B.Ware’s Waiting Rooms Heal All Wounds

Time Heals All Wounds

which is why physicians invented waiting rooms

An All-Too-Familiar Story

     When the PCP (Primary Care Physician, who may be an M.D. or a D.O.) for your PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) is booked, you can, if you so choose, desire, or are in desperate need and live in a rural area as defined by the medical community, see the PA (Physician's Assistant). After waiting first in the room designated for the inevitable and then in an examination room which has all the comforts of a prison cell except for a toilet, the PA will prod and examine and decide to send you across the hall of the clinic to the X-ray department, which is managed by a separate entity. After waiting in a waiting room cloned from the last but which features at least one 10-year-old magazine, the X-ray technician will usher you into another room, don a lead-lined apron, and radiate your "broke" whatever. After another wait in the examination room where you have time to inspect the tongue depressors more closely, marvel at the "sharps" container, and cringe at the biohazard symbol, the PA will refer you to an in-network specialist (i.e., a member of the PPO, not necessarily a broadcast personality).

     The office manager for the PCP and PA will call you later with specifics as to your appointment with the specialist, a preamble for which includes returning to the clinic, which is not where the specialist is located, to pick up your X-rays. The trip to the X-ray department at the clinic provides another opportunity to meditate on the framed art prints on the wall only to have your idyllic musings interrupted by the news that the X-rays are missing.

     The next day, after the errant X-rays return from a round trip to the City Morgue, you receive a phone call from the used car dealer with which you have been "negotiating." He tells you that your last offer is too low and that you need to come in to work something out. When you arrive at the car lot some 15 miles distant armed with credit union data, you contract a case of deja vu when, after sitting in a waiting area, the dealer informs you that he can't locate the vehicle for which you are negotiating. Your day is ruined when he returns later to inform you that it sold the day before. You speculate that the Medical Examiner bought it and used it to return your lost X-rays.

     On the morrow, you gather up the cat and her stool sample for her annual visit to the veterinarian. Once again, you're in the room of waiting. As you reassure the family pet and read about heartworm and other threats to domestic animals, you question whether waiting rooms are humane treatment for any living creature. The veterinarian has an assistant not unlike your PCP's PA. She invites you into a windowless room. As she leaves you and your companion to wait, you entrust her with the zip-sealed sandwich bag of litter siftings suspecting that somehow it, too, will be misplaced.

RETURN

	When the PCP (Primary Care Physician, who may be an M.D. or a D.O.) for your PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) is booked, you can, if you so choose, desire, or are in desperate need and live in a rural area as defined by the medical community, see the PA (Physician's Assistant). After waiting first in the room designated for the inevitable and then in an examination room which has all the comforts of a prison cell except for a toilet, the PA will prod and examine and decide to send you across the hall of the clinic to the X-ray department, which is managed by a separate entity. After waiting in a waiting room cloned from the last but which features at least one 10-year-old magazine, the X-ray technician will usher you into another room, don a lead-lined apron, and radiate your "broke" whatever. After another wait in the examination room where you have time to inspect the tongue depressors more closely, marvel at the "sharps" container, and cringe at the biohazard symbol, the PA will refer you to an in-network specialist (i.e., a member of the PPO, not necessarily a broadcast personality).
	The office manager for the PCP and PA will call you later with specifics as to your appointment with the specialist, a preamble for which includes returning to the clinic, which is not where the specialist is located, to pick up your X-rays. The trip to the X-ray department at the clinic provides another opportunity to meditate on the framed art prints on the wall only to have your idyllic musings interrupted by the news that the X-rays are missing.
	The next day, after the errant X-rays return from a round trip to the City Morgue, you receive a phone call from the used car dealer with which you have been "negotiating." He tells you that your last offer is too low and that you need to come in to work something out. When you arrive at the car lot some 15 miles distant armed with credit union data, you contract a case of deja vu when, after sitting in a waiting area, the dealer informs you that he can't locate the vehicle for which you are negotiating. Your day is ruined when he returns later to inform you that it sold the day before. You speculate that the Medical Examiner bought it and used it to return your lost X-rays.
	On the morrow, you gather up the cat and her stool sample for her annual visit to the veterinarian. Once again, you're in the room of waiting. As you reassure the family pet and read about heartworm and other threats to domestic animals, you question whether waiting rooms are humane treatment for any living creature. The veterinarian has an assistant not unlike your PCP's PA. She invites you into a windowless room. As she leaves you and your companion to wait, you entrust her with the zip-sealed sandwich bag of litter siftings suspecting that somehow it, too, will be misplaced.