Salubrious Basterds

Salubrious Plague Chaser

Note: This post satisfies the legal requirements of my earlier post entitled “Blog improv.” That’s where I asked for some random words. I will now use those words in this post. The random words, in addition to “Salubrious” which is used in the subject line, will be highlighted when they are used. Enjoy! –Abyss

The doctor will fee you now!

Is your doctor all that and a bag of chips? Is your doctor the cat’s meow?

I don’t know. You tell me. How do you feel about someone who says, “Sure, I’ll help you with something important like your health.” You know, that life and death stuff. Almost as important as a new episode of Jersey Shore. “But I’ll only do it for something akin to every penny you make for the next twenty years. Deal?”

Wow. That’s just awesome! And to think I’m such a friggin’ idiot – I do nice things for people every day and I don’t even charge. Woe is me, how dumb I’ve been. If you catch me at home sticking my head in my Easy-Bake Oven, please don’t try to stop me!

I get it. You are an important human being, Doctor. Me? I’m a steaming pile of poop. That’s why I have to schedule my whole life around my visit to see you, wait in your disgusting little room full of sick people, and pay over $100 for 10 minutes of quality time where you’ll barely pay attention to me and rush me away as fast as humanly possible.

The other day my wife was feeling rather forlorn because she was in some rather extreme pain. There was a red bump behind her ear and some painful redness that seemed to go up to the tip of her ear. At first we assumed it was a pimple or a bug bite.

The next day, though, her ear was still in a pickle, so she did something we don’t often do. She took herself in to see the doctor. Good thing, too. I turned out to be neither of the problems we suspected. It was some kind of infection of the bone behind the ear and is fairly serious if left untreated. The doctor prescribed some antibiotics.

My wife complained about the severe pain, which seems to be close to debilitating, but the doctor refused to prescribe her anything for it. Apparently he has his own moral standards about prescribing the dreaded “narcotics” that might take away my wife’s pain until the antibiotics could kick down the infection.

I understand that the health care system is so discombobulated that doctors now live in fear of writing prescriptions for pain meds. Some people visit 10 different doctors a month, get 10 prescriptions for pain meds, and get those prescriptions filled at 10 different pharmacies to remain under the grid and avoid detection. I get that.

On the other hand, however, my doctor can easily verify that he sees us like once every few years and that we haven’t had any prescriptions from him during that same time. If we’re addicted to pain meds we sure have a damn clever way of hiding it!

So the basterd listened to my wife complain about her pain and decided, “Nah. You can live with it. My salubrious standards are more important than your suffering. You are depressed. I’m glad you came to see me to get this off your chest. Come back and see me later. Next patient, please. Send in another victim of industrial disease!”

I thought doctors took the Hippocratic oath which says, “Do no harm.”

“Ah,” says the doctor. “There’s your problem, old chap. I’m not the one doing the harm. You can blame the funky ear bone widget thing for that. I’m just the one refusing to treat the pain caused by what is doing the harm. See the distinction? They taught me that in medical school – in addition to billing systems, of course. Also sailing, golfing, and hiding assets offshore.”

Are doctors simply in charge of thinning the herd? Or are they actually supposed to help the people that come to them in pain?

I admit. I simply don’t get it.