|
Yesterday I believe I may have discovered the most uncomfortable
place on earth outside of being stuck in a muddy trench with
bullets whizzing overhead. I had decided to go to the doctor's
office to get a flu shot, as a lot of my coworkers have been
getting the flu and I I wanted to decrease my risk of catching
it this year. Unfortunately for me, I had forgotten the hellish
experience of sitting in the doctor's waiting room before my
appointment... otherwise I'd probably have just gladly gotten
the flu.
A doctor's office waiting room just has this inexplicable aura
of anticipation and dread permeating the room. It doesn't matter
what you're seeing the doctor for, it just has this uncanny
ability to make you nervous. And I assure you, I have no fear of
needles, so the purpose of my visit had no influence on my
feelings at all. In fact, as soon as I left the office waiting
room and was escorted back for MORE waiting in the room where I
was to get my shot, I felt a great sense of relief to be parted
from the diseased hordes waiting outside.
The overwhelming sense of discomfort starts from the minute you
walk in the door. The instant you step into the room, everyone
looks up and stares at you, like they expected Jesus to walk in
and heal them from all their afflictions. Then when they realize
that you're not Jesus, Buddha, or an alien come to distribute
healing anal probes and candy, they all go back to whatever they
were reading. Except for one or two, there are ALWAYS one or two
who just keep staring at you, no matter what you do. When you
walk over to the window to sign in for your appointment, you can
feel their eyes tracking you across the room. It's like one of
those creepy paintings with the eyes that follow you, except
they're not paintings, and usually they're so ugly you have to
wonder who would ever want to paint them anyway.
After you're done signing in, you turn around and realize you
have to find a seat in a room full of diseased people. That man
over there is coughing and spewing, that woman is shaking
uncontrollably, and dear god what is that pus-like stuff oozing
from that boy's eyes?? The art of choosing a seat is a delicate
one. Like a game of "Minesweeper", one wrong move and you're
done for. You don't want to sit next to someone who has the
bubonic plague and doesn't understand the common courtesy of
covering your mouth when you cough. After I had already chosen
the perfect seat with an empty chair on either side, some
doddering old woman who looked like an unwrapped mummy decided
to sit down next to me. She then reached into her pocket with
her calcified claw of a hand and pulled out a snotty wad of
tissue that she's probably been using since 1943. At this point
she proceeded to hack, cough, spit, drool and sneeze into the
thing, all while sitting right next to me. Damnations!
No sooner than you solve the intricate puzzle of finding a seat,
you're called BACK up to the damn window to verify that all your
insurance information is correct. Again feeling those tracking
eyes following you the whole way. And the receptionists are
always gruff and curt and act as bored as humanly possible. And
they always look deceptively nice too. It's as if they're paid
to act like an asshole and then as soon as they punch out at the
end of the day they become all cheerful and smiley again.
Then you go back to your seat and the waiting game begins. Of
the 30 minutes I was in the doctor's office yesterday, 27 of
them were spent in the waiting room. It's not the waiting that's
so bad (I'm not going to complain about 30 minutes, I've had it
much worse), it's the uncertainty. When you're waiting in
a LINE, yeah sure, the waiting sucks, but at least you're
reasonably certain when you're going to be finished, since
everybody's lined up in a set order. But at the doctor's office,
you have absolutely NO idea when the nurse is going to come out
and call your name. I swear at least four people who came in
well after I did got called in by the nurse before I did. And at
least one of them came back out and left the office before I
ever had my name called. And I didn't even need to see the
doctor for my appointment, only the nurse!
Since they know you're going to be waiting a while, they've
strategically planted various magazines around the room to keep
us impatient patients placated, so that we won't incite a riot
or something. Unfortunately the magazines they choose are always
the lamest, weirdest, most obscure titles that you have never
heard of, nor have you ever seen outside a doctor's office. Who
in the world BUT a doctor's office would order a subscription to
crap like "Better Homes and Gardens", or "Popular But Really
Boring Science", or "Financial Stuff That is Boring as Hell But
Has Really Colorful Graphs". I even saw "Tennis" and "Golf"
magazines sitting on one of the tables. HOW can they have
monthly magazines for tennis and golf?? Wouldn't you run out of
material after the first two issues? A friend of mine tells me
that his dentist's office has "Teen Cheerleader", which is often
seen in the hands of a dirty old man waiting to get his dentures
soaked or some such. Creepy.
But I'm not foolish enough to pick up any of those magazines. Oh
no. As entertaining as "Highlights For Kids" may be, I'm not
going to touch one of those snot covered, drool soaked, germ
infested things, just so I can be bored and look like an idiot
sitting there pretending to read "Redbook" while trying to find
pictures of hot chicks in the perfume ads. Anyway, after your
eyes widen and you sit up hopefully for about the sixth or
seventh time the nurse comes out and calls a name OTHER than
yours, you finally get the green light to go on back and escape
the horrors of the plague room.
Your first stop at this point is the scale of Anubis, which, if
you're on a diet or trying to lose weight, is probably the worst
part of the whole experience. Because invariably, it's going to
show your weight as drastically greater than whatever you
thought it was. Even if you just weighed yourself on a reliable
scale the day before. But the scale of Anubis doesn't lie. So
you choke back the tears as you think about that last twinkie
you ate. Fatty.
Then you're escorted back into the examination room, where after
you get fastened to the blood pressure tourniquet that drains
all the life away from your arm, you will be condemned to wait
for at least fifteen more minutes. And you'll hear voices right
outside the door, you'll even probably hear the clipboard in the
little door tray being picked up, as if someone is just about to
come inside. And yet, no one does. It's like everyone who walks
by just picks up the clipboard and slams it back down to fuck
with you, to make you think that your waiting is nearly over. So
you have nothing to do but continue to sit and wait and wonder
how easily you could break into that little biohazard bin.
When the doctor finally DOES come in, it's a real event. It's
like the sighting of a rare species thought to be extinct, or
meeting royalty. They poke and prod and pretend to listen to
what you have to say, write out a prescription and leave before
you're even done rattling off your symptoms. But this isn't a
rant on doctors so much as it is their offices, so for now I'm
going to spare you the litany of all my problems with them.
Anyway, after your appointment you always end up having to find
your way back to the lobby and the check-out window on your own.
There may have been a hustle and bustle of hallway activity when
you were brought back to the examination room, but when you try
to find your way back out again, there is nothing but the
whistling wind and occasional tumbleweed to accompany you.
Doctor's office hallways have to be the most disorienting place
on earth, because the way out is NEVER in the same direction you
remembered coming in from. It's like when you're waiting by
yourself in the examination room with the door closed, someone
flips a giant switch and all the rooms rearrange themselves like
a giant Rubik's cube. I'd love to have that job. "Switch Guy" or
"Doctor's Office Labyrinth Engineer" would look really cool on
my resume.
Stumbling through the maze always ends up leading you through a
door that should have been marked "Screaming Monkey Facility" or
"Explosive Colon Disease Lab" but was for some reason left
blank. After the embarrassment of walking into the wrong room
(perhaps even several times) you probably manage to find the
checkout window and lobby just from blind luck or trial and
error. Congratulations! Your ordeal is almost over! After
dealing with the frowny and surly checkout person, all you have
to do is run the gauntlet through the plague room and you're
home free! Unless of course, you have a prescription to get
filled. Then it's off to the drug store with you, and you get to
experience an entirely different but just as annoying circle of
Hell. OH JOY!
note: Protoclown still wonders why
they had to stick a gloved hand up his ass to administer a flu
shot. Or that time he had an ingrown toenail... or that time he
had bronchitis... or that time he asked to be a writer for this
web site.
|
