Score Zero for the Non-Helping Office Help

No one is a generalist in the doctors' front offices anymore. Everyone has a specialty. There are receptionists who answer the phones after the patient is routed through several menus of choices, insurance mediators, plant maintenance engineers, environmental statisticians, medical records compliance officers, and those-who-ought-to-be-eaten-by-Baba-Yaga.




     I fell the other day. This is not unusual for me these days. The balance problems that I have due to some brain damage acquired in a motor vehicle accident means that every so often despite my best efforts otherwise, I will fall.


     This time, I hurt my arm. Doc sends me for x-rays on Wednesday. I find out on Thursday that I have a broken ulna up at the head where it slides into the elbow. Not the worse fracture certainly, especially considering that there is no displacement. I am managing the pain with over the counter pills taken according to directions.


     Doc wants me to see an orthopedist, a receptionist that I do not know from his office tells me. Okay. I will not see the local butcher, I tell her. Anyone else anywhere else but that one. She says she will pass it on to the referral specialist.


     She doesn't. Actually, she doesn't advise the referral specialist that I need a referral at all. Thursday passes in a haze of little blue pills and a little blue pillow that I keep stuffed under my arm.


     Friday mid-morning arrives. I stop in at the appointment desk to pick up a hard copy of the radiology report. I ask about my referral. I am directed to the referral specialist's window.


     I don't know this referral specialist. She doesn't know that I need a referral, hasn't heard anything about my "broken elbow"-- the office help has all referred to my broken ulna this way and I don't correct them-- and in fact has not received any message from the receptionist that I need a referral to a bone doc. I give her my details and leave.


     I do not hear from her. It is now Friday at five minutes after four. I call the doctor's office. The new receptionist answers. "All of our referral specialists have left. They are not the usual ones," she tells me as some sort of excuse. She cannot tell me if any work has been done on my referral, if an appointment has been made. Nothing. "Call back on Monday," she suggests. "You won't get to see a bone doctor this weekend anyway. You can see one anytime." She hangs up.


     This is not satisfactory. I call back and firmly insist upon speaking with a nurse. The nurse talks with me, answers my medical questions-- I have never broken or even sprained an arm before-- and then she calls my doctor.


     My doctor calls me back. He will be handling the referral himself on Monday.


sapphoq reviews says:
To all office workers in physicians' offices everywhere, I have some tips for you:




1.  Please do not make light of any patient's concern or pain by telling them that they can see a specialist "anytime" or that they will not be getting to see a specialist this weekend anyway.
My referral should have been taken care of on Thursday. I should have been provided with an appointment with a specialist-- or at the very least, a phone number of the office of a specialist-- on Thursday or at the very latest on Friday morning. The appointment itself would not have had to occur on Friday morning. I was not asking for a miracle here. I was expecting the same consideration that you would give your own older relative with a broken body part.


2.  Please do not make excuses for why something was not done in a timely fashion.
Telling me that the referral specialists "are not the usual ones" leaves me to wonder if they are imports from a distant planet. Not helpful.
I may be brain damaged but I am not brain dead. I know that the initial problem may have started when you did not hand my referral to the referral specialist.
I was not proficient at carrying out my own job responsibilities for a number of years myself. I know what slacking off at the job looks like. It looks like you.


3.  Please do not tell me that you do not know if anything was done about referring me to a specialist.
I find it unbelievable that you could not be bothered to pick up my chart-- or the electronic equivalent of my chart-- and physically look at the last page to check if there were any notes about a referral in progress.


Yes, I am on first name basis with my doctor, your employer. Yes I did tell him what transpired in his office in his absence.


It is your job to know how to do your job and to do your job. Do your job or get a different one. Do not irritate this particular irritating patient because I will not just sit back and "take it." I have a blog and I know how to use it.

Let's Talk About Rape

uprooted tree trunk with bits of dirt clinging to its' roots and rootlets. 

     The woman approaches the stage. Her cheeks are painted red and her eyes are glowing with something other-worldly. I hold my breath. I know this is going to hit me right in the gut. Give it to me, sister. I am ready.

     She warms up to her subject. The re-telling of her life gets more and more sordid and convoluted. The dam breaks and the lights shatter. "I was the one who decided to get into that van with those men," she said. "No one forced me to do that. I was responsible for my rape that night."

     Already I can feel myself collapsing inwardly. This I was not expecting. I was not ready. No one should have to be that brave. That strong. That needy. 

     I stare at the other members of the audience. I am the Other. Everyone else is nodding in approval. Some are clapping. I want to vomit. A guy passes me a piece of cake. Stuff the emotions downward. Something else to focus on. I lift up the sugary fakeness with a plastic fork. I don't enjoy the taste of it at all.

     Nine more minutes. People are smiling. Laughing. How could they? Let them who have the ears hear. I groan inwardly. Ain't nuthin' going to fix this. I focus on my breathing. On the walk I took with my dog and her doggie friend today in the woods. A purple trillium was blooming and the mayapples were busting out all over. 

