Monday, February 11, 2019

Have a Seat!

I think this should be created with mock leather and memory foam. 
It would look incredibly uncomfortable until you sit down! Ha!

25 comments:

  1. I fixed today's post so it had a clickable title. Sorry for not getting to it till so late in the day.

    Alan in CA2/10/2019 08:30:00 PM

    1) The right shoulder isn't the middle of the road.
    2) "The only thing in the middle of the road is yellow stripes and dead armadillos."
    --Jim Hightower
    3) You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been called a red.


    Words to live by!

    Warren Suggests Trump Might Be In Prison Before Election

    Thanks, Alan! You have no idear how much I needed that!

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    1. My thanks to puddle for the phone call and my thanks to Catreona for getting into Blogger and adding a title.

      I was confused to get in to HEP after dinner and see the title "Monday" as I was pretty sure I had changed it to "Have a Seat"! LOL! Now I understand!! I changed it to "Have a Seat" again before I read Comments. I hope you don't mind, Cat. I'd be happy to switch it back to "Monday" if you prefer.

      I think that's the first time I've somehow managed to not add a Title!!! Argh! Lesson learned.
      I also noticed at the same time that yesterday's photos had not been set as "extra large" so I went back and fixed that. Hmmmm. Think I've been doing too much lately? LOL!

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    2. Funnily enough, I had a hunch the title ought to be something to do with a seat. It seemed safer to go with something generic though, so you could fix it if you wanted to.

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  2. Well, they took me twenty minutes late at the gynecologist, which I guess is about par for the course for any doctor's office. It was a routine visit, general exam, which had been postponed twice. The first time, in early December, my friend Patty took time off work to take me because Dad (the only member of my family who drives) and Sis had other commitments. First of all, both the med tech and the doctor were furious that my P.A. sent me there to check out abladder infection rather than to a urologist. The P.A.'s thinking, which seemed sound to me, was that since I hadn't had a GYN exam in far too long, I should go for that and while I was there, the doctor could check out this other problem.

    Well, he did condescend to see to the infection and prescribe a course of antibiotic, only it didn't clear up the infection.

    Anyway, both the med tech and the doctor were also displeased that my P.A. hadn't waited to send me there after the first of the year, when they would be in their new office with disabled accessible equipment. They both flatly refused to touch me to assist me onto the exam table and they also refused to let Patty do so either.

    Reschedule. Since other things were happening in my world, the earliest I could reschedule for was February Fifth. A couple days before the Fifth, a robocall came in, reminding me that my appointment was the Eleventh. That was confusing. I was all for calling to clear it up but, well, Sis doesn't take well to suggestions, and she would have bitten my head off if I'd mentioned calling.

    Predictably, we arrived on the Fifth to be told that the appointment had been rescheduled for the Eleventh. They gave us some mumbo jumbo about having had to reschedule to make sure the accessible equipment was available... I didn't quite follow. They also claimed a letter had been sent notifying me of the change. Needless to say, no such letter ever arrived.

    So, this morning. Sis got sick about an hour and a half before we had to leave, but that was all right, or so we foolishly thought. "The nurse will be able to help you with whatever you need." Famous last words!

    There was no nurse, just the same surly med tech. Dad wheeled me in - BTW her office or cubby or whatever you want to call it wasn't big enough to let a wheelchair in, so I had to stay half in and half out of her doorway, but I guess medical offices not accommodating wheelchairs is no biggy. I mean, why would you really need to, right? :P

    So, anyway, this girl looks at my elderly father and says, "You're going to help her onto the table then, are you? Let's just say it went downhill from there!

    So, I'm not in a very good mood!

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    1. Sounds pretty nightmarish to me... Any chance you can get a doctor, nurse, etc. who are actual *humans* and not lizards in disguise?

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    2. I don't know what to say. I find it hard to believe all this is ADA-compliant.

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    3. OH MY GOSH! Is there a group in the know who can name for you a doctor in your area who actually accommodates people who have disabilities? It sounds like that office is trying to be "compliant" but doesn't have a clue as to what that really means. They need a new profession!!

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    4. Unfortunately, the behavior being not only inhumane and immoral but also illegal, that is failing to comply with the ADA bit didn't occur to me till I'd been home for a while. Pity, since it's rhetorically pleasing as well as a damning indictment. Dad did tell the med tech their treatment of me amounts to discrimination against the disabled, which she vehemently denied, and that they might well be hearing from his lawyer. But I don't think he'll actually do anything. By the time we got home, he seemed pretty dejected, saying writing letters does no good. (Mum had suggested writing not only to this practice, but also to my primary care practice and the local medical board.) When I suggested writing a letter to the editor and giving them bad publicity, he said that was a good way to get sued. So, though the incident upset him greatly, it seems unlikely that he'll pursue it in any way...unless something similar happens tomorrow.

      He's taking me in tomorrow for an endoscopy to check my throat. The doctor I saw last week said it is unlikely that scar tissue is building up. Still, she was concerned that there seems to be *something* in my throat that, for instance, not only do foods like granola and oatmeal sometimes make me choke, but I sometimes choke on liquids and sometimes on nothing at all. I'll just start coughing and choking for no apparent reason. She got me in for the endoscopy ASAP.

