October 2, 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of my mom, BJ’s, passing. From August on of 1993 comprised a season from hell for us. On August 4, two days after April’s 17th birthday, she broke her leg with a spiral fracture, when she stumbled on the top landing of the attic steps from her bedroom. She started her senior year in high school in a wheelchair with a cast from her ankle to her hip. We had to borrow our friend Nancy‘s hospital bed, and place it in the living room, since April obviously could not handle steps. Since Nancy no longer needed a hospital bed, she used April’s flat bed.
On September 4, Nancy was found dead in that bed of an apparent heart attack. She was 50 years old. Her family asked me to handle her funeral and the burial of her ashes, etc. I took a several days off of the job I had just started with an auto parts company in Macungie to do this. I had just returned to work. It was a bright, warm day, the 13th or 14th of September. I was riding my Honda Helix scooter down the main drag of Macungie. A car ran a red light to my left and made a left turn into the left turn lane, next to me. I started honking, because I did not have room to move right and I did not know what this driver intended. At the next intersection, while I was honking and flashing my headlamp, a landscape truck ran the stoplight to my left. I hit his front, right fender and went airborne! I flipped three times at different angles to the earth. I rolled off the hood of the truck on the way down. My bike was still running. The anti-freeze was flowing toward me. I started to scream. I did not know what was broken, but did not want the radiator fluid to get into my wounds, so wanted someone to move me quickly.
Thankfully, a member of the volunteer ambulance crew worked at the bank across the street and had witnessed the whole thing. He was already on his way out the door before I hit the ground. I shattered my right ilium and fractured my pelvis, and got some cuts on my left arm and hand. I think that was September 10. The ambulance took me to Lehigh Valley Hospital. This was back when they just had a rotation of doctors with various specialties on rotation in charge of the ER. On my day, it was a hand specialist. He kept hovering over the scratches on my hands. They got stitched up beautifully! I kept on telling him that they were not the problem. My hip was the problem. They took an x-ray of my hips. They gave me crutches and told me to walk out of there. I screamed like bloody hell! They gave me another Percocet and told me to “buck up.”
I don’t know where or if I slept that night. The hospital ER called me the next morning and asked me if my hip hurt. I said, “No shit, Sherlock! I was only screaming as I left last night.” They asked me to come back to the ER. I said, “Why don’t I just schedule a CAT scan?” They assured me they weren’t going to make me wait around all day, but get me right in, since their gurneys are uncomfortable, and I had to get a ride with a neighbor who had a Lincoln Continental, since there was no way I could fold myself into our Subaru Justy. We were there for over eight hours! I determined there and then to avoid Lehigh Valley Hospital if at all possible!
At this point I needed a hospital bed and April could graduate to her flat bed, albeit, still in the living room. Nancy didn’t need her bed anymore, so someone retrieved April’s bed from her apartment. I used the hospital bed in the dining area and April used her bed in the living room. Bethann answered the phone, “psych ward” if she was upstairs and “orthopedics” if she was on the main floor. My doctor, Priscilla Benner, loaned me her cordless phone, so I could keep it at my bed, so we didn’t have any more injuries from trips and falls. The mailman delivered our mail directly to my bed. I was supposed to be horizontal for three weeks.
My mom died on Oct 2nd. So, it was a day or two over three weeks and Bethann and I were flying to Phoenix for BJ’s funeral. The airline seated me exactly opposite to the way I requested, so that my right leg was cramped behind the bulkhead. We had an extra hour delay on the runway. They offered a complementary beverage as an apology. I chose an O’Douls. What a mistake! I ended up puking out the door of Joan Bucher’s van when Les pulled over on the way home from the airport. That was my last O’Doul’s.
I have had six strokes, many (~50) TIAs, a brain bleed, and a couple of seizures. I have gone for several years without a neurologist. I thought I found a decent one. Then I read her notes on our visit. She had not listened AT ALL. She got things exactly opposite of what I had said. She ordered unnecessary tests, because she had not listened to my recounting of my history, nor had she read my chart. So the things she got right, she treated as if they were amazing new discoveries that she had made, instead of what we had found out at HUP in August of 2011.
I am allergic to 13 different medications, and have at least two auto-immune disorders. I cannot afford to have doctors who are sloppy and careless.
Now, directly to the headline. When I was nine or ten and sick with something, my mom made an appointment with our usual family doctors. The practice had grown to include five physicians. We went there in time for our appointment. We waited for over an hour. My mom was livid. She went to the desk and let them know what the problem was, and that it was unacceptable to have a sick child sitting in their waiting room for that length of time and unacceptable for Dr. Towne to treat us this way. We were leaving. We would no longer ever see Dr. Towne; would advise Dr. Linke to let him go, and will return when someone is ready to see her son or would go directly to the pharmacy. These are her son’s symptoms. We left.
Yesterday, I had an appointment with another neurologist. He rescheduled three times to better fit his schedule. I was instructed to show up 15 minutes early. This irritates me! Doctors routinely do this. Why don’t they just set the appointment time as 15 minutes earlier? It’s a power play. On two accounts: 1) It’s disorienting. You now have two times in your head to remember. 2) It establishes the idea that you are arriving earlier and are waiting for him or her, establishing the fact that he or she is more important than you are.
Tony and I were ushered into the exam room at the quarter of time, went through the preliminaries, BP, chart corrections, etc., then waited until more than 45 minutes after the scheduled start time of the appointment. In other words, we were there over an hour. I had had it. The memory of my Dr. Towne non-visit had returned to me and I left in a not very graceful fashion.
It was not until after I had gotten home and realized the date that the full impact of perhaps why the Dr. Towne and Mom incident had seemed so immediate at the neurologist’s office. And I said some things at the neurologist’s office that my mom did not feel comfortable saying publicly as a woman in the 1960s would have, but I am pretty sure she said to them later, privately. She and my dad met in law school. She worked as a legal secretary at various times. Lawyers have to keep schedules, as well. There are ways to keep schedules and handle multiple important issues and people. Good legal secretaries know this. Good doctors know this. Skilled surgeons, who have to show up on time, know this. Not everything that needs to be said needs to be said by you, or needs to be said now. I believe sloppy schedules are largely the result of arrogance.
Afterword:
Today, (10/7/2023) I received an email from the neurologist, from a donotreply account, that said that I had missed my appointment. I emailed them pointing out that I was not the one who missed the appointment, rather it was the doctor who had. Furthermore, he had made my point regarding rudeness and arrogance by sending an email from a donotreply account, as there was no way to have a true two way, equal conversation using that.