I gots to know

If you’ve been here before you might know the world confuses me. Actually, you might know a lot of things, whether you’ve visited this site or not. Frankly though, I’m not interested. I’m sure the things you know are very important to you, but they aren’t to me. In truth, what I know isn’t important to me. What I find important is what I don’t know, and it baffles me.

For instance, did you know that I’m a biohazard. Every time I see a doctor or nurse, which honestly is way too often because I’m accident prone, the first thing they do is put on a mask and rubber gloves. Then, when they remove such protection, they immediately sanitize themselves. Do they think the warped thinking is contagious? Are they worried about inhaling some hair-loss bacteria from my balding head? Am I an unwitting carrier of the ugliness virus? Hey if I have the plague, I’d really like to know. Don’t get all suited up in sterile clothing and tell me every thing’s okay.

Cutting remarks

I got a bad cut a while back that required stitches. The nurse knitted a beautiful tapestry across my hand and told me I’d be fine. The thing is, I had to see thirty-seven more people before I could leave the ER. All of them masked up before they’d come within ten feet of me. If I was okay, why were they all so afraid? Did they honestly think they might somehow catch the wound on my arm by association?

I don’t know a lot about medicine, but I do know you can’t catch an injury. Cuts come from the combination of sharp objects and stupidity. I should write a paper explaining this. A new discovery like this, might win me the Nobel Prize in medicine. Nah, I’d better not. I mean doctors go to school for eight years. I’d hate to show them all up. How embarrassing would it be to find out they took out numerous loans for an education, when my natural observational skills are better, and didn’t cost a cent.

Total control is not needed

Also, while we’re talking about the medical field; What is it with all those buttons and knobs? I needed an ultrasound the other day and the machine had three million buttons on it. The technician only touched five of them. And two of those were On, and Off. I just don’t get it.

Look, somebody had to create all those controls. They must do something. It’s hard to believe folks put them there just to make the machine look more impressive. Some engineer must’ve taken a look at the machine and decided the medical techs needed the ability to Filbicize the Squirt-Squat, and created the knob. They probably made a million dollars for this and nobody ever touches it. We call this progress.

What I want to know is; Am I the only one who notices this? We pay thousands for health care and the providers don’t even touch all the buttons on their machines. I, for one, would be a lot happier if the techs spent half an hour adjusting dials and knobs before the procedure. It would build my confidence even if they didn’t have a clue what most of those knobs did. Just spin them for a bit and look serious and act like the adjustments you’re making are tremendously important. I wouldn’t even mind if the buttons were fake, and did nothing. Just the appearance of the calibrating would be a comfort to me.

But no! You walk in and lie down. They rub the device on your belly and hit a single button over and over. Then you roll over and they do it again. I’m not sure they’re actually doing anything. They could be watching cartoons for all I know. I mean they keep telling me to be quiet and breath. What if they just want to hear Dopey Duck’s speech as he quacks up?

Safety first

Then there’s the clinic’s Zero Injury Initiative. There are signs proclaiming this new strategy all over the place. The plan seems to be that they want no patient injuries. It sounds like a good idea until you think about it a bit. What I want to know is; What was the goal before this new policy? Were two or three patient injuries a week, okay? Was the injury goal for the whole clinic, or per technician?

Next, I wondered what the punishment might be. “Sorry Susan. You had your quota of injuries this week. Don’t come in until Monday when the quota resets.” What if Mary hasn’t hit her quota for a few weeks? Do allowable patient injuries roll over? Can Susan use some of Mary’s extras to avoid suspension? Perhaps, you don’t get suspended if you’re causing too many injuries. Perhaps, the punishments are more like school. Susan might have to stay after her shift and write on the blackboard, “I will not let my patients fall off the table in my lab” a hundred times. The questions really are endless.

Of course, one has to wonder why they need an initiative in the first place. I would think having no patient injuries at all would be common sense. Especially in a hospital environment.

I mean, if they’re like me the patients came in with an injury. I’m quite sure they don’t want the clinic to give them another one. Then again, the place might be having a two for one sale. You come in with a contusion and they treat a laceration for free. What?? You don’t have a laceration?? Well, we’ll give you one at no cost to you. No thank you very much.

Ohh, the pain

Now, I don’t know about you, but all these things have gotten me totally bamboozled. It makes my head hurt. As I am in this state of confusion an awful lot of the time, I contacted my doctor. Ohh, by the way the state of Confusion is somewhere between the state of New York, and the state of Inebriation. It’s easy to find by looking up the State of the Union address, and heading south. All this being said, I made an appointment with my doctor to see about this.

I patiently waited a month. Then two days before the appointment date, they called and cancelled it. It seems he was feeling under the weather, and I had to reschedule. I rescheduled for a month later. Then a bit later I was informed he had a conference to attend, and I had to schedule again. At first, I found this frustrating. I grumbled because in the old days of calendars, pencils, and appointment books my parents’ doctors never missed an appointment.

Then I figured it out. In today’s environment of reducing harmful blood chemicals, herbal supplements, holistic healing, and going back to old remedies like dancing around the patient while shaking rattles. My doctor has hit upon some great words of wisdom; Time Heals All Wounds. Agreed this saying was meant to heal a broken heart, but c’mon a cardiac arrythmia is kind of a broken heart. Right?

Maybe, time can heal my aching head.

But I seriously doubt it!!!