      Now, what I've been thinking is this: Bay State Medical Center (along with Mercy Medical Center one of the two mega hospital businesses hereabouts) is not so much a hospital as a corporation. In my twenties, I went to a marvelous GYN, Dr. Kennedy. I loved her; felt totally at ease with her. Neither she nor her nurse ever hesitated to help in any way I might have needed. But, you see, she was in private practice. There are precious few private practices in this area anymore - Bay State keeps buying them out. So you see, what I'm thinking is this "We can't touch the patient" stuff is not hospital policy, but corporate policy. Seems to me Kayhill (sp?) let that slip in December. I'm pretty sure he said, "We can't take the risk." I couldn't quite figure it out at the time. They might be afraid of being sued but, really, to have such a policy etched in granite seems absurd for a medical practice which, by definition, deals with sick people and sometimes disabled people. It makes perfect sense once it's seen as corporate policy.

      If the folks at the surgery center also refuse to assist me, especially if there are no grip bars - I could kick myself for failing to ask the med tech today if their exam rooms are equipped with grip bars! The ones at our old practice, where none of us felt comfortable with the doctors, were so equipped. In my naivete, I just assumed all modern medical buildings had grip bars in the exam rooms. But surely, if the rooms at Kayhill's practice were so equipped, they'd be a lot less hot under the collar about shifting a disabled patient.

      It seems unlikely that the surgery center will have grip bars. In that case, what to say to the tech is obvious. ""This center is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities act, which requires reasonable accommodation. A grip bar is a reasonable accommodation. Physical assistance from a staff member is reasonable accommodation. This place does not make reasonable accommodation. I'll make sure everyone I know is made aware that this center is in violation of the law." And, as I started to say up above somewhere, if the people at the surgery center are indeed equally non helpful, Dad may be moved to take some action.

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    5. (Mum had suggested writing not only to this practice, but also to my primary care practice and the local medical board.)

      I'm with Mum!!

      And I stand with your idea of speaking up if there is no reasonable accommodation.

      My goodness, they apparently need you to show them what's what. Get on their payroll as a consultant!

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  3. I tried to change it last night before I went to bed, but the page would never load. I called listener when it still wasn't working when I got up, and evidently you and she were changing it about the same time, lol! Yours won!

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  4. CNN just reported that both Pat Leahy (D) and Richard Shelby (R) have emerged from the negotiations saying that they have reached an "agreement in principle" that would mean no shutdown. Hopeful!

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    1. Well, that's going to be interesting....

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    2. If the Twit in Chief can be kept away from his iPhone long enough to let the grownups do their work.

      BTW Susan, I like that meme about the silent 7.

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    1. Sure. A highly lucrative one, I should imagine.

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  6. When I look at that photo at the top of the thread, I can only think of what it would be like to lose anything in that sofa!

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    1. Haha! I should have looked closer! Might have found some keys, loose change, maybe a bra. LOL!

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  7. Endurance: Search for Shackleton's lost ship begins [Click] "We are the first people here since Shackleton and his men!"

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  8. There are almost no solo practices left any more, for two reasons that I can see. One is that insurance billing has become so incredibly demanding; another is that banks almost force loans on medical students, so they graduate nearly overwhelmed with debt and must concentrate on making money--which means entering group practices. Quite some time ago (about 20 years) our pediatrician, who had a very good solo practice, decided to pack it in because of the insurance billing stuff. He sent letters to every pediatric residency program in the United States looking for a young pediatrician to take over the practice, and received not a single inquiry. So he closed the practice. He was the best pediatrician in the area, hands down. I came to detest the huge hospitals/hospital chains as places to work. There is one exception, where we go now--Kaiser Permanente. The whole system is unionized, top to bottom, which I think has something to do with it. The workers don't have that hangdog aura of those in the other big (and anti-union) hospitals. The old county hospital similarly had decent labor-management relations, but was given to a private hospital by the county board of supervisors. That the private hospital board had been notably generous to the board of supervisors clearly had nothing to do with it, and neither did the fact that the spouse of the chairman of one board was a member of the other board; oh, no. The county hospital was in good financial condition until the county board of supervisors ordered them not to bid on the Medicaid contract. Water under the bridge.

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    1. Wouldyoubelieve my DIL is the office administrator for a doctor in solo practice. It's rare, but apparently still happens. A friend of ours was actually still making old fashioned house calls in the late 1990s...!

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  9. I think it will be particularly interesting to see what the Twit in Chief [shall we abbreviate that TIC?] does with the alleged congressional agreement.

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  10. TIC ~ yes.

    Bless my soul, I read those last two links so fast I thought you were suggesting that the GOP is old fossils. And I was agreeing before I noted those were two different thoughts.

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  11. Our current insurance company is set up just like medicare so that it's an easy transition when you get to that age, or if our healthcare system goes to single payer.

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  12. Another big snowstorm coming tomorrow afternoon through Wednesday. Looking at 9-12" with some wind. But temps will rise from -2 into the 20's, so no problem.

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