Wait time in doctor's waiting room tops one hour

If Dante's Inferno were rewritten and adapted to modern times, I am certain one of the circles of Hell would include having to sit endlessly in a doctor's waiting room. I did this twice yesterday. My first visit was to my oncologist for a routine followup exam. The time I routinely spend in his waiting room is without exception far more than I spend in the actual examination room. I don't mean I spend ten minutes in the waiting room and five in the exam room either. I mean I have sat in that waiting room flipping through outdated, dog-eared secondhand magazines for as long as 45 minutes before finally seeing a phlebotomist. That's another thing. With the enthusiasm fellow patients put down last year's copy of the AARP magazine when their name is called, you'd think they were jumping up to be the next contestant on The Price is Right. They're not. They're just getting blood drawn and then sent to an exam room to wait yet again.

I like to sit in view of the receptionist's window. My theory is that I can give her pathetic stares and guilt her into bumping my name up on the list. This seldom works, if ever. The magazine selection at my oncologist's office is limited, so I picked up the three-month old issue of ESPN magazine. Not because I thought I'd find something worth reading in it, but because it was the only thing in reach. I did happen upon a page with scantily clad women made up to look like members of KISS. One of them was missing a tooth. They were - get this - rollerderby queens. I thought that was a sport that went out with the Carter administration and The Partridge Family, but apparently it's back. A Google search even revealed the name of the local team, Atlanta Rollergirls. Note to self: get tickets.

Eventually I made my way into the lab room. This is where someone takes blood from you and records your weight. I always curse myself for wearing what I deem heavy clothes that day. I know it's silly. How many pounds can those cheap Target pants with the expando Fatty McFat wasitband really add to my weight? I'll spare you the number on the scale readout, but let's just say it was high. So high in fact that I had to scarf down two cinnamon rolls today just to alleviate the accompanying anxiety.

One of the phlebotomists I'm used to seeing no longer works there. While in the waiting room, I overheard that she was now working as a school nurse at a local high school. With the remaining phlebotomists I discuss my theory of their former coworker hooking up with a ne'er-do-well high school detentionee and having his love child. This was a joke of course, in that funny-'cause-its-probably-true sort of way. We all shared a laugh at her expense.

These days it seems like exam rooms in the doctor's office are smaller than a Guantanamo Bay prisoner's cell. I find I have to crack the door to ward off claustrophobia. On my recent visit my doctor saw me in no time flat. He told me that because the door was ajar, he couldn't tell whether or not there was a chart in the folder holder. When he rounded the corner to see if a chart was there, we made eye contact and he greeted me with a handshake and a smile. I think it was partially out of a sense of guilt or obligation, much the same way we're forced to converse with an aquaintance who catches us looking at them from across the room, but so what! This helped me get in there and out.

My oncologist is a kind and well-mannered individual. He is one of the few medical practitioners I have ever seen in my 33 years whose touch alone feels truly healing. He volunteers for About.com answering questions on cancer and Hinduism. I enjoy reading his posts almost as much as I do chatting with him during my semi-annual visit. His accent reveals hints of Hindi or Gidjarti, but his writings denote evidence of heavy British schooling. He spells behavior with a superfluous U and occasionally employs Britspeak words like "erstwhile." During my visit we discuss my wife's pregnancy, he feels my testicles and we part ways.

My next doctor's appointment was a routine followup with my urologist a few hours later. I arrived at five minutes before two o'clock to find the door locked and four other people waiting outside. The downside of waiting at the urologist's office is that you suspect you're going to have to give a urine sample so you try and avoid going to the bathroom beforehand. This can sometimes lead to prolonged agony that for many just aggravates the whole reason they're seeing the urologist in the first place. I had a diet soda in hand and probably fifteen minutes time to wait, so I decided to go ahead of time, knowing I'd still be able to go again if they wanted a specimen. When I returned from the men's room, the door was unlocked.

