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At the doctor's office
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At The Doctor’s Office
All my life I have been blessed with a very stable temper and a wonderful loving concept of my fellow human beings. I hardly ever lose my temper. I try to be kind, considerate, faithful, true, just, and reverent but never accusatory or condescending to my fellow companions on this astral globe. But today I lost it------my temper that is. I had gone to the office of my cardiologist but not to meet with a physician. He had asked me to meet with a dietician who would go over my recent blood test when they had extracted about ½ gallon of blood from my emaciated body and to consult with this dietician as to the best improvements that could be made to my diet which would improve my blood chemistry. Even though I was meeting with the dietician from the Cardiovascular Laboratory I was told to come to my Cardiologist’s office and the dietician would meet with me there. My appointment was at 10.30 AM and by the clock on the cardiologists wall (carefully placed so that it was not visible from the patient’s waiting room) I arrived at 0957 hours.
Trouble started right away. The only communication between the waiting room and the office staff was a tiny window placed on the wall for the benefit of those six feet nine inches or taller to talk to the secretary. There was a man standing there and he was arguing about how much money he owed the doctor. He had a sheaf of checks, bills, and scraps of paper which he was going over one at a time with the little airheaded girl who between buffing her nails with an emery board would whine " I can only go by this statement." Having been to this office many times I recognized that the clerk was new. So I did a rude thing. After waiting ten minutes or so I entered the sacred confines of the clinic and turned to the much larger window inside where I could see everyone in the office including the three office personnel who were lounging against the file cabinet and sipping coffee. I brusquely summoned one of them over and said "I just want to sign in. " One of them asked my "Which Doctor do you wish to see?" "None of the above", I replied "I am just here to see a dietician from some laboratory". "Well we just work for the doctors. I don’t think that the dietician is here yet?" It was now 10:25AM. The coffee drinking secretary did reach over and get a form which listed several dozen disabilities and system conditions and asked me to check the ones from which I suffered. I told her that it was still the same as it had been when I was there three days ago and just to go by the one I had filled out then which was in my folder. Then she offered me a privacy statement and asked me to sign it. Since it was easier to sign the statement than it was to explain that I had signed one of those three days ago also I signed it. Then she said, "Please sit down in the lobby and I will see if the Dietician is here yet.
Now the lobby at the Cardiologists office has 17 chairs in it counting one bench with three butt depressions as three chairs. All of them were full and one waiting patient (or patient accompanyer) was leaning against the wall wi th his nose in a newspaper. The man who owed the money was still fighting the good fight at the patient’s check-in window. I was considering taking up smoking again and going out on the porch when in walked a living doll in the tightest slacks you ever saw and one inoperative button on the top of her blouse. I said that she walked in but really it was more like a dance. When she walked she rotated each foot slightly just as it struck the ground—probably an old Comanche trick to obliterate her tracks. As she came into the lobby she announced "Is Mr T--------- here?" I admitted to the charge and she said, "I know that I have an appointment with you at 10:30 dear man, but Mrs. W. here WAS first you know and we made a mistake and scheduled both of you for 10.30 . Now I am sure that you won’t mind waiting just a bit while I go over Mrs. W--------‘s lab report with her and then you and I can sit down and study your "Diet" and she made "diet" sound like something forbidden by the missionaries. By the way I had seen Mrs W. Come in after I arrived. The Dietician was about 22 I would estimate. She patted my arm., Before I could get my mouth closed and make a statement she had vanished into the white halls of the cardiac clinic. There was still no chair in the lobby. I tried the elevated hearth to the fireplace but the Gilbert Pit Limestone was too hard and sharp for me to sit on–even with a magazine under me. By this time two preschool kids were screaming at each other and chasing around the room. I assumed that their parent was inside. Certainly no one in the lobby looked young enough to have children that age-----or grandchildren either.
Finally about 11:30 little miss powderpuff came back and got me by the hand and led me back into A room where she went over my very detailed blood chemistry and then handed me a telephone number written on a piece of paper and said "When you get home call this number after a few days and ask for the Dietician and she will have a diet all laid out for you and some advice about what you should eat and what you should not".
"I thought that you were the----"
"The Dietician, Oh no. I am a "helper" for the man who owns the laboratory. The Dietician was all tied up this morning and just couldn’t get away to meet with you but we had fun didn’t we?"
Sara would not speak to me when I got home.
I’ll let my blood chemistry be the subject of a separate letter after I study it with Best and Taylor in hand and my Medical Dictionary on my knee. But it ain’t really bad.
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