What's Up Doc?

Let's talk about doctors and vets for a second. Now, I can actually say that I'm alive today thanks to doctors fixing me up after a bad car accident when I was sixteen. I'm forever grateful to them, of course. At the same time, why didn't the ambulance turn on the siren or lights when taking me to the hospital? If I died from bleeding to death internally, which I was...bleeding internally, what would they have said? "Oops".

Other than that horrible incident, in which they saved my life, I've had nothing but BAD experiences at hospitals. This is why I avoid going to one at all costs, because I don't have any medical insurance, which I know isn't smart, but if anyone wants to pay for it for me....? Even if I did have insurance though, I wouldn't want to go because I know for a fact that they do everything, even unnecessary stuff, so they can collect more money from insurance companies. This causes more waiting though, and if you tack that on to the time you spent waiting in the lobby to get seen, you just spent the whole damn day at that stupid hospital.

I recently scratched my eye (cornea) at work and luckily it was under workers comp, but they sent me to an urgent care, I waited for an hour and they looked at me for 30 seconds and said "you need to go to an ophthalmologist because we don't have the equipment to look into your eye". WHAT!? You already knew that and when I told you it was my eye, you thought you'd check it out anyway!? So, I go to the ophthalmologist and they told me I would have to pay out of pocket because they didn't take my insurance and my work would have to pay me back....you can probably guess what I told them. They told me to go to the emergency room, so I went back to my friends house and we waited till late at night, kept calling the hospital to see how crazy busy it was, they said it was packed, of course. This was a Tuesday night mind you.

After we finally went to hospital and spent four hours there, I got it looked at and they said my eye was scratched, gave me some Vicodin and some eye drops. They recommended an ophthalmologist that would take my works insurance. I went there the next day, and the doctor says "I don't see anything wrong with your eye, you're good to go". WHAT!?

A similar thing happened with our dog at the vet. Her eye was red and she couldn't keep it open. We go to the local vet and told them we have fox tails in our yard and it might be what's in her eye. They even had a poster that said "Warning, fox tails can be a problem". And they told us it's common with animals that get brought into them. They looked at Dottie's eye and said "oh, it's scratched. Here is some medicine. Nope, kept getting worse. We go back a few more times. "You need to go to an ophthalmologist for dogs in San Diego". We go there and within 30 seconds, they say "It's too fox tails under her third eyelid, we'll get it out, no problem".

When all was said and done, we spent about $400 on the dog. Did I mention my wife and I are currently NOT WORKING!? I'm furious with the vet right now and it has only increased my disgust with doctors...and vets. What the hell are we supposed to do if we can't trust our hospitals!? If they tell us something and they're wrong but we just gave them a bunch of money!

Lets just say that from now on, unless I'm on my death bed, I'm not going to any hospital. Duct tape and Super Glue will be my friend when I need a wound or broken limb fixed.