I signed in and sat down, again looking for something to read. At Georgia Urology the reading material is limited to Golf Digest, Atlanta Style and Design, a copy of Children's Bible Stories and some flyers for incontinence and erectile dysfunction. I briefly perused a flyer on the drug Flomax so as to avoid having to make eye contact or idle chitchat with any oldsters with weak bladders. Again, I sat in full view of the receptionist's window and the hallway that leads to the exam rooms.

In the room with me were the four people I saw outside the door and a few stragglers making their way in to the office. One couple stood out to me. She sat next to a stroller, and he was redfaced and noticeably uncomfortable. "What will they do in pre-op?" I heard him ask his wife. She assured him that they would probably brief him on what's going to happen and take his blood. I guessed vasectomy, but there could have been a number of reasons he was there. Whatever his reason, he wasn't volunteering much information. No one does at the urologist's office. At the cancer doctor you might overhear someone talking about their recent surgery or chemotherapy. Strangely, no one shares their tales of not being able to get it up or make it to the bathroom in time.

Sitting a few seats to my right was an older couple. The woman wore a scowl and seldom looked up from her knitting. At one point, a young pregnant woman walked in with a husband and toddler and the older woman mumbled that they were too young to be there. "Young people have problems too," her husband said. The pregnant woman's husband must have had a urology fastpass because he got called soon after getting there. His wife entertained their daughter by pointing out pictures in Atlanta Style and Design. The girl looked to be about two, old enough to say some recognizable words, but the only thing she'd say I could understand was an occasional mama. Then I realized that when the mother was talking to the girl, she was speaking German. Once I discovered that, I did understand the girl when she said "ein Hund" and followed it up with what sounded like doggy. The old spinster wasn't as impressed as I was with a bilingual toddler. She put down her knitting, picked up Children's Bible Stories and handed it to the mom. The proselytized preggers smiled, flipped through a couple pages and went back to pointing out pictures in her magazine.

In the time I sat in that room, I could have done a week's worth of grocery shopping, gone out to lunch and learned to read Chinese. The nurse must have called everyone's name but mine. I watched countless people come in, get called and then leave in the time I was still sitting there. Occasioanlly my doctor emerged with a patient. Once he waved at me and gave a look that seemed to say this waiting's a bitch, ain't it? Finally I went up to the window and asked if I had arrived at the wrong time. I didn't think I had and this was really just a polite way of telling them I'd been waiting and wanted to see a doctor and soon. Sure enough, she informed me, my appointment wasn't at 2:00. It was at 3:00. I pled stupidity and my name was called shortly after.

My urologist is an all around great guy. I know I said virtually the same thing about my oncologist, but it's true. Sure, my urologist doesn't use words like "erstwhile", and his knowledge on Hinduism is probably limited, but he's good at listening and sympathizing. When he found out Elaine was pregnant, he called to congratulate us. When I popped into his office to show off ultrasound pictures, he stopped what he was doing and came out to see them. He may boast a New York ivy league alma mater but his demeanor is down to earth. Furthermore, at the end of my appointment he told me I was one of his favorite patients. What a guy! During my visit we discuss my wife's pregnancy, he feels my testicles and we part ways.

Between the two visits, I spent over an hour and a half just waiting. I know that receiving a diagnosis doesn't happen as quickly as receiving a fast food double cheeseburger. I also know I'm not the only person requiring my doctors' time, and some patients (most in fact) probably have more pressing issues than I. However, can't we come up with some better system to shorten the time we're required to spend in the waiting room? The ennui of it all! And the reading material! I need to order my doctor a subscription to Maxim magazine.

