Bad Medicine and Ghost Stories

Knowing the heavy rain would keep some from attending this afternoon’s bingo, I bundled up, braved the weather and went down to the Community Room.

The Baker was present.

Having not seen her around for a while, I’d been worried and assumed her absence on the walkways had something to do with her ailing husband.

It did.

Because of the sorry state of health care these days — long waits to get an appointment with one’s doctor, being rushed through and given inadequate service when one does get to see the doctor, a problem her husband had with a growth near his eye has worsened. An operation is in his future but there’s a snag because the Baker is dissatisfied with the Dermatologist.

She had an issue with the dermatologist's staff asking, "Does your husband have a power of attorney" and, when she replied "yes" they then insisted, and not in a polite way she said, that they would have to see a copy of that power of attorney.

Why?

Who knows.

Luckily, she had the paperwork on her, produced it and office staff then came up with "You can’t be in the room when your husband sees the doctor".

Well the Baker was having none of that.

As she is her husband’s everything, she said "No", that her husband cannot advocate for himself; consequently, she goes where he goes and was not about to let him out of her sight.

Things got ugly with office staff after that, so the Baker wheeled her husband outta there.

When she said the name of the dermatologist’s office, I said "I know that place. It has terrible Yelp reviews".

It was the office my doctor tried to send me to last year when I had an allergic reaction to something — the place that never followed up on scheduling me as my doctor had ordered, and no one ever answered the phone when I called to find out what was going on.

After reading their Yelp reviews, I was glad they didn’t follow up — reviews along the lines of "Horrible Service!! ... Calls are outsourced to a call center … Office staff is rude and inefficient! … Go to a different Doctor!! … I would not recommend this office … My experience with this dermatology doctor is very bad. If I had to give negative or zero, I would definitely give him zero" yada yada yada.

No surprise the Baker had the experience she did with this office. She dodged a bullet by walking out before they did something bad to her husband.

So there’s that.

Even with a little more than half of the regulars not braving the weather to show up at bingo today — which improved my chances of winning, I came close multiple times, but never won a single game.

No matter because though I’ve come to enjoy bingo and like to win, it’s the tea spilling from the grapevine that I enjoy even more.

Nothing earth shattering was spilled, but I did hear Red Light discussing the upstairs unit across the quad, the bad energy unit that is above hers.

The new tenant has not yet moved in, but I heard Red Light say that ever since the last tenant moved out, she’s been hearing footsteps, someone walking around inside the unit. "I know the sounds are not coming from the unit behind me. It’s directly overhead" said she.

"Ghosts" said I — surprised that I’d let that out because I generally keep my knowings to myself, don’t trust people to accept or understand there are many things beyond our basic limited senses.

Red Light laughed and said, "Ghosts is what (I didn’t catch the name) said when I mentioned it to her".

"No, seriously" said I and filled her in on how I’d come to the conclusion there is bad energy in that unit because everyone who has ever lived there had their lives fall apart.

Red Light knows me well enough to listen intently when I went through what I’ve observed. After which she said, "That kind of stuff scares me … I can’t even watch scary movies … but some people believe in it."

"I believe in it because I know what I and others in my family have experienced. I once moved because of it, but I won’t talk about those experiences right now".

I won’t talk about those experiences ever. I didn’t mean to be having this current conversation, the words just came out, so I have to believe for a reason.

At any rate, when the new tenant moves in, I bet Red Light will be watching him just as closely as I will, to see how things go for him.

I also bet that Red Light will think twice, and probably be a little spooked out, when next she hears footsteps overhead.