Ding Dong

Though my little stalker is still here (Is school out already for the summer?), it wasn’t she ringing the doorbell yesterday. It was Next Door Neighbor saying she’d not seen me in some time, was checking to see if I’m okay.

Nothing on my door to alert might be trouble inside, as was the case when not seeing NDN for a time, a notice on her door not removed and her car still in its stall, I began thinking of requesting a welfare check, tried successfully to reach her by phone before doing so and learned she’d been hospitalized for 22 days. She just said she’d not heard me coming in/going out and had not seen me for a while.

I’m very quiet coming in/going out and while inside. Someone I bet our Karen resident wished lived upstairs over her, rather than Talker, but to NDN I said "Monday, Wednesday, Friday" are the days I’m likely to be seen outside, and only because I have to as those are my workout days, that I prefer staying inside, A/C blasting, to escape the heat, but thanks for checking on me.

NDN lost a ton of weight during her hospital stay, and recounted how she went in because she was having intestinal pain, couldn’t keep food down which condition the doctors made worse in her hospital stay with this procedure, that procedure, tubes and intravenous feeding, at death’s doorstep as her condition worsened.

When all was said and done turns out it was a simple intestinal blockage, which she believes the doctors took 22 days to diagnose due to incompetence or in order to pad the bill. Said they’d even told her she’d not be able to care for herself again, tried to talk her into hospice care.

She’s pretty much back to her old self now — doing her own cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, dragging her grocery cart dangerously up the stairs. Her only change is the weight loss, now on blood thinners, and a newly acquired distrust of doctors.

Welcome to my world.

Added to the lithany of complaints I have about my Provider was when, two month's ago, I received a text that the doctor had ordered Lab work — blood and urine, only to arrive at the Lab to be told they have no record of urine …… this after I’d held it all morning, if you know what I mean.

So I show the Lab Tech the text message to which she replied, "Oh those are automatic. They just send those out automatically at certain intervals".

Good to know.

Fool me once.

So I shook my head in disbelief at last week's text message "You are due for labs. You may need to fast or provide a urine sample".

And what's with this "may need". Which is it? I either do need to fast and provide urine, or I don’t.

After recently fooling me once, I’m taking this attempt to fool me twice as yet another auto text, not actually orders from the doctor who doesn’t even know if I’m still alive.

If by chance it’s not a robo message, that would make the doctor look even more incompetent because, if she’d looked at my chart/medical history, she’d know I just had all that stuff done in the E.R. when I had that dehydration episode.

Doctors no longer care about us as individuals. They just spout the same old same old — eat right, exercise, then send us the bill, as was Trainer’s experience when he recently went in for a checkup, at his wife's insistence.

Trainer said his doctor walked into the room without acknowledging him. No good morning, no eye contact, she just sat down, looked at his chart, made assumptions from what was on the chart, told him he should get some exercise in, start walking a couple times a week.

"Does that mean I should stop running and start walking?" asked he.

This doctor looked up at that, saw how fit and muscular he was, and it was "Oh!".

He’s now looking to switch doctors. Good luck to that, said it. It’s the same everywhere.