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No more cell phone

If the one with the most toys wins, I'm one step closer to the agony of defeat. I recently gave up my cell phone. I know to some youngsters this may seem equally as horrible as selling one's kidney, but for those of us over the age of thirty, we realize that a personal phone number is a luxury that dates back only to the early 2000s. In fact, it wasn't much before that that obtaining a phone in one's own bedroom was viewed a considerable right of passage. Even then, kids who shared a line with other family members often had to interrupt their phone conversations with such coarse phrases as I'm on the phone, or I got it, or I SAID I'm on the phone. Those with older or self-important siblings sometimes might hear What part of "on the phone" don't you understand? Those were the golden years.

As a real estate agent, I felt a constant obligation to answer my ringing cell phone. After all, the caller might be a buyer or a seller, or better yet, a buyer who wanted to buy from a seller. Maybe he was a millionaire and therefore all the more profitable a client. The millionaire never manifested, but I did once get a buyer who ended up buying from a seller. And while I got several profitable calls from real estate clients over the past few years, most of my calls were from non-selling family, friends or the vet who simply wanted to confirm my dog's boarding appointment. Worse yet were the calls I received from friends who called only to pass the time while stuck in traffic. These pointless conversations were sprinkled with the caller firing otherwise unheard insults to fellow motorists, a play-by-play of where they were, and the occasional inquiry as to what I was doing. Have you ever realized that when someone on the phone asks what you're doing, what they mean to ask is what you were doing before they interrupted you with an untimely phone call?

I don't miss the cell phone. I'm usually all about gadgetry. At times I would have a palm pilot, a Realtor key and a cell phone all in one pocket. If I needed to take pictures of something, I'd also carry a digital camera. No more. Stuff equals stress. And stuff that makes you accountable to the rest of the world equals more stress. If people want me, they'll find me. And if they don't find me, the world won't stop turning.

I need to go. Must check email.

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I'm a freak; you're a freak

While I was at the bookstore yesterday I noticed a display of the book No Excuses: The True Story of a Congenital Amputee Who Became a Champion in Wrestling and in Life. I asked the clerk behind the counter whether the book I wanted was in stock. It wasn't, so I picked up the autobiography with the long-winded title and wandered through the store leafing through its pages. I wish I could say I was looking for the recipe for championing life, but I wasn't. I didn't care about wrestling either. I just wanted to see pictures of an amputee. Here was an inspirational book with jacket endorsements from Arnold Schwarzenegger and I just picked it up to see if there were photos of a guy with no limbs. A brief skim of the book satiated my curiosities. There were photos -- color glossies no less. I'm only mildly ashamed at my inclination to gawk. After all, if I told you there was a website dedicated to a fingerless fiddler would you click on the link? Go on . . . click it . . . click it.

The parenting book I was looking for is out of print, so I ordered a used copy from Amazon. Before finalizing my order my inexplicable zeal for human anomolies forced me to look for another book I had longed for a few Christmases ago, Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others, My wife had been unable to find it so instead she gave me Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves and Triumphs of Human Oddities. I devoured this book in a few short days. Something on world history I'd bore with after a chapter or two, but give me something on people covered in hair or peoplw with abnormally small heads and I can't put it down. I must not be alone in this admiration for the congenitally eccentric. After all, Michael Jackson makes no bones about his purchase of the Elephant Man's skeleton and Back to the Future's Crispin Glover reportedly collects diseased eyeballs. Furthermore, when I opt to purchase the freaks book from Amazon, I'm immediately asked if I would like to purchase any of another several titles on the same topic, including one entitled So You'd Like To . . . Get Your Freak On. There's a market for this.

In Very Special People, Frederick Drimmer addresses our astonishment with those often labeled as freaks. He says that when we see them we take greater comfort in our own normalcy. Personally I think "freak" is a relative term. Everyone is freakish in someone's view. Not everyone has a conjoined twin or extra limbs of course, but we all possess some attribute or quality that could potentially mark us as freaks. My coffer is minus one family jewel, for instance, though this was the result of surgery, so I don't think that puts me on the same level as someone who was born a uniballer. Regardless, some may consider it freakish.

