Obamacare Is Just Another Day: Part 2

The clinic’s lobby had two attendants, forty chairs, and no people. Admittedly the women behind the desks (form two lines?) were on the phone constantly, are they serving as a call center for other clinics? If not, why not? Who else could be calling them?

The place shined with grant money and there were posters on the wall for many wellness programs, smoking cessation gadgets, walkathons, and a gaggle of support groups. I’d have traded them all for a mural of an angry drill sergeant screaming “get off the couch and take a hike”.

Despite being the only one in the lobby I waited. Half an hour later a nurse(?) led me into the “cattle processing area”. This is where they ignore you while typing shit into computers. Because medicine.

She took my weight while I was still wearing six layers of jacket. (It was five below out and I’d as soon hang my jacket on a rack in a clinic lobby as I’d lick the bricks of a Tijuana gutter.) I, like virtually everyone in the climate, was duly recorded as twenty pounds heavier than I’d have been in say, Baltimore. I could see the statistics floating through my head. “Everyone up north is fat. President forms committee to address health issues.”

She tapped a bit at the keyboard, glanced at my records, which were floating across the screen d’Orwell, and decided to get my height. I stood against the wall as she carefully took the measurement.

“So does height ever change?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“What do my records say for my height?” I asked.

“Um that’s confidential.” She looked worried.

“The new measurement, I’ll bet ten bucks it’s pretty close to the old measurement. Unless I got new shoes.”

“Uh huh.” She ignored me. I noticed she’d written my height on a stick it note but didn’t type it in. I know my weight too. It hasn’t changed much. I might have lost a few but not enough to brag or counteract the weight of a jacket.


Then came my blood pressure. I was pleased it wasn’t an automated machine. I’ve no hint that the machines do a worse job, I just assume they do.

She grabbed the cuff and I took off my shirt (and sixty pounds of jacket). The cuff looked puny. I put my arm down on the table and…

Look I’m a humble guy but I deserve a little happiness too. So just let me have this. Just humor me. I beg of you. Let me have this one bit of glory:  I’ve been working out. Hard. For years. I’ll be damned if my biceps look just a little bit better than they once did. I wanted to flex and say something muscle headed. “Look at them guns baby! I’m a hunka’ man!” I didn’t, because I look like a bag of crap in a furry suit, even so, my biceps look OK.

The cuff didn’t fit so she swapped for a bigger one. Yowza! I rock.

She had an array of cuffs. They had ideograms for bigger and smaller sizes. I don’t know what I was hoping for, maybe cuffs lined up from weakling to studmuffin but I was sorely disappointed. The cuffs for me had a big puffy ideogram that was clearly the “Michelin man” body type. Great, hit the gym like a boss and you get the fat ass cuff. Life is like that.


She asked me to describe my symptoms, which I did. It’s a cold. They’ve seen it before. She dutifully typed it all in.

I was pleased that I was asked (for the third time) if I’d been to one of several African nations. At least they got the ebola memo.

Then came the social engineering. I always have fun with this.

“So, do you live alone or with someone.” Her fingers poised over the keyboard.

“To what end do you ask?”

“I don’t know.”

“I live in a shack in the forest with seven dwarves and a monitor lizard named Rufus.” Ask a stupid question, I’ll give a stupid answer.

I know it’s not her fault. I know it’s because medicine. I can’t help myself. I love the social engineering questions…

“Do you smoke?”

“Rolled up car tires.”

“I’ll call that a no.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you drink.”

“Pure mountain spring water and the blood of my defeated enemies.”

“I’ll call that…”

“Not much.” (By local standards I’m a teetotaller. Notwithstanding my attempt to cure my cold with whiskey over the weekend.)

She got to the next question and paused. I was waiting for it. She grinned.

“Go ahead. Ask if I’ve got guns in my house.” I said.

By now she’d figured out the game. “I think I’ll leave that one blank.”

Folks, you gotta’ enjoy life. Am I right?


The doctor was excellent, competent, and looked like Fez from That 70’s Show. I swear I left college feeling like I was 80 and looking like I was dead. How young can you be and still be a doctor?

A full course of medical school and I still look like a teenager? Send me to the American hinterlands to improve my rugged good looks.

A full course of medical school and I still look like a teenager? Send me to the American hinterlands to improve my rugged good looks.

From his point of view I probably looked like some ignorant inbred redneck that wasn’t cool enough to hang with the Duck Dynasty guys.

Go ahead, ask me another social engineering question.

Go ahead, ask me another social engineering question.

Everything worked fine except when he told me to eat “soap” and I got confused. “You eat soap… soap… like tomato soap.” Eventually I got it. Don’t blame me, I was sick.

All our doctors are like that. When you finish med school you must have to “do time” in the backwater? I haven’t received medical treatment from an individual who at first glance appears to have been born in America since the 1990’s. Poor guy. His dreams of becoming a rich expatriate pediatrician probably didn’t include freezing his balls off in a deserted clinic three hundred miles north of nowhere.

