Our summary.
If you have health and well-being problems with which you need help, and you email a letter to those who are likely to be able to help you outlining those problems and asking whether helping those with them are within their areas of specialisation, you are likely to get a whole range of responses.
(We’re assuming here that you won’t be bothered with those who don’t have an ordinary email address readily available.)
Some won’t respond in any way, won’t even acknowledge your email.
Some will turn out to have email addresses that don’t work.
With some, it’s obvious that your email doesn’t even get to the doctor – you just get a reply from front desk people which doesn’t answer your question in any way, you just get hassled to make an appointment.
With some, it’s obvious that your email doesn’t even get to the doctor – you just get a reply from front desk people telling you that the doctor specialises in everything. (Or perhaps that’s what the doctor has told them to say?) e.g. Dr Roderick Gillespie.
About 1 in 20 doctors will respond with that might be regarded as a satisfactory reply, and if you only deal with these if will increase your chances considerably of not ending up with one who wastes your time and wastes your money, or, even worse, does you harm, like Dr Andrew Brooks.