I'm not saying freak is bad. After all, some of my best friends are freaks. Freak is the new chic. This is the importance of being freakish.

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Editorial apology

On the previous entry dated January 4, 2006 I alluded to a fictitious character I referred to as Pat Robertson-Roddam-Clinton Jr. Please note that this comment was made both in jest and before the recent indelicate comments spoken by the Reverend Pat Robertson regarding the untimely stroke of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. I woud like to express my most sincere apologies to the members of the Roddam family, the Clinton family and to anyone who uses the suffix Jr.

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Wish list for my kid

As I quickly approach fatherhood, I think of the things that have made a positive impression on my life or the lives of those around me. I hope my future son or daughter in due course will also develop some of these defining qualities and experience some of these epyphanic events. Not necessarily first but definitely foremost on the list is getting married. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't wish nuptuals on someone who's too young or someone who didn't get them right the first seven times, but when I think of those people that have had the most wonderful influence on who I am today, my wife tops the list. She's there to make me laugh in times of stress and there to offer another perspective when I need a second opinion. She cooks dinner as well as anyone on the Food Network and squirts toothpaste on my toothbrush before I get out of bed in the morning. There simply is no better travel companion, parenting partner, runway model and arbitor of all that is good than my wife. Marriage is the single best undertaking I ever undertook. I hope my offspring will wise up someday and make the plunge the same way I did.

Foreign travel is another must in my book. As Americans we take pride in the fact that our way is the right way. The land of the free and home of the brave is the land by which all others should be judged. This opinion holds true up until the point you step outside our borders. Nothing shakes up a young Yank more than realizing that people in different cultures have a different way of doing things, and their way suits them just as well as our way suits us. Aquisition of a foreign language is something I'd love for my kid, but aquisition of foreign culture is even more important. I hope when my kid's in Rome, he does as the Romans do.

I want my child to read. I don't mean just Hooked on Fonics or teacher-prescribed reading either. I want my kid to look at books as a way of entertaining himself, learning something new and gaining insight into another's viewpoint. I want my kid to read the philosophical writings of Goethe, Voltaire and Kyle Minor. And if Pat Robertson-Roddam-Clinton Jr. has a stack of books s/he's about to throw into a fire, I hope my kid reaches for those first. So what if it's a book about the master race of Veggie Hobbits in Loompaland! I'd certainly rather my child read something of questionable merit than watch something on tv of no merit.

This one may sound petty, but I want my kid to be liked -- liked by other kids, liked by adults, liked by friends and family, liked by teachers, professors and future employers. We all have people we like and people we don't. Consequently, we're all liked by some and not liked by others. Regardless of the nature of the individual relationships we have with other people, we give preferential treatment to those we like. The liked student gets a better education and the liked employee gets chosen for promotion. Fair or not, this is the the way things are. With this wish though comes a concern. I hope I can teach my child to understand the difference between doing things for the sole purpose of being liked and doing things that in turn lead to being liked. Kids who make choices just so they're liked tend to end up pleasing the wrong people. Peer pressure is only as good as the peers who press. We have to be likable before we're liked.

Another life lesson I hope my child grasps is that it's seldom wise to sacrifice long-term gain for instant gratification. Whether it's saving for the future versus spending like a trust-fund baby or waiting for Mr. Right as opposed to settling for Mr. Right Now, I want to instill in my child that we are a product of our choices, and some decisions have long lasting consequences. This can work for us or against us but in either case the decision is ours to make.

It's now dawned on me that this list of things I want for my kid could go on and on. I haven't even touched on the things I wish I had done when I was younger and now hope my kid will do, like learning to swim or practicing a sport. Perhaps more important than wanting these things for my child is doing what I can to make them happen for my child. I don't anticipate fatherhood being an easy venture but I do greatly look forward to it. I just hope I will remember my job as dad is not to push my kid through doors but just to open doors. Well, maybe a slight nudge wouldn't hurt provided it's in the right direction.

