[Rant] Minor Rant III: For a Few Hollers More

It's Monday. Went out this morning to leave for work early enough to stop and get a doughnut, turn the corner to where the car is parked, and the passenger side front tire is flat. And it's raining. Seems we had a screw in the tire, that we stopped on just right to let all the air out overnight. Walked a 1/2 mile to Wal-Mart and picked up a can of fix-a-flat, walked back home and aired the tire up enough to be able to drop me off for work and the wife to run the car by our tire place to get it fixed. I never got my doughnut.
 
Note to self: safety razors are not particularly safe when you draw your finger along the edge while rummaging through your Dopp kit.
 

Dave

Staff member
I should have checked my email before I came to work. Because of the ice storm, staff does not have to report until noon. So of course I'm in at 6:15. Only 5.5 hours early. I could have slept in. Oh well, I got some stuff to do so I'm going to work.
 
I should have checked my email before I came to work. Because of the ice storm, staff does not have to report until noon. So of course I'm in at 6:15. Only 5.5 hours early. I could have slept in. Oh well, I got some stuff to do so I'm going to work.
Same here. "I still hear Cary running around, must not be 8AM yet." "Still hear Cary, must not be 8." "Hmm, I've been hearing Cary for a long time now, what's going on? School was closed and it's 9AM now? Great."

--Patrick
 
Y'know, more and more I'm seeing people write like that - one-word "reaction" to things. "Wrong!", "Lame!", Sad!", "Great!" - and they all just remind me of Trump. Also, they look like they could be replaced by the corresponding smiley but the person riting didn't have a smiley list handy.
 
Y'know, more and more I'm seeing people write like that - one-word "reaction" to things. "Wrong!", "Lame!", Sad!", "Great!" - and they all just remind me of Trump. Also, they look like they could be replaced by the corresponding smiley but the person riting didn't have a smiley list handy.
I bolded a bit of your grammar. *Twitch*
 
I've been sick for way too long and it's infringing on my ability to work. Finally took my blood oxygen level and while it's not terrible it's below where I'd like it to be despite the various medications I'm taking to manage this illness.

Guess I have to find a doctor and get checked out. The annoyance with that is some doctors are so skittish about missing something that they'll send you to specialists or the hospital when you're at the edge of some chart or another just to cover their bases.

Don't really want to go back to my old doctor, it was a chore to get him to approve a sleep study (which showed I have sleep apnea, so thanks doc for stalling the process until my insurance changed and I couldn't get coverage for the necessary and expensive medical devices) and I've had to argue with him about medications before.

I may just show up at urgent care, rather than try and find a doctor to build a long term relationship with. It's twice as much out of pocket, and I'm guessing they may be even more skittish and interested in sending me to more expensive and time consuming care providers.

Bleah.

It's no migraine, but low oxygen headaches suck.
 
Y'know, more and more I'm seeing people write like that - one-word "reaction" to things. "Wrong!", "Lame!", Sad!", "Great!" - and they all just remind me of Trump. Also, they look like they could be replaced by the corresponding smiley but the person riting didn't have a smiley list handy.
I'd 100% assume that anyone who finishes a thought with "Sad!" is trying to reference trump.
 
I've been sick for way too long and it's infringing on my ability to work. Finally took my blood oxygen level and while it's not terrible it's below where I'd like it to be despite the various medications I'm taking to manage this illness.

Guess I have to find a doctor and get checked out. The annoyance with that is some doctors are so skittish about missing something that they'll send you to specialists or the hospital when you're at the edge of some chart or another just to cover their bases.

Don't really want to go back to my old doctor, it was a chore to get him to approve a sleep study (which showed I have sleep apnea, so thanks doc for stalling the process until my insurance changed and I couldn't get coverage for the necessary and expensive medical devices) and I've had to argue with him about medications before.

I may just show up at urgent care, rather than try and find a doctor to build a long term relationship with. It's twice as much out of pocket, and I'm guessing they may be even more skittish and interested in sending me to more expensive and time consuming care providers.

Bleah.

It's no migraine, but low oxygen headaches suck.
I feel for you, but sadly have no advice. Doctors around my area have been dropping like flies for the past three years, and my wife and I had been following an ARNP from one practice to another, but the last stop was a complete clusterfuck - and then one day we got a letter saying "we're closing, get fucked," essentially. The doctor who founded the practice (back in the 60's) finally retired, leaving it to the Russian (first generation) doctor who alerted the infectious diseases clinic to my condition (folliculitis) in such a way that I spent 3 weeks getting "urgent" calls from them to come in because they were certain I had bubonic plague. I once spent 3 weeks trying to get an appointment to see said ARNP because I wanted to change my diabetes meds to take a more aggressive approach to managing the disease. It took 3 weeks to get an appointment because the receptionists kept trying to just get the ARNP to prescribe me Insulin(!) without seeing me. So, they would transfer me to the nurses' (medical assistants) desk, who would make a note that I wanted to change my meds, and send it to the ARNP, who would send a note back to them, instructing them to have me come in, so I would attempt to make an appointment, and the whole thing would start over. The entire office was one giant clusterfuck. The receptionists hated working there, and made it known by constantly bitching about the doctors, the patients, and everything in between, in full view/hearing of all of the patients in the waiting room. The only computers they had were for scheduling appointments and printing out medical history forms, which patients had to fill out at least once every 3 months, because they had no computerized medical records and frequently lost people's charts.
 
