Medical Merry-go-round

For the past year (or more) Ann has been afflicted with a lot of heavy duty back pain which has lead us, in turn, to some equally heavy duty experience with the marvelous medical merry-go-round. We'd been warned by friends who had gotten caught up in it, and have had occasional glimpses of it ourselves, but it has to be experienced to be truly appreciated.

It's a merry-go-round that moves with excruciating deliberateness. Nothing, it seems, happens the next day, or even the next week. After you've seen a doc his or her notes have to be transcribed and then reviewed and then faxed to the primary doc who will eventually read them and you will hear from an appointment secretary who will leave a messsage on your answering machine, a process which consumes two weeks.

But the appointment secretary can't leave a message with content for anyone but you (thanks, HIPPAA) so you have to return that call and experience the true joys of voice mail. And since you qualify as neither a "true medical emergency" (as opposed, presumably, to a false medical emergency) nor a "physician's office calling", you are relegated to "push 3", whereupon you are told that the apppointment secretary is busy helping other patients or (obviously) away from her phone so please leave your name, date of birth, telephone number, mother's maiden name, and your call will be returned in the order in which it was received. You are expected, of course, to stay home by your phone until they call back or Halley's Comet returns, whichever happens first.

Eventually, though, you will get an appointment to see the doc, but don't take that apppointed time too seriously. They don't. Just take a good book (unless you enjoy old copies of well thumbed magazines), enjoy this merry-go-round's Muzak, and wait. Then, after your business with the doctor is finished you'll be rewarded and encouraged by the parting comment, "If you have any problems, be sure to give me a call." What a sense of humor!

Miss me?

I'm one of those people who really prefer having some structure and order in their lives. Nothing complicated: I drive through the car wash on Monday, feed the bluebirds at 8:00 each morning, vacuum the carpet on Tuesday and Saturday, trim my fingernails on Thursday, and so forth. Well, I guess I don't have to be that way; life on earth as we know it would go on if I cut my nails on Friday, and I don't get too upset if the car wash is closed on Monday, but it just wouldn't be right. You understand?

Maybe not, for this drives some people nuts. My wife just shakes her head, the children blame the Marine Corps, and some folks just get angry and want me to get more fiber in my diet. Loosen up, they tell me. Easy for you to say. It's not that I prefer structure, I need it. You don't have to tell me about INFJ types or obsessive compulsive behavior. That's where I live.

Which may explain my more than month long absence from the Homeboy Reports: it wasn't programmed into my schedule. Instead I waited for the muse to strike, like waiting for the Market Street bus on Oleander Drive: it wasn't going to happen.

So let's see if I can make these reports happen on Friday mornings. That's when I always had to get the sermon wrapped up (after thinking about it all week), and perhaps that same process will work here. We'll see.