A doctor's rant

Cliff was escorted into a room at the heart group's office right on time:  10:45.  A nurse had him weigh and took his blood pressure promptly.  Then she wrote down all his medications, both prescription and non-prescription, and left, saying the doctor should be with us shortly.  
We waited.  And waited.  For over an hour, we waited.  At one point Cliff said, "I'm not coming here again!"
FINALLY a courteous, smiling nurse-practitioner came in and introduced herself.  She quizzed Cliff about various things, asked him if he realized he had gained weight, and so forth.   She said we shouldn't wait another three years to come and see them, that we ought to come once a year.  
I told her, "Cliff just told me he won't be coming back here again; he gets tired of waiting so long."  
She assured us she understood and said the doctor would soon be with us.  
When he came in, he started out "About the wait..."  
Which I heard as "About the weight..." 
So the next five minutes or so were totally confusing to me until it finally clicked, but click it did.  
"When we saw Obama-care coming," he said, (I'm thinking, 'It's Obama's fault Cliff got fat?') "we saw that new rules were put in place so that doctors were only going to get 50% as much for their services; hospitals, however, still got 100%.  We went out of private practice and put ourselves in the employ of this hospital, because that way we still get what we've always been paid."
Please realize I'm paraphrasing, since I don't have a photographic memory.  You could tell the man was totally exasperated with the situation he's in.  He assured us that he wasn't bad-mouthing the hospital, that it's a fine hospital, a perfectly good one.  But the hospital is now his boss, and is obviously mismanaging some things.  He didn't use the word "mismanaging", but that's what he was getting at.  
"She and I came in at 8 o'clock this morning," he said, motioning toward the nurse-practitioner.  "We sat at our desks and waited for someone to bring a folder to me so we could go to work.  At 9 o'clock, seven folders were placed on my desk at once, so we were already an hour behind, and covered up with work."  
"I could rush the patients through here, but I don't like to do that.  And if I go to the top and complain, I could be fired, because I am working for them."  
I really, really wish I could tell you word for word what he said, and convey to you the passion with which he said it.   
"No wonder nobody wants to study to be a doctor any more," I said.  
"No, that isn't it," he said, "I'll tell you why nobody wants to be a doctor; it takes half-a-million dollars to go to school to become a doctor; I was thirty-eight years old before my schooling was paid for and I could finally say my money was my own."  
Then he motioned toward the T-shirt I was wearing:  "And yes, fire Congress."  
Because that's what my T-shirt said.  "Fire Congress".  
We accepted his apology and told him we appreciated his explaining things to us.  
I'd love to state his name, but... he could get fired.  
How humiliating.  

morning ramblings

Saturday I got our pill-holders out to fill; the bottles of two of the three prescriptions Cliff takes were almost empty, so I called the pharmacy to order more. I received a recorded message that he was going to have to visit the doctor... there were no more refills.

That bit of information made me realize it had already been three months since our last doctor visit. Cliff argued that it couldn't be, but it was. How does three months go by so fast? I decided to go ahead and renew my blood pressure medication while we were there, and save a trip later.

Thanks to nurse-practitioners, we can always get in with very little notice, and yesterday morning I secured appointments for the two of us at 10:30. That meant Cliff had to fast, since he has to have his blood tested because he's on Lipitor. I decided to fast too, out of sympathy for him. I had two different leftover dishes we could heat up when we arrived home starving.

The nurse-practitioner listened to our hearts and lungs (and to Cliff's throat, I assume checking for clogging arteries), wrote our prescriptions (increasing my B.P. med), and sent the nurse in to collect blood from Cliff. She finished, and said cheerily, "I'll bet you're hungry; now you can go get something to eat. You know what would be good right about now? One of those great big P.T.'s tenderloins!"

Now, the thought of P.T.'s tenderloins had not entered our minds; in fact, we never go to P.T.'s. But with our stomachs empty as they were, that sounded like the best idea in the world.

At the pharmacy, we were told there would be a wait of thirty minutes for our meds, just the right amount of time for two starving people to go find something to eat.

No, we didn't have that tenderloin sandwich; oh, we discussed buying one and splitting it. But when all was said and done, we went to Subway, and came home feeling quite good about ourselves.

One more battle won.

While waiting for our sandwich to be made, I looked at the Sun Chips they had available in small bags; I picked one up, and it seemed as though there couldn't be more than five chips in there. They charge $1.30 for that? We never buy chips with our Subway sandwich, and we usually order water to drink. It saves us a fortune.

I've been buying a large bag of Sun Chips at the store and dividing the contents between ten zip-lock bags for Cliff to take in his lunch. That comes to about thirty-eight cents per serving, and he gets at least twice as many as he'd get in a small, individual bag from the machine at work, for much less money. Having them bagged up ahead of time like that prevents either of us from chowing down the whole bag, and that large bag lasts Cliff two weeks.

That's a partial arrowhead and a couple of pieces of flint I found when Cliff and I were walking in the pasture the other day.

Sadie and I walked today after Cliff went to work; he had his every-three-month doctor visit this morning so the doctor could ask him how he's feeling, and to get his blood work done. Once you've had CABG surgery and go on all those prescription drugs, you get to see a doctor regularly.

A couple of weeks ago, I vowed to patronize the small-town grocery stores around here. Last week I spent only $68, and today I spent $63. Trouble is, today's money was spent at Walmart.

I know, I wasn't going to do that. But the grocer in the town where our doctors' office is had to close down due to competition from Walmart. I don't drive. It was either patronize Walmart or make a special trip someplace else, and I hate to make Cliff drive extra miles in his free time. So on the second week of my "patronize local grocers" vow, I folded. Hopefully next week I'll get back on track.

I've found I watch my grocery dollars more closely if I take a certain amount of cash, rather than using the checkbook. So that's another practice I'm implementing.

We are not in dire straits; but we're in our sixties, so I know the time is coming when we won't have Cliff's steady, quite generous paycheck to count on. I may as well get used to budgeting now.

On this gloomy, gray afternoon there's a cold front coming through, possibly bringing rain. Sunday may bring sunshine and sixty degree temperatures, say the weather-guessers. If it does, we'll get on the Gold Wing and head out on the open road for a few hours... if the good Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise.