COLUMN: Sick of the doctor’s office
I spent a lot of time in the doctor’s office this past week and decided it was time for me to expose the health care profession for who they really are.
First, I’d like to talk about the people who do the scheduling and admitting of patients. These individuals appear to be the last surviving branch of the Nazi regime and hold the power in their cold, little hands to wreck your entire day. The following are a list of things to remember when dealing with these people:
Never arrive late. Coming late to a doctor’s appointment in the scheduler’s mind is basically a personal insult to their entire existence and they WILL make you pay. A person can plan on waiting at least an extra 10 to 15 minutes for every minute he was late, this is beyond the typical half hour they make someone wait past his “scheduled appointment” time.
Don’t expect any smiles. These people know they do not need you. There are always sick people, and you are simply one more annoyance they have to deal with until they can get off work and go to their book-burning party.
Don’t read the magazines. I would suggest that if you want to get in to see the doctor as quickly as possible, sit as close to the schedulers as possible and stare at them (without blinking if possible) until they let you in.
Once a person gets through the door that separates the waiting room from the area where the doctor actually works, one might think that his wait is over and that the doctor will soon be in to see him; one could not be more mistaken.
At this point, a sick person must then be weighed, have his temperature taken and interrogated by a member of the medical profession’s elite SS core to see if he is actually worthy of the doctor’s time. Then if they feel extra cruel, they slip a torture device on to your arm and try to squeeze a confession out of you and then tell you to remove your clothing so that your humiliation can be complete.
This is when you go through your second round of waiting, this is why you are called the “patient,” except this time you wait half-nude and sitting on a Frankenstein-like bed covered with the same paper butchers wrap freshly-slaughtered meat in. At this point a person doesn’t care about being sick anymore, but just wants this sterilized version of hell to end.
The doctor then comes in and re-asks you the exact same questions the SS nurse had. He then uses three tools to diagnose every illness known to man. These tools are 1) the stethoscope, which they apparently need to keep in the freezer or it will go bad, 2) the mini-flashlight, that either they hold in their hand or wear on their head with that Borg-like metal shield that swivels down over their face, and 3) a wooden stick, which they use to entertain themselves by sticking it down the patient’s throat and making them gag.
After about 45 seconds of looking, the doctor makes a decision on what’s wrong and scribbles down on a little piece of paper something that looks a great deal like one of my daughter’s drawings when she was about 3 years old. But it really contains a list of the places on the person’s body that are uncommonly hairy, so he can call the pharmacist and laugh about it while he makes the next patient wait.
When the doctor does prescribe medicine, he makes up some random dosage on the fly like, take three pills in the morning and a half of a pill at night.
At this point the doctor shakes the patient’s hand and walks out, being paid more than a week’s salary for most people for less than a minute of poking, shining a flashlight, and writing down some Egyptian hieroglyphics so that the sick individual can spend more money to have the prescription deciphered and filled.
Seriously though, I believe the medical technology we have available to us today to be incredible and do not wish to degrade those people who save and improve lives every day by their efforts. I look forward to the great things that are coming in the future of medicine, especially the day they finally get rid of the butcher paper, no longer need the scheduling Nazis and fire their ornery butts.
Bryce Casselman’s column appears in The Statesman on Monday’s. Comments can be sent to him at yanobi@hotmail.com.