Health care inferno

Every president we’ve had since Andrew Johnson or thereabouts has promised to reform our health-care system, but I think the only way to have a positive health-care experience is just to never get sick.

Sadly, I couldn’t follow my own advice, which has plunged me into about an 8-week journey that Dante should have accompanied me on.

First, I went to a doctor’s office and saw a 12-year-old physician’s assistant who drew some blood and told me I have pancreatitis. She made it sound like no big deal, told me to watch what I eat for a while and not drink alcohol, and I’d be OK.

A couple of weeks later I was not OK, so I went to see an actual doctor, one I’ve seen before. He got a little snippy with me when he found out I’d been to see somebody else.

“So,” he said, with a hurt look, “You just go see whoever you want to when you’re sick?” I felt like I’d been cheating on him. Wow, a guy gives you one prostate exam and he acts like he owns you.

He had a different view of pancreatitis than the physician’s assistant. “You know this can kill you, right?” Well, no, I didn’t know that. So he sent me off immediately to get a sonogram, which was actually kind of pleasant, as far as medical tests go. It’s not every day you get something warm rubbed over your belly.

The doctor, happy that we were together again, told me that the sonogram didn’t reveal anything, and he said my problems were caused by high triglycerides, and it should all clear up in a couple of weeks. As I left, I’m pretty sure he mouthed the words “Call me” when the nurse wasn’t looking.

Well, a couple of weeks passed, and I wasn’t feeling better – as a matter of fact, I felt about 5 times worse, and I decided I should see another doctor. I thought about calling the first doctor and telling him I still wanted to be friends, but I knew he’d see right through me.

My new doctor is a woman, and she ordered a bunch of tests, and now she believes I have gallstones. These apparently showed up on the ultrasound I had – you know, the one my first doctor had pronounced “normal.” Maybe he was so mad at my betrayal that he withheld that from me on purpose! Hell hath no fury like a general practitioner scorned. Or, maybe he’s just a quack.

I like this new doctor just fine, except that the woman who schedules appointments has one minor issue - she barely speaks English. That’s really what you want when you’re feeling like crap, to have to repeat everything you say five times to the person making your next appointment.

The doctor asked her to set up an appointment for me with a surgeon, who will give me an opinion as to whether they’ll snatch my gallbladder out. She asked me, I think, when I wanted the appointment, and I said, between gasps of pain, “As soon as possible.” She said ok, she’d call me when she had it done. So she calls in a couple of hours and says, “I have you appointment on 28th.”

I said, “But today’s the 30th.” She said “Yes, appointment on 28th, 9 a.m.” I said, “Wait, do you mean APRIL 28th? She said, “Yes, you want early, that’s first early morning they have.” I said, “No, I didn’t mean as soon as possible in the day, I meant, like, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.” She then, I believed, cursed me out in Cantonese, and I hung up the phone and called the surgeon myself, and got an appointment in just a few days.

It’s not over yet. Tomorrow morning at 6:45 a.m. I go to the hospital for another scan, where they inject you with dye and you get a warm feeling all over. Then I have to have more bloodwork done. This will be about the fifth time I’ve had that done in the past few weeks. My arm looks like that of a heroin addict.

But hopefully they will, before long, decide what is wrong, and take care of it. Then the medical bills will come in, and I’ll likely have a new health problem - a heart attack.