THE ARMY HAS IT RIGHT “HURRY UP AND WAIT”

Recently I went to the doctor’s office for a visit. This doctor is my “Primary Care Physician.” Once you have a “Primary Care Physician” you are considered really important. I used to have a doctor, but then the insurance companies came along and complicated things. It seems they needed more paperwork, and decided I needed it too.

For the sake of expediency, I will call my “Primary Care Physician” a doctor. In fact that is what I call him right to his face, and he doesn’t get angry.

Now my doctor had to send me to a specialist one day, and gave me a referral to this specialist. When I was given the referral, it came in the form of a long piece of narrow paper that looked like the receipt you get at the supermarket. When I saw that I immediately became suspicious thinking I had somehow purchased something I didn’t know about.

But my experience in the waiting room is always the same. I go into the room, look about, and see about one and a half million people ahead of me sitting there, with long, worried, unhappy faces. The television is blaring, and the younger guys are all sprawled out in their chairs, while the receptionist is doing her best to ignore me while I am standing on her chest trying to get her attention. Finally she looks up and says, “Yes?” This makes me very happy since she could have said “No.” I say my name and we cover the insurance, because if I don’t have any, they will get the bouncer out of the closet and toss me into the traffic outside.

Once this little bit of business is completed, I start my quest for a seat, looking for one that is not next to a: sneezer, cougher, sprawler or cell phone user. Now I wait. Usually I have a book I am reading, and know it will be hard to concentrate with all the noise from the TV, but I try. Slowly, one by one people are called. By now my body hurts. I’ve been sitting there over an hour past my time. I am getting angry, I’m starting to think to myself as I see these poor old people, who can hardly walk, stumble to the door “Suck it in and go home, you old coot.” Then I think, God will get me for that, but I don’t care, He’s not waiting over an hour like I am. FINALLY!!! The nurse calls. “Joseph?” No that’s “Joseph the waiter, who has all the time in the world to sit with all these losers, while the doctor is probably reading his stock portfolio.” I go into the inner sanctum. “Joseph, go pee in this cup, then we’ll take your weight.” Tell you what lady, you go pee in the cup, I know you can’t take my weight because you never take it properly. I pee, come out of the toilet feeling really self conscious as I hold the cup, and the nurse takes the cup, (I’m hoping she chug-a-lugs” it), as I step on the scale. I put my other foot down just as she is done sliding the weights around and says “thank you, now follow me.” I follow her into the examining room, and can’t help but notice how beautiful the leaves on the tree outside the window look. I sit. I sit some more. Still sitting. Yup, still here, I get impatient, look out the window, notice how the snow is sticking to the ground, nurse Hildegard comes in again, sticks the thermometer in my mouth, takes my temperature and says “the Doctor will be in, in a moment.” About 45 minutes later the Doctor flies in. “Good evening, how are you?” How am I??? How is a cat dumped in water?? That’s how I am. “Fine” I answer, like the sniveling coward that I am. (He does give needles) “What can I do for you today?” (You could go away, that’s what you could do for me today.) He takes my blood pressure-“270 over 90 million,” I wonder why? He takes out his rubber band, wraps it around my arm and sticks a needle in it. Pulls out the tube from the syringe and puts in another tube to draw even more blood. I wonder how he doesn’t push the needle in further when he does that. All this blood, and I haven’t even paid him yet.

My Doctor is about my age, with a well-trimmed beard, flat stomach and Jewish. (Only the best for me.) He will now without saying anything to me, make me feel inadequate for not being a doctor, not having a flat stomach and not being Jewish. He goes on a tirade about people who are over 65 who are leaving their Medicare subscriptions for private coverage and maybe expects me to do something about it.

We go into his office, with what looks like the back of a pharmacy, with all kinds of sample drugs. He opens my file, I move to the edge of my chair, always expecting the worst. This is it! I have months, maybe weeks left, should I call my wife to come and get me? I’ll be in no mood to drive myself after “THE NEWS.”

He says to me “Do you want 30 or 90 day subscriptions?”

WHAT ABOUT THE NEWS??

HEY, AM I GOING TO LIVE TO SEE ANOTHER DAY IN YOUR WAITING ROOM????