Blog Archives
Just Give it To Me Straight; Will This Effect My GPA (Grand Plan to Age in relatively good health)?
Medical tests confuse me. Not the try-to-get-into-medical-school-so-you-can-spend-the-next-decade-of-your-life-not-sleeping kind of medical tests. And not even the “Better 1… or Better 2?” kind of optometry tests (though those kind of confuse me, too; I always suspect that I am being tricked and neither one is better, they are both exactly the same. Coincidentally, my contact prescriptions seem less accurate every year, and I go twelve months seeing things in a blur because I am afraid to admit to my optometrist that I lied when I said #2 was better in the hopes of making the test end more quickly.) No, I am talking about the extract-some-bodily-fluids-to-send-to-a-lab kind of tests. When you think about it, it’s my poor bodily fluids that are actually being subjected to these pop quizzes for which they never had the opportunity to study. So, I guess it’s not the tests that confuse me – just the results.
“Mrs. Cap’n Firepants? I’m just calling to tell you that your test results were negative.”
“Oh my God!!!!! So, I do have cancer?”
“Umm, we weren’t testing you for cancer. Just for kujdjidlkjkdjf.”
“Oh my God! So, I have that? …Uh, what is that?”
“No, I am trying to tell you that you do NOT have it.”
“But you said the results were negative.”
“That means you don’t have it.”
“But shouldn’t that be a positive thing, that I don’t have whatever it is? Are you one of those glass-half-empty-people? Because maybe you shouldn’t have this job if you are going to be spreading your gloomy outlook on life to perfect strangers.”
“This has nothing to do with my optimism or pessimism, Mrs. Cap’n Firepants. It’s medical terminology. When what you are trying to find in the test is not present, then you say it is negative.”
“So, are you saying that you wanted to find this in my blood?!!”
“I need to make some more calls, Mrs. Cap’n Firepants.”
“Wait! Are you positive the test was negative?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
I breathe a sigh of relief that I apparently do not have kujdjidlkjkdjf. And then I remember that I was kind of hoping that I do have it because it isn’t fatal, can be fixed by taking a pill a day, and would explain why I am such a terrible person.
So, now I am positive that I am feeling negative.
This may explain why my gynecologist’s office just leaves an automated message about my Pap Smear every year.
There’s No Goin’ Back
I am trying to find a new doctor. In the course of all of this, I had to have my records released from the office of the former doctor. In a surprising turn of events, the former doctor’s office received my form on the 20th and, one week later, still had not sent them to the new doctor. I called the new doctor to find out what the holdup was. When I asked them if there was something else I needed to do, they said, “Call the other office, and ask them to send the records.”
I gulped.
I was hoping to avoid talking to anyone in the former office. First, because I am a wimp who hates confrontation. And secondly… well, the first pretty much covers it.
So, I called the office of the doctor who I was spurning.
The records lady was very pleasant, asked me who I was, date of birth, etc… Finally, she said she would send it right over. I decided not to ask why she hadn’t already done this. I mean, if all she needed was a voice on the phone (who could have been an imperfect stranger asking for my colonoscopy records to be transferred), then what was the point of the release? And, if the release was necessary for legal reasons, then why did she need my voice?
But, I didn’t say any of that. It’s just whatimeant2say.
Before I hung up, she said, “You do realize, don’t you, that once I transfer these records, it would be very difficult for you to come back here again?”
I am, according to my mother, descended from a mafioso, so I know a threat when I hear it.
“Uh, okay,” I said, and hung up.
whatimeant2say was, “You do realize, don’t you, that there is a reason that I requested those records to be transferred, and it’s not because I want to have two friggin’ doctors on my payroll? You do realize, don’t you, that this is a direct reflection of the kind of treatment I feel I received at your facility? You do realize, don’t you, that I can do a mean Tae Bo roundhouse kick (as long as it is in front of a t.v. in my bedroom, and there is no one else around)?”
This next doctor better be good, that’s allihave2say.
I tried to find a funnier picture, but this is all I got.
whatimeant2say 