
John Roach is an unlikely poster boy for primary care services. But life’s funny that way.
Growing up, he dreaded going to the doctor.
He pauses to chuckle at this full circle moment—a testament to how much people can evolve over the course of their life, provided they stay open to change.
“When I was a kid, I had tonsillitis,” he explains, “and going to the doctor for me was just torture. The first thing they wanted to do was to jab you with a needle, and I swear back in those days they used to sharpen them on the sidewalk,” he says, only half joking.
“That was the main thing that shaped my experience of going to the doctor,” he continues, “My parents would be pulling me out of the house and I’d be dragging furniture behind me. I mean, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep from the terror of it. It shaped me from a very young age to believe the doctor was the bad guy.”
After those early traumatic and painful experiences, John admits: “because of that, I’d stay away from the doctor as much as I could. Thankfully,” he adds, “I’ve been pretty healthy. Because I really never had a family doctor again for years and years.”
He stops again to laugh, wondering aloud what his younger self would think of him now—sitting down to discuss his positive experience with a primary care provider.
He concedes that, as he got older, he realized that going to the doctor was an important part of taking care of himself. But that doesn’t mean he liked it. “I’ll tell you,” he says, “I didn’t want anything to do with it. The medical profession made me extremely uncomfortable.”
Which is why it’s such a revelation when he adds, “But, coming here to Hopscotch Primary Care, I’m very comfortable.”
So, what changed? What could transform a lifelong aversion to the doctor so completely that today John Roach is taking the time to sit down and share how much he now loves going to the doctor?!
John is just as surprised as anyone. Happily so.
Like a lot of retired folks, John and his wife Suzette chose to relocate to Western North Carolina later in life. They both grew up in Fairfax County, Virginia, just a stone’s throw from Washington, DC.
“We’d been talking about getting out of there,” John explains, “because it had turned into such a madhouse.”
Those daydreams turned into a solid action plan when 9/11 happened. “We lived about 15 miles from the Pentagon, and I’ll never forget that when the plane hit the building that day, our whole house shook. The windows rattled. And we looked at each other and thought, ‘It’s time to go’,” he shares, still awestruck by the memory.
But where could they move to find the quiet, country lifestyle they craved for their retirement? Thankfully, luck was on their side.
“We’d been to Asheville to see my sister and liked it, but we thought it was too big for us and what we wanted. We started nosing around and out of sheer luck found Marion,” John explains.
John and Suzette quickly dug in and made a home in the charming, quaint mountain town of Marion, NC. They fell in love with the beautiful country that surrounded them. There, John was able to continue his lifelong love affair with restoring and working on classic cars. Today, he’s rightly proud to have amassed quite an enviable collection.
They’d finally found the retirement lifestyle they’d been dreaming of. But, they knew they needed to find primary care to keep them on track with their health and wellness goals in retirement.
After all, they were ready to enjoy these years they’d worked so hard to earn.
They connected with a primary care provider who they saw for many years—but it wasn’t exactly a love match.
“We had a local doctor here in town. And he was a very good doctor,” John admits, before adding, “but he didn’t have the time to be a doctor. 15 minutes was all he got, and that’s not much time to do much of anything. If you got to the end of that time and asked if he could take a look at something, it’d be ‘Oh, sorry, you’ll have to make another appointment.’.” He shakes his head, still frustrated by the injustice of it all.
John takes care not to place the blame on his doctor, understanding that he was operating under systemic constraints that hampered his ability to provide the level of quality medical care that he clearly wanted to.
Still, he felt understandably disheartened and jaded by the experience—no one wants to feel like a number on a computer screen, being rushed through a revolving door of subpar care, while their valid health and medical concerns are neither heard nor fully addressed.
Little did John know that everything he’d come to accept about the limitations of modern healthcare was about to change—with one chance lunchtime encounter…
Another John—John Lennon—once famously sang: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
I mention this quote to John Roach during our conversation, and it elicits another hearty, amiable laugh. Like many, this sentiment speaks to his experience of life so far.
In his seven decades of life on this planet, John has learned it’s important to stay open and to embrace the happy accidents and inevitable changes that are part and parcel of being human.
He’s also learned that taking care of your health becomes more and more important as you age.
Still, he’s the first to admit that knowing something and actually doing something about it are two vastly different things…
Like many older adults, John was willing to accept care that was just ok, simply because he didn’t see a viable alternative.
But that all changed over the course of one lucky lunchtime.
“We were having lunch just down the way from here,” he says, “and Suzette said something about Hopscotch Primary Care. She saw something on the internet about them. And I just said, ‘Well, it’s right over there. Why don’t we walk over and see what it’s all about?’”
And so they did. And what they found transformed the way they looked at healthcare.
“We walked in and the girl at the desk greeted us and was so nice and friendly,” he begins, “They gave us the grand tour and we just felt good here, right from the start.”
“You could tell that everyone was happy to be here, doing their jobs, and not stressed. They made us feel very welcome from the first moment we set foot inside.”
Thankfully for John, this great first impression was the start of a beautiful new chapter in his health and wellness story.
Both John and Suzette especially love how Hopscotch Primary Care is designed to cater to the unique healthcare needs of seniors.
As he puts it: “We don’t need somebody who takes care of everybody. We need somebody who specifically takes care of people our age. Because they’re in tune with what’s going on with us.”
With Hopscotch, gone was the feeling of being rushed through appointments, with barely enough time to review blood work results and discuss issues before being shuttled back out the door—with more questions than answers.
Suddenly, John and Suzette felt they’d found a healthcare model that was actually made for them—designed to provide quality care to seniors.
