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SHEARON: Any idea how long it’ll be? |
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 |
 I generally have a good relationship with my doctors. It’s sad that I’ve reached the age where I have to have more than one.
But I’ve always been a little put out with the fact that no matter what time my appointment is, I always have to wait.
Normally, I just resign myself to it, and see the doctor when he deems fit.
Once, I didn’t. I had taken my daughter to see the eye doctor about a blocked tear duct. She’d had it for a while so it wasn’t a big emergency.
We waited, and waited, and waited. We finally waited so long that I was in jeopardy of being late for another appointment. I have this weird obsession about being on time, but there’s probably not enough space in the paper to go into my odd character flaws.
I finally grabbed my daughter by the hand and walked up to the receptionist’s desk.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “But we’ll have to come back when the doctor has more time.”
The receptionist seemed shocked that I wasn’t willing to wait indefinitely on the doctor.
I explained to her that I had someplace else to be, and that I would just come back when it was more convenient for the doctor to see us, and that I didn’t have any more time that day to devote to seeing this particular doctor.
The doctor wandered up at this point, and also seemed amazed that I wasn’t willing to wait until he was ready. He said he was almost ready to see my daughter.
“Sorry, doc,” I said. I explained to him that when we set the appointment time, I allowed a couple of hours for the visit, then scheduled another work-related appointment for later that day, thinking I allowed a reasonable amount of time for him.
For some reason, this sort of freaked him out and he said he’d see my daughter right then.
“OK,” I said.
We went back and he examined my daughter. He advised a treatment (which ultimately failed and had to be finally corrected by another doctor) and we left.
I got the feeling no one had ever told him his time was up before.
I found myself waiting the other day when a relative had some minor surgery performed. We had to be there at 6 a.m. Rather, we were told to be there at 6 a.m. Of course, they didn’t call the patient back for about an hour. About an hour later they came to get me, telling me I could sit with her. I thought the operation was over. Nope.
We visited for another hour. It was after 9 when they took her to the operating room. If we had gotten there at 8:30 it would have served everyone just as well.
My most memorable doctor-waiting experience was after a motorcycle wreck. I had to get some surgery done on my arm. I won’t go into it. It makes me queasy to think about it, and it makes most people shudder a little when I tell them about it. But it’s fine now.
Anyway, I got to the hospital at the requisite crack-of-dawn check-in time. They had me put on the open-in-the-back gown, given me a shot to relax me and rolled me into the surgery waiting area. I laid for a while and counted the holes in the ceiling.
The shot they gave me was a pretty good one, and I was happy as a lamb for quite a while. Then I noticed that, while still fairly relaxed, I wasn’t quite so happy. Then I noticed I’d been lying there for a LONG time.
Finally, a nurse came in.
“Uh, I’m not sure how to tell you this,” she said. “We can’t find the doctor.”
Thanks to the drugs, this just sort of amused me. A few minutes later they found him (yes, he had been on the way to the golf course) and he came in and did the surgery.
He must have been in a hurry to get back afterwards because he left a large, square monitor glued to my back.
When I got ready to go home, I leaned forward and the nurse said, “Uh, oh.”
Not what I wanted to hear immediately after surgery.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Well, they left the monitor on your back. They are supposed to pull it off while you’re still asleep.”
The problem was this: I’m not actually bald. The hair up top just migrated to my back, and the monitor was glued firmly in place on top of it.
At least the nurse was honest: “This is going to hurt.”
It did. I screamed. (A loud, manly scream, though).
Then it was over.
After waiting so long for the doctor to show up, I was sure wishing he would have stuck around to finish the job.
Apparently I wasn’t worth the wait.
Story of my life.
Robert Shearon is news editor of the Courier. His column appears periodically.
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