Doctor, doctor, give me the news already

Due to an over-zealous attempt at being domestic and deciding to clean the bathtub, I now find myself once again back in the doctor’s waiting room with a bad back…admittedly it’s good to finally be vindicated and be able to tell my mum conclusively that I physically cannot do housework [hence she should come over and do it for me….schweet!]. 

Anyway I have been waiting here for a while and so far have learnt what “FOMO” means from a sanitary pad commercial and tried to silently eat a bag of chips so as not to attract the scorn of all the over-reacting South Yarra mothers in their exercise gear and minimally sick children, for making so much noise….this just resulted in my sucking on the chip until it was soggy enough to remove all crunching noises. I’ve also tried to make my Instagram  profile more interesting by trying to take a good photo to indicate that I have a bad back and am waiting at the doctors [hopefully to get some sympathy from the masses too!]. I came up with the ingenious idea of taking a picture of myself grimacing from pain, strategically located in front of the doctor’s sign.  Unfortunately execution of this photo was much harder given the unwillingness of the general public to volunteer to be my photographer. Anyway I also felt that I needed a larger camera than just this piddly, little iPhone to capture the doctor’s sign…a full professional photography team wouldn’t have hurt too, to really capture the moment as I just didn’t feel that any of the Instagram filters worked for me. Needless to say my Instagram account might just have to remain empty and really just a secondary source of stalking material.

Far out this doctor is taking foreverrrr. It’s actually pretty amazing that when you go to the doctors you are expected to wait patiently for a billion years to see them [haha I just realised why they call us ‘patients’ hahaha get it?]. It’s as if once you enter a doctor’s office, your time completely stops and is rendered irrelevant as you must make way for the patron-saint doctor. You see patron-saint-doctor needs to take every bit of time getting to know each patient personally to exhibit their remarkable bedside manner, and then they put words in your mouth about what your symptoms are just so they can pigeon hole you in one of the three diagnoses they see on a daily basis, so they don’t have to listen and for once think about what you actually could have. Before you leave, they then lecture you about drinking more water/resting/asking if you’ve had ‘x’ vaccine [which really is just the doctor-version of an upsell at the counter]. Finally they then go and chat to the reception staff for half an hour because they’ve forgotten what the time is and don’t realise that they have another patient waiting for them.

And of course, heaven forbid anyone who tries to rush a doctor or criticise them for failing to hold dictated appointment times. For we must remember that the patron-saint-doctor’s time is sacred and what they do is a gift to society as they have skills that no other has – that is the skill to listen to your symptoms, look empathetic and irrespective of what you actually have send you out with a drug pen and either a prescription for antibiotics or a Ventolin inhaler….

The fact that society holds the patron-saint-doctor in such high regard really shits me – for example I could go home and tell my family that I’ve been made the youngest CEO of BHP AND I’ve been given a Nobel Peace Prize for solving the crisis in Syria and Egypt, but ultimately that will never garner as much interest from my family as would any unrelated doctor’s heart-warming stories about their patients. In the end, doctors are just glorified professional services providers who get away with treating their ‘clients’ like shit. Seriously if I walked in 45 minutes late to every client meeting I’m pretty sure the client would have taken a dump on the table then left after 10 minutes of waiting. I just don’t get how they get away with such poor customer service when they’re such a commoditised good.

Now I know you’re probably thinking that there is a back story to this. Admittedly the beginning of my dislike of health professionals happened to coincide with every medical school in the country saying that they didn’t want me be a doctor when I was in Year 12 [it also didn’t help that I scored so lowly on the ‘Empathy’ section of the UMAT that the administrators were forced to call the Police given my score indicated that I was technically a sociopath…for the record I stuffed up the multi-choice numbering and am not actually a sociopath]. Anyway since then, I have always harboured resentment towards the profession that was too good for me.

*********

Ah LOL. I just came out of the doctor’s office for an appointment that lasted around 10 minutes which was a complete rort. Firstly there was the constant questioning about whether my pain was “sharp or dull?”. Fuck as if anyone ever makes time to describe pain in those terms? “Oh sorry I have a shovel through my abdomen, so I guess I would describe this pain as dull since that’s the noise a shovel makes when it hits the ground…?”. What does “dull pain” actually mean??? When I started to use other words to describe my pain, like “hurts when you press it” or “shooting pain”, it was almost as if this 10-minute-Robodoc couldn’t comprehend and kept screeching out “sharp or dull, sharp or dull, SHARP OR DULL, SHARP OR DULLLL????????????????”.

Then there was the standard follow-up question: “out of 10, how would you rate this pain?” Hmmm let me see how to answer a question that has no context and is entirely subjective thus giving you no real reference point for how I might feel. Like I’d rate getting your head blown off by the man from ‘No Country for Old Men’ as being pretty painful, so that’s a 10, but that would mean my back pain is about a -147. However then again, because of said back pain, I can’t walk so I’m just going to say that out of 0 to 10, I’d rate my pain as an ‘imaginary number’.

Seriously if I wanted meaningless advice I could’ve started following one of the evicted Big Brother housemates on Twitter. If you’re going to be overpaid, at least make some effort to do something…anything…show me you can juggle or maybe try to fit as many cotton balls in your mouth, and then maybe I’ll feel like paying you.