That said, he was a great doctor. I’ll never see him again. It would be cool if he stayed forever and had local friends and put down roots and maybe kicked ass at the ice fishing derby in town… but around here doctors are imported and leave as soon as they can.

Not to say his advice was bad. Nor the medicine. He was spot on and that antibiotics have done their usual miracle. I am ever grateful for antibiotics. And doctors.

On the way out I asked for a lollipop and they gave me one. How cool is that?

About AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Adaptive Curmudgeon is handsome, brave, and wise.
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0 Responses to Obamacare Is Just Another Day: Part 2

  1. Mark Matis says:

    One might hope that they did not dig into their supply of “special” lollipops for you. The ones made of super-strength ExLax…
    }:-]

  2. Tim says:

    Too much gun for the regular cuff, eh? That’s impressive. I’ve been working out for about 25 years and I still have spaghetti arms. Stupid genes.

  3. jon spencer says:

    You could have asked for a Fentanyl lollipop.

    • According to Wikipedia that’s a substance that would help with a sore throat or drive me into addiction and moral depravity… apparently depending on the political entity in which I’m residing? Funny how that works.

      Nice thought but I’ll stick with Werther’s Originals.

  4. abnormalist says:

    Few observations.
    1. Being asked the social engineering questionnaires years ago, got to the “How much alcohol do you comsume?” “Light drinker? Avg 1-2 drinks daily, avg moderate 3-4 daily, avg heavy 5+ daily” Stated “So, if I dont drink Sun – Thurs, but drink 7 beers on both Friday and Saturday, do I qualify as a light drinker? I average 1-2 a day then?” “Yes sir” “wow, thats the first time in my life I was told I was a light drinker for 7 beers in a night, two nights in a row.”

    2. The bigger cuff is used for the Michelin man body type more often than for the big guns body type…

    3. The nurse gets very upset when you start asking “why are you asking me if I have guns in my home? How is that relevant to me getting good care here? Will I be discriminated against based upon my answers? Is this a anti gun or pro gun healthcare establishment?”

    I have got to remember the “I live in a shack in the woods with 7 dwarfs” line. I will add “and this lazy chick, I haven seen her outta bed in YEARS”

  5. ron says:

    i always like to tell them that i did not walk for almost a year after my last operation.

    then i tell them it was circumcision at birth.

  6. rapnzl rn says:

    As a nurse, I will keep my snark to myself. Still, I will chuckle a bit.
    Until they ask me about how much I chuckle on ‘intake’ at my next humiliating encounter with Modern Medicine (or whatever they call it then).

  7. MaxDamage says:

    My 5 year-old had his checkup the other day, and of course the social engineering questions came out during the discussion of his progress towards becoming human. When asked if we had guns in the home (a stupid question in and of itself for South Dakota — we are the only state that shoots its state bird) I started with the standard line, “Why, do you want to buy some?” Sure enough, the kid pipes up. “Daddy has lots and lots of guns!”

    I need to work on that privacy concept with him.

    – Max

  8. Chocs says:

    Glad you’re feeling better! 🙂
    Sadly, men have a bad reputation when it comes to handling illness.
    We have a different system here in SA but when I was in USA and getting treated, I would tell the nurses – “Oh no, just a handgun and the rifle; all the cobras and puff-adders don’t like the taste of gun oil, it made Lenny the Lion sick the last time…”

  9. PJ says:

    I guess they didn’t get the memo at Kaiser Permanente, because I have never been asked the social engineering questions, particularly guns. I keep looking for them, but no joy.

    But yes on the new doctors. My last doctor was a nice woman, but when you only go in once every 10 years or so, it’s hard to develop a doctor-patient relationship. I saw her only once or twice, then she retired. Then I picked another name from a list they presented me with, this time a nice Jewish boy. Normally I look for Indians, who fulfill my latest stereotype of what a doctor should look like.

    • I always get the social engineering questions. I just look the part I guess.

      Also there is always a sign on the wall that says “IN ACCORDANCE WITH POLICY XXXX.2343.ZYW WE ARE COOPERATING WITH LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT TO REDUCE THE ABUSE OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS”. What this means in practice is “IF YOU’RE A MALE WHO LOOKS BASICALLY HEALTHY WE WOULDN’T GIVE YOU DECENT PAIN AMELIORATION EVEN IF YOU’D BEEN DISEMBOWELLED WITH A DULL HATCHET AND FED THROUGH A WOOD CHIPPER. HERE’S A TYLENOL AND GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR OFFICE YOU SCHEMING DIRTBAG.”

      Seriously, they’re terrified to treat pain, especially in non-elderly men. I hate that. There’s no sane reason why I should be undertreated because some crackhead is a dipshit.

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