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Auld Lang Sinuses

I was perusing other blogs today and noticed a trend of people either regurgitating their New Year's resolutions or offering up their 2005 Year in Review. I say "regurgitating" because if you think about it our new resolutions are really just rehashed versions of those of auld lang syne . . . and the lang syne before that . . . and the one before that. While the year in review is no new idea, I think VH1 has driven it into the ground. I'd like to think I have better uses for my blog than competing with Mo Rocca. Besides I still think Martha Stewart was railroaded, but that's another story.

I spent the last workday of 2005 knee-deep in tissues soaked in my own snot. Some of my next-cube neighbors are either sick or well on their way. I guess I'm just another domino in the chain. I can't smell a thing which is probably for the better considering what this ailment has done to my gastrointestinal system. On every fifth Kleenex I had to excuse myself to the bathroom because I started my nose bleeding again. Once when I returned to the tiki cube I noticed a drop of dried blood on the tip of my nose. I licked my thumb and rubbed my alae nasi trying to get the blood off. When saliva didn't work, I came up with the ingenious idea of using Purell instead. Not smart. There is a reason they call this stuff hand sanitizer and not nose sanitizer. My nose was chaffed from multiple blowings and the alcohol in the Purell stung like hell. It was like dousing your face with cologne right after shaving, only the burning sensation is concentrated on the sensitive tip of your nose. Snorting sulfuric acid would probably not have burned half as much as this did.

To make matters worse I had a disengaged scab in my nose that wouldn't come out no matter how hard I blew. To my coworkers I must have sounded like the big bad wolf only congested. I used a Kleenex and tried to discreetly pull out the coagulated bloodsnot. It was still putting up a fight so I yanked it. Turns out it was attached to one my nose hairs. This hurt so bad my eyes started to tear up. It was then that I began to wonder why nasal grooming has to be such a painful endeavor. If in my old age my nostrils become hirsute, I think I will just settle for having an unkempt schnoz.

On a lighter note I treated myself to lunch today at Ledo's Pizza. I ordered the Buffalo chicken sandwich which was dumb. I had ordered this once before and didn't particularly care for it. Why I thought it would taste better this time I don't know. It didn't. The sauce tasted like it was made with a bit of ranch dressing, some tobasco and fourteen cups of salt. Still I ate this in record time.

Please note that when I eat lunch out I am not only trying to escape work, I am trying to escape humanity. If the restaurant is basically empty, kindly do not choose the booth adjacent to mine when making your seat selection. I do not care to listen to your conversation anymore than you care to watch me pull bloody boogers out of my nose. Today a family of four (mom, dad and two twenty-something sons) just had to sit as close to me as possible. The son facing me was a dead ringer for Shoney's big boy. I don't just mean in girth. I mean he had the look right down to the swoopy hairdo. It wouldn't surprise me if he owned a red and white checked apron.

The family was well behaved until the song Drift Away started playing. Actually they were still tolerable when the song started playing. It was when it reached the chorus that they got on my nerves. At that point, father and both sons began singing in three-part atonal unison:

Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul

I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away.

Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away.

Skinny brother was going for a third refrain on this line when thankfully he was cut short by the lead singer singing the correct lyrics. Dad made some reference to how this song would be a good one to sing Karaoke. Yuck. Their conversation died down and I mistakenly thought I was through having to hear them sing. No such luck. When the chorus repeated so did they. It sounded like bellowing cats. The next song was by INXS. Thankfully the tone-deaf family didn't know the words and went back to their meat lover's pizza.

As for me, I took a cup o' kindness yet, for Auld Lang Syne

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Brush with scamsters in Bushnell, Florida

My wife and I pulled off the I-75 freeway to gas up and get a bite to eat in a small town called Bushnell, Florida. With still over three hours to go on a ten-hour trip to Naples, we had reached that point on the journey where getting there was no longer half the fun. What better way to cure travel crabbiness and curb the appetite, we thought, than with cholesterol on Texast toast? We headed for Waffle House.

