Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Doctors, Dentists, Insurance Companies, and Hospitals Suck

This is the story both sad and true
Of a lady who likes not a fuss
So giving the Devil his undeserved due
She will hereby remain anonymous

It is almost midnight and the young lady will probably not return home until 3 or 4 am.
This has not been her week.
Five days ago her purse was stolen out of her pocket book in her locked office at her supposedly secure workplace at a Long Island Hospital. Aside from the terrible inconvenience that goes along with such an invasion of personal property and space she now has the unenviable task of stopping and replacing credit cards as well as personal documents. The thirty dollars the bastard stole is truly the least of her worries and one can only hope he uses it to buy an overdose of drugs and die.
Naturally hospital security is tremendously helpful. Sort of like the proverbial teats on a bull.
"File a report and I guess you could make a claim with your insurance company. Have a nice day."
But life goes on and so did she.
Her next encounter with the medical profession was a visit to the dentist. This normally annoying task that many fear like the plague would have been like rolling off a log for our heroin if not for a small sidetrip into the Twilight Zone. Years ago you could sit fairly straight up when you visited the DDS but nowadays it's all about the comfort of the guy in control. So you are basically lying down while he does his dirty work. It was while she was in this position that the dentist decided to drop his little mirror down her throat causing her to gag. In pulling the thing out he bruised her epiglottis, that flap of tissue that sits at the base of the tongue and keeps food from going into the trachea, or windpipe, during swallowing. "No, don't pay me now, we'll submit our bill to your insurance carrier. Have a nice day."
So now, two days later, two days of a sore throat she checks out the good old epiglottis on the web and finds out that if it is scratched it could become inflamed and if that happens it could get infected and if that occurs it could swell and block the airway and you could die. The odds are against this Rube Goldberg scenario but when it is you the odds tend to go up, don't they?
So she is now in the emergency room trying to get past the barrier set up to stop anyone this side of crazy from wanting in, the front desk clerk. And since some scumbag addict has her purse she does not have her insurance card. Those clerks live for this type of situation.
"We can't look at you until we see your insurance is paid up."
Hopefully everything will turn out alright (it did) so she can plan her next step in this week from hell, a trip to a lawyer. Hey, doctors have insurance also.
Have a nice day!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't believe what happened to her. Is she okay now? Let me know who her dentist is so I make sure I never go there. I'm not liking my husband's dentist either.

Reschzoo said...

She has returned to the land of the living with thankfully nothing more than a residual sore throat and an experience she somehow would have been happier without.