“As you get older, you develop problems you didn’t have before,” he explains, adding, “I’m lucky to not have any major health issues,” before continuing, “but I just feel like Hopscotch is here if I have a question or need somebody to talk to. I call them up and they’ll fit me in the same day or the next day, instead of making me wait for months.”
“They actually hold appointments for that,” he adds, “so you can just come in if you have something come up. It’s very comforting. Because, when something’s wrong, you want to know what’s going on sooner than later. You don’t want to wait for it to get worse.”
Hopscotch Primary Care’s longer appointments are especially appreciated by John and Suzette Roach. They’ve both found that the 40-minute appointments offered by Hopscotch Primary Care provide them with the additional time and attention they need to fully address their health concerns and questions.
“It just makes us feel wonderful,” John explains, “because their whole model of care is designed around meeting our needs and the needs of folks like us that are a certain age.”
John explains how his relationship with Dr. Westbrook at Hopscotch Primary Care’s Marion clinic has made him feel supported, cared for, and listened to. “He’s explained to us how the body’s a moving target, and it’s always changing, especially as you age.”
John fully embraces healthcare designed for seniors, even though he’s still amazed he falls into this category. “When you hear folks talking about senior citizens, you have to take a beat before you realize—hey, that’s ME!” He breaks out into another hearty laugh before adding: “You know, some days I feel young, and other days I feel like I’m a hundred years old.”
With his checkered history with medical care, John acknowledges his expectations for care were pretty low, before finding Hopscotch Primary Care.
“I never expected a lot from my healthcare provider,” he admits, “And now, I feel comfortable coming here and I feel like I’m being taken care of. They’re actually listening to me and paying attention.”
As for the real impact he believes Hopscotch Primary Care has had on his overall health and wellness, John doesn’t mince words: “I feel like my life might be shorter if I’d never found Hopscotch Primary Care. They’re taking care of us. And they have the time to do it right.”
John’s a big believer in right timing. His life so far is full of examples of this concept in action—from connecting with Suzette to finding his perfect healthcare match in Hopscotch Primary Care.
Talking of timing, John may also be the poster boy for right timing when it comes to a recent health scare he unexpectedly faced.
“It was the strangest thing,” he begins, shaking his head as he recalls the experience. “I was at Hopscotch for my first appointment with Dr. Westbrook and we were waiting for him to come in. I looked over at Suzette and asked ‘Is it hot in here?’. I got up and opened the door and the lady at the desk asked me if I needed anything. I told her I’d take her up on her earlier offer of a bottle of water.”
“I got up and walked into the waiting room and opened the cap on my bottle of water,” he continues, “I turned around and looked at her and she said ‘Are you ok?’ and I said ‘I don’t think so.’ She asked me to sit down in the chair nearby and helped me into it.”
“The next thing I know, I came to and I was wearing that bottle of water all down the front of my shirt,” he says, still confounded by the experience.
Thankfully, John’s fainting spell was due to an issue with his blood pressure and it hasn’t recurred. It also happened in the exact right place at the right time.
“When I woke up, there were, like, five people around me,“ he laughs, “Everybody was so concerned.”
The experience was not one they’d wish for, but it served to solidify their choice of Hopscotch Primary Care as their primary care provider.
Of course, they rescheduled their first appointment.
When he returned, John was treated to a king’s welcome. “As soon as we came back in, everybody greeted us and asked how I was doing and told me how nice it was to see me up and walking around.”
He adds, smiling, “And, at that point, we’d only been there one time, and not even for a full appointment. It was like we’d been patients there for years. That never would have happened at our old place, and we’d been going there for 15 years.”
It’s yet another apt example of the happy accidents that alter life’s trajectory. And John Roach is certainly a believer in staying open to the messages and changes life puts in his path.
Today, he and Suzette say they “tell anyone that’ll listen” to come to Hopscotch Primary Care to get the quality primary care they deserve. “We need to make t-shirts,” he laughs.
But John doesn’t just spread the word about Hopscotch Primary Care because of the great care he and Suzette receive here. It’s also because of the other ways he feels Hopscotch goes above and beyond for older adults like him.
“We get such personable care here. They’re so in tune with us and what we need and what we may need later on,” he explains, adding, “I also like the fact that they also have folks here to help explain insurance and coordinate care and things like that. We feel like we have somebody in our corner who cares about us.”
John also appreciates how his Hopscotch Primary Care care providers make suggestions that consider his lifestyle and goals, rather than just telling him what to do.
As an older adult, who has his fair share of wisdom and insight about his needs and healthcare goals, John feels respected by Hopscotch Primary Care as an essential member of his care team, and the one who ultimately calls the shots on his health choices.
He enjoys how they take the time to explain things to him, rather than preach to him about what he should be doing.
“Like when it comes to managing blood pressure,” he says, drawing from his specific lived experience, “They give you the full picture, and take the time to explain why, rather than giving you a list of things to do.”
From a kid who had to be dragged tooth and nail to the doctor to an adult who loves going to the doctor—John Roach has truly made a 180 in his feelings on healthcare.
He’s quick to credit this transformation to Hopscotch Primary Care and the difference in primary care he receives from his team at Hopscotch Primary Care of Marion.
John smiles, pleased with the hand that fate has dealt him. He relishes the peace of mind he feels, knowing he’s found a primary care provider that’s there to support him in everything he needs to live a long, healthy, active life.
After all, he’s got some classic cars in his garage, just waiting to be lovingly restored…
Interested in getting top-quality primary care for seniors on your team? Hopscotch Primary Care would love to support you in your health and wellness goals. Come experience the Hopscotch Primary Care difference! Complete this form and we’ll be in touch soon.