not taking new patients. It felt like a big waste of my time to try hard and not be able to get an appointment anyway. It just wasn’t as easy as it was in college, where a physical was just set up for me. As such, I usually just gave up looking to attend to my work, hobbies, and other areas of my life.

These three factors are excuses for sure. I hate to admit it, but even though I knew I should have just coordinated an appointment and gone the extra step, given my privilege of having good health insurance, it wasn’t a big priority. Even though it wasn’t arrogance, it was complacency.

. . .

Two things snapped me out of my not seeing my primary care provider ways, and they sound rather trivial.

First, I read a very good article by Helen Ouyang, a physician and writer, at the New York Times Magazine, titled “What Does It Take to Get Men to See a Doctor?” As the title implies, the article is about men not seeing their doctors and documents, in America, deaths of despair, like suicides and overdoses, which are disproportionately suffered by young men. Ouyang documents how men die at higher rates than women from 14 of the top 15 causes of death, and how men not seeing their doctors until it is too late might contribute to the five-year gap in age expectancy between men and women on average in America.

“That disparity has many causes, one of which is that men simply don’t go to the doctor as often. The problem begins early: After pediatric care, young men largely disappear from medical settings until after serious issues arise. Women tend to see their gynecologists regularly; men have no clear equivalent.”

Ouyang attributed several causes to men not seeing the doctor. These include traditional masculinity’s expectations to be a provider and prioritize work, expectations to “tough it out” and not having an equivalent to women of regular check-ups with the gynecologist, except prostate cancer screening, which have more complicated guidelines.

The outcomes are predictable — for men, more than women, problems aren’t caught until it’s too late, and treatment is often more reactive than proactive. The author, an emergency room doctor, often does not treat men until it is too late, or after they have been suffering troubling symptoms for too long, often urged to see the doctor at the behest of a wife or daughter. She talks about anecdotes of treating a man for a major heart attack whose medical chart was completely blank, and others for overdoses and suicide attempts their families never saw coming.

After reading this very thought-provoking article, I talked to several other young men, who were also young, healthy runners. They shared that they haven’t seen a PCP in quite some time and needed to. One told me how he had an ear infection where he couldn’t hear out of one ear for days. He just took it as normal, and his partner was mortified — if she had gone deaf in one ear for days, she would have gone to the doctor immediately. Several talked about how it is just so much more difficult to coordinate than when they were younger.

The second big motivator to change this part of my life was another alarming article I read. It was about whether long-distance running was linked to colon cancer and how many ultramarathoners who had no risk factors were dying suddenly of colon cancer. I ignore tons of health articles that may have adverse implications because of a “you only live once” mindset and how it seems like everything has the potential to adversely affect health in some way.

But this article from Roni Caryn Rabin at the New York Times hit very close to home. Here were young, ostensibly very healthy and fit people just like me who died suddenly from colon cancer. Doctors recounting anecdote after anecdote of polyps and early deaths from colon cancer completely spooked me. A study that found a disproportionate amount of colon cancer among ultramarathoners and marathoners than in the general population also spooked me.

If this could happen to all these other ultramarathoners and marathoners, it could definitely happen to me, and I could potentially not see it coming. I definitely do things people would consider “extreme exercise,” like the time I ran a marathon on the treadmill. I didn’t know whether this meant, at 28, that I should try to pursue a colonoscopy much earlier than recommended.

The participants usually did have one symptom I have not experienced: blood in the stool. I asked friends who were doctors if I should be worried, and they pretty much said, “I think you’re worrying too much if you don’t have blood in your stool.”

But these two articles, plus the sheer amount of time since I had seen a PCP for my own health, were a necessary wake-up call: it was time to see the doctor.

. . .

Yes, seeing the doctor came from something as trivial as unlikely as worrying about whether I had colon cancer despite no risk factors or symptoms and reading an article in the New York Times.

I have a bit more flexible a work schedule now as a lawyer in big law than I did when I was a teacher in terms of being able to take one day working from home. Thus, I went to the same inconvenient database for my health insurance, and found a practice that had three doctors and a physician’s assistant. They all said they were accepting new patients and had the same phone number, so even if one of them was too busy, another person was likely taking new patients. I got on the phone with the practice and got an appointment.

I went to see the doctor about a month ago. I explained my worries. I told him about the primary care provider and men not going to see them article I read, and he actually told me he wasn’t too worried about me. I am in my 20s and healthy, so the “see a PCP once a year” rule that I thought was the gold standard of health actually did not apply as much.

I also explained I had not gotten any bloodwork in a while. I explained, among other things, my sudden fear that I could have colon cancer. He said that was really unlikely, especially since I did not have blood in my stool. I also have a family history of heart disease from my dad having a heart attack when I was 12, but this likely came a lot more from him being a smoker and my not being a smoker. I explained that I had a heart murmur earlier in my life, too, but I was 12 then, and now, at 28, as a marathon runner, my resting heart rate hovers around 40 beats per minute and he did not detect a heart murmur.

Since I hadn’t gotten blood work in a long time, the doctor also ordered some bloodwork. I got blood work three weeks later, and I got a call that I was “all good.”

Thus, there was no bad news with my health, which was good news.

. . .

Now, in terms of respiratory infections, I do see the doctor when necessary, but it is more reactive than proactive. I did see a doctor when I was sick with Covid and when I had bronchitis years ago. I don’t get sick often, and there is a usual trajectory that colds and respiratory infections get better over the course of a short period of time. But as I get older, I do notice that the infection lingers quite a bit. What I could recover from in two or three days in high school or college now takes at least a week.

Earlier this year, I had the worst flu I’d gotten in my life to that point — I had a fever and chills and had to spend whole days in bed. I was getting nine to 11 hours of sleep to get better. My body was just not the same for a whole two weeks, even if my respiratory system did get better.

I usually never get flu shots, but this year, I resolved that I never wanted to feel that bad again from the flu. I decided to get a flu shot after years of ignoring the conventional advice to get a flu shot once a year. I’m not a health conspiracist or particularly arrogant about not needing flu shots — I was just too busy, and it did not cross my mind for a long time until the flu happened to me.

Now, I resolve to be better and get a flu shot every year and see a PCP every year.

While I definitely should have been doing it years earlier, at least I finally established a relationship with a PCP at 28 instead of 35 or 40. I can see a world where, unless I was knocked into my senses, I would have kept not seeing a PCP. No, there were no issues and fortunately, all health-related fears were abated for at least this year. But now, getting an appointment just means calling the office instead of navigating a complicated portal.

I am not going to sit here judge every man out there like me who hasn’t seen their PCP in a while. I always knew I was wrong for not seeing a doctor for my checkups, but it still took me years to get around to it, despite perfectly good insurance.

As such, I don’t think a lot of men in the same situation are idiots, either — there could be a lot of factors, including insurance, cultural expectations of men, work, logistical difficulties, or fear. The battle for me was always mental — the fear of the worst and the whole “ignorance is bliss” mentality. The longer I waited, the worse this fear became. Thus, it’s not like I actively looked to not see the doctor, but when the excuses came up, I let them stop them in my tracks.

I am glad the worst was not the case, but it took a lot before I could face that possibility. I think it’s important not to judge men in this situation because there could be a million reasons. Ultimately, knowing that seeing the doctor was important and knowing I wasn’t the only one with this hesitancy helped me to finally overcome it.

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This post was previously published on The Partnered Pen.

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