Ouch. Well the urgent care clinic worked out fine, they gave me antibiotics (zpak) and steroids and told me to follow up with my doctor next week.

I also visited a doctor's office nearby and they are accepting new patients so I'll try them out.

Hopefully this treatment works.
 
I just spoke to the surgeon's office. My referral was only deemed to be semi-urgent back in the fall so the soonest I could get an appointment is in early April. That's just the consult. Once I have the consult, I'm looking at another six months possibly after that to have my stomach fixed. When I called before Christmas, they wouldn't even make me an appointment.

I'm fairly horrified that I'm only semi-urgent. WTF would urgent be??
 
I just spoke to the surgeon's office. My referral was only deemed to be semi-urgent back in the fall so the soonest I could get an appointment is in early April. That's just the consult. Once I have the consult, I'm looking at another six months possibly after that to have my stomach fixed. When I called before Christmas, they wouldn't even make me an appointment.

I'm fairly horrified that I'm only semi-urgent. WTF would urgent be??
"Whines an d shouts at me so much I want her out of my hair as fast as possible", probably :(
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I once called a doctor for a visit. I had some internal bleeding, but nothing urgent. The receptionist said that the earliest she could fit me in was in 3 months.

"Did you hear me say that I am bleeding?"
Did she then say "well if you have an emergency, go to the emergency room?" My parents both had that as part of their outgoing voicemail greetings.
 
In the process of bleeding out?
My stomach is bleeding.

Last fall when I accidentally didn't take my stomach meds for a few days I was in horrible pain and my doctor did some tests and there is lab proof that my stomach is bleeding.

I made a bunch of medical calls today and:

I will be 18-24 months for the allergist unless my doctor can convince them that I'm urgent. He forgot to send in the referral last month when promised. I have hives and look like I've had a chemical burn after I shower.

My SI MRI is still on track to be 20 months after it was requested. It made a snapping sound several times this week and my pain has doubled. There is no point in going to the ER. They won't do anything there.

My neurologist wants me to have another MRI of my head to make sure an aneurysm or other nasties aren't causing my headaches and attacks where my vision, hearing and speaking are impacted. The earliest I can expect that MRI is November 2018. When I expressed my concerns that I might not be here to keep that appointment, his admin lady gave me the name of a private MRI clinic.

The private MRI clinic responded to my email within ten minutes and can book me for both MRIs within five business days of receiving completed requisitions from the referring specialists. If I'm cool with spending $2,000 plus tax. That's for the base model scan of course. All extras are extra!
 
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Yikes.

--Patrick
Canadian health care at its normal. You have the right to be on a waiting list to get diagnosed for YEARS while in horrific pain, AND the condition is almost certainly getting worse (but for free). Or pay a bit of money to at least get the DIAGNOSIS, after which treatment is (often) reasonably quick. I and a number of family members have all experienced this.

Probably still better than the abomination the USA has, but that doesn't make it good.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Probably still better than the abomination the USA has, but that doesn't make it good.
As long as you (or your spouse) have a full time job, the US system isn't all that bad. Or at least it wasn't, prior to 2010. Yes, there were some people who didn't have/couldn't afford insurance, but the number of those people was grossly overexaggerated to push through the bad system we have now.

But yeah, the horror stories about Canadian/UK wait times were a large part of the pushback of further "socializing" our medical system. But people don't want to hear it, they just want responsibility off their plate.
 
As long as you (or your spouse) have a full time job, the US system isn't all that bad. Or at least it wasn't, prior to 2010. Yes, there were some people who didn't have/couldn't afford insurance, but the number of those people was grossly overexaggerated to push through the bad system we have now.

But yeah, the horror stories about Canadian/UK wait times were a large part of the pushback of further "socializing" our medical system. But people don't want to hear it, they just want responsibility off their plate.
Oh the UK ones aren't as bad as the Canadian ones, and there's BETTER socialized examples (for less money too!), but this is drifting into the Politics forum type of thread, so I'm stopping. Not the right thread and forum!
 
I saw my family doctor today. He was pretty shocked about the MRI wait time of two years (I saw the neurologist last November and that's the one I was told won't be before November 2018) and will send me for a CT with contrast asap. I guess it's not as good for detecting whatever it is that they're looking for but it can rule out a few urgent things.

He agreed with my assessment about the ER for my SI pain. He gave me a second pain med prescription to take every four hours in addition to my patch. I have a trip to the block room in two weeks that had been set up already with my pain clinic, so I just need to make it until then.
 
Which all just goes to prove people need to look further than their noses are long (to badly mangle a Dutch proverb). Belgium, France, Germany - all semi-socialized health care systems, all with higher average standards than the USA, none have such outrageous waiting lists. Seriously, Squidley would probably get her MRI faster if she flew a plane here and asked :p
 
I'm seriously appalled that the private clinic would see me within five days.

Not so much about the private clinic itself but about about how horrid wait times are for anyone without an extra $2,000+ laying around. It really feels wrong.
 
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