Wednesday Sundries

Theme for Hump Day Humor

Thirteenth Edition

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

~School Employees~

Of course, the first cartoon I thought of was Calvin and his long suffering teacher--and principal. I hope all these gifs work!





Here's what happened to Michelangelo's David after a tour in America. Apparently there were too many stops at McDonald's.




What does a doctor do when he doesn't know what else to do with a patient? I guess every doctor runs out of ideas sooner or later, some sooner and some keep trying until much later. We've had a couple of doctors throw their hands into the air about TB on the same day and it's very depressing.

The first guy has been TB's doctor for like 20 years. I've never been all that impressed with him and it turns out he missed TB's high sugars and the fact he had diabetes. That, for me, would have been the end of that. Anyway, he's been following TB all these years and initially started out treating the leg infection. I was surprised he didn't send TB to the ER from the get-go but tried to get rid of it with antibiotics. Well, to make a long story longer, he did eventually tell us to go to the hospital.

Don't doctors have admitting privileges? There've been times in the past when Rich or I were admitted by phone to a hospital and bypassed the ER entirely. Anyway, after spending three days in the hospital and then (strange coincidence) being suddenly discharged after searching for a bariatric bed came up, TB was instructed to get in touch with his primary care physician a week out of the hospital.

After a week, TB was still in agony. His legs were still red, swollen and painful inspite of the antibiotics he was still taking. His back was still hurting and the drug he's prescribed, opana, wasn't really helping anymore.

First we wanted to see the doctor but when we called for an appointment, he wasn't available. The nurse went to see if he wanted to squeeze us in, schedule for another day, or see another doctor. Normally this guy would have squeezed us in so I was surprised when the nurse said he wanted us to see the nurse practitioner.

So we did. TB told her everything that had happened she she had an idea but she wanted to run it by the doctor. I could hear them talking in the hall and it was clear the doctor wanted to pass TB along to the infections specialist who'd seen him in the hospital and recommended the lymphedema therapy. I started to feel angry. Our discharge instructions said to see the primary care physician, not some new doctor.

The nurse practitioner came back and didn't say another word about her idea, just encouraged us to follow through with the physical therapy (we already had an appointment set up for that) and to see the new guy. When we left, TB said there was no way he was going to some new doctor.

Our next appointment that day was with the pain specialist and when TB mentioned the opana wasn't working anymore he threw his hands up too and said TB would be better off going to a pain center. He gave us UMDNJ of Stratford and so we called there...but we can't get an appointment for TB there until the pain doctor sends over all the records andTB must have at least a 3 month documented history with this doctor. I sure hope he does or the information is useless.

Don't you love doctors like that?

We're going to be getting a new primary--I sure am not going back to that guy. A nurse practitioner would be fine--they seem more in tune with patients anyway.

And I got the number of the Rothman Institute, which is an orthopedic speciality place and am trying to get TB in to see them. Maybe they'll listen and attend him without getting fed up after just a couple of visits. :P