Route 48 west of I-75 in Bushnell is a fairly secluded and desolate neck of the woods. A slightly dilapidated motel with a weedy parking lot sits next to a gas station with pumps that predate the '79 oil embargo. Our Waffle House was across the street from them. The town is midway down the state directly across from Orlando. Those who have visited the Sunshine State know that an imaginary line runs across it separating the two Floridas -- the northern section with its mobile homes and confederate flags and the southern half with its septuagenarians and gated golf communities. Judging from our surroundings, we were north of that line.

The restaurant was pretty empty, but there was a lone woman dining at the counter and a couple sitting in the corner booth. The man and woman in the corner had a large duffle bag and a pink bookbag sitting on the floor beside them. He was yammering on his cell phone at volume ten about being broken down and needing the rear half of a drive shaft for a 92 Dodge pickup with extended cab. The waitress, who was as big around as she was tall, was trying to cater to his dilemma. She offered him a phone book and told him she knew someone who would help install the part if he could find one. An older woman who looked like Polly Holliday on crack manned the grill. Elaine and I took the booth closest to the exit.

The waitress asked what we would have to drink and she brought us a coffee and cherry coke. As we perused the sticky menus/placemats we were treated to more of the stranded man's phone conversations. We're sitting at a Waffle House . . . We're right off the expressway . . . I just need the rear half. He interspersed his phone conversation with demands of the waitress. Where am I at? . . . What's the phone number here? . . . Do you have a pen? The woman with him looked like hard living, but she couldn't have been more than 20. Twice I think she caught me staring at her.

The waitress came back to our table and asked, "Have you two figured out what you want to drink?", then realizing she had already served our drinks she burst out laughing. I wish I could be as easily amused as this woman. We ordered our food and chowed down like there was no tomorrow. That frycook sure could make a mean patty melt. By the time I was half-way done with my sandwich, the stranded man approached my table.

"You look like a movie star," he said pointing at me. "I just haven't figured out who you look like." His woman motioned for him to return to his assigned table. "Me and this cat are gonna go sign autographs," he said. It was then that the smell in the air changed from griddle shortening to fish. I just gave the courtesy smile and went back to shoving meat and fried onions down my throat.

Before we got up to pay, I looked outside and saw two other men with duffel bags crossing the parking lot of the retro gas station. Meanwhile the woman from the counter was outside rummaging around under her car seats for the change she needed to pay for her meal. When we made our way to the register the man on the cell phone became agitated. He wanted his check and he wanted it right then. When the waitress couldn't find it quickly enough, he wanted to know quickly how much they owed. When she asked if he still needed the number for the would-be mechanic he said that his situation had been taken care of. In the short time it took us to pay our check a white van with spiked rims pulled up in front of the restaurant. Other men, all dressed alike, were unloading duffel bags onto the sidewalk. It was weird. I asked my wife if she wanted me to drive. "No, get in the car," she said. We did.

As my wife backed the car out of the parking space, I watched the van to make sure it wasn't attempting to pull forward. I don't know what was going on, but part of me wondered if we had been marked for an episode of bumper car insurance fraud. We made it out of the parking lot with little circumstance, but we did keep an eye on our rearview mirrors to make sure we weren't being tailed by the duffel bag gang. I don't know for sure that some scam was about to take place but Elaine and I both got that creeped out feeling. That alone was enough to make us weary. We opted to stop somewhere else for gas.

The whole kerfuffle raised certain questions. Was the woman at the counter going out to her car to signal the rest of the duffel bag gang? And what was with all those duffel bags anyway? Did the van have any connection to the chatty Charlie in the corner or was that mere supposition on my part? Was the couple part of a larger organized crime ring? Maybe a cult? Does a 97 Dodge pickup with extended cab really require a two-piece drive shaft? Explain your answer.

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