Waiting a little longer.

Yesterday when I went to see the gastro, I not only waited a mere five minutes before they called me (WHAT? I KNOW!) but I had the pleasure of doing it in a television-free waiting room. The wall flatscreen was off. Everyone was reading or texting or talking quietly. It was lovely. One woman took advantage of the tranquil atmosphere to tell her daughter that she was not only a baby, but a wah-wah one at that. "Baby, baby, baby, you're such a baby."

"Well, you're a jerk to me," said the girl.

"You're such a dork," said that woman. "Look at those glasses." She went off on a rambling story about the girl wanting glasses when she was a kid or something, and finished up with, "Dorky dork."

Ouch. Name calling hurts, people! And why would you call your kids dorks, even if they are? That's just strange. My parents never called me a dork, and now I'm a stupendous success at life. It's true. Just ask all my millions of blog readers.

Anyway, the nurse called me just as the "Dorky dorks" were really revving up, and I escaped to the examination rooms. The doctor's PA and I had a ten minute meeting during which she exclaimed at how much better I was and made our next appointment for three months in the future. This is good - I was beginning to feel those $45 copays.

A funny thing about the doctor's office: because all the doctors and PAs have laptops that they carry around with them to each visit, there's no need for a computer in each examination room. Nurses use terminals at stations outside the room. So at the beginning of an appointment, when they take your stats (temp, pulse, blood pressure, etc.) they don't have a terminal to use for entering information. None of them carry paper or notebooks. They write your stats on whatever random bit of paper they can find; everything from the backs of doctors' business cards (set up in each exam room in little black holders) to paper towels from the room dispenser. It's odd. A security thing, maybe, so that they don't have tons of info in a notebook? I doubt it, since they only use the notes for computer data entry and thus don't label them with names. A budgetary or environmental thing? Wouldn't you go through a lot of paper towels instead of notebooks, then? It just seems weird.

I'll have to have another colonoscopy soon, probably next year. Obviously 2011 is going to be fantastic.





^{*Sometimes it's hard not to weigh $45 in one hand and ten minutes plus a whole slew of "Dorky dork" in the other.}