     Seven minutes. A friend leaves. He is wiser than I am. I stay to witness the debacle. Why do I do this to myself? 

     A woman walks over to me and gives me her phone number. I glance at the name on the paper. She seems to think that I ought to remember her. "I'm working now," she says. "Odd hours. Call me." I stuff the paper into the pocket of my hoodie. "Sure." I glance at the name she has written down. Sheila. At her face. Never seen this woman before in my life. I will have to ask someone later. I am face-blind. My prosopagnopia seems to bother others a lot more than it bothers me. I've gotten used to it. It hasn't gotten any better but it hasn't gotten any worse either. 

     Three more minutes left in the performance. I know full well that there are people who are capable of manufacturing rape incidents out of their imaginations for their own twisted satisfaction or monetary gain. I have seen the results of such machinations up close. I despise people who manufacture their own victim-hoods. They are scum. They make a mockery of the human beings who are  real victims. The woman up on the stage is not making it up. What kind of society allows victims to claim responsibility for the actions of their predators?

     She spends her last minute talking about her triumphs. But it is too late. I am fried. Is that someone crying? I cannot tell in the profound darkness. The woman exits the stage. The applause is thunderous. I cannot join in. Broken, I sing my way home.

All Your Info Belongs to Us-- No. I Resist.

I've been here with Google for  a bunch of years now.  And I don't like what I've been seeing lately.

Specifically, when using a v.p.n. plus a proxy, I get the error message from hell.  The particular wording of the message involves the accusation that my computer network is having unusual traffic and thus may be using automated queries.  There is no option for a capscha to "prove" my humanity.  This pisses me off.  What pisses me off also is a visit to the Google forum reveals that I am not the only customer with the problem.  The help page advising me that somehow my computer is infected with malware is totally not helpful.  It isn't.  Period.  In the age of tell-all, v.p.n.s are bad m'kay and apparently proxies are too.

Let me be quite clear.  This pisses me off to the point where I am now exploring the possibility of moving the whole shebang over to Wordpress and/or using one my domains with hosting in a non-u.s.a. country to publish my blogs.  And yes, I am also checking out other search engines whose mission does not involve data-mining things such as how big my snots are.  I am not the product.  That is why you have ads, Google.  A big fruck you to you and to the fact that the words "Google support department" is an oxymoron.

I am absolutely sick of the mindset that says "All your information belongs to us."  I am sick of being blocked from searching Google News because I use a proxy and a vpn.  I am sick of the assumption that the opposite of the word privacy is the word security.  I am sick of Big Brother-- which unfortunately now in my brain includes Google-- and sick of the shenanigans of The Big Five [cable companies] in cahoots with Big Hollywood doing deep packet inspections in order to "catch" a few pirates sharing [not stealing] files.  By the way,  stealing means I am claiming that I authored the work in question when I did not.  I suspect that the deep packet inspections are or will ultimately be used for something more than having some pirates arrested and hot-footed off to kangaroo courts and then to jail.  No love there folks, none.

I will throw in the Facebook I mean Fedbook phenomena which requires folks to grant access to all kinds of personal and wallet info to like eighty percent of the universe.  I don't really understand why folks would ever give their real names to Fedbook, never mind all the other stuff that in a civilized society used to qualify as t.m.i., or too much information.  

I sort of blame those teevee talk shows for the Fedbook phenomena.  It appears to me that the same folks who were spell-bound by the dirty laundry of total strangers are the same kind of folks who wish to display their own.  Of course, no one is forced to use Fedbook, Google, or any other service.  And yes, since we are playing on their playgrounds, we have to at least make an attempt to look like we are following their rules.  One of these days, I will be taking my business elsewhere and I will leave a forwarding address.

No love to Big Brother, The Big 5, or the Police State that some politicians are bent on the United States of America becoming.   

I'm Back Now-- but not in a flash

Yeah, I've been gone for far too long. I've been seduced by Second Life (Fuel Burner referred you, if you ever do decide to sign up). I've spent a ton of time learning how to build in 3D. Considering that I've got double vision in one eye from the brain injury as well as perception problems, being able to build something that actually holds together is a feat within itself. Oh yeah, and one of my relatives got married.

Attendance at that wedding was mandatory. Just before leaving for the very expensive hotel (almost 200 bucks for one night), I had my hair cut. Gave my first braid to the Locks of Love. In case you haven't heard about Locks of Love, basically it is an organization that collects lengths of hair to turn into wigs for kids who have lost their hair due to medical baldness. I decided to grow out my hair once in memory of Marie-- my friend Philly David's sister. She had cancer and she died. She was a Quaker. At the meeting hall, there was a little boy there she admired because he was growing his hair out for Locks of Love. He was confident enough not to care about the other kids teasing him for it. So I grew my hair out in honor of Marie.

I felt really good about it when I saw the braid of hair in the bag destined for a kid who really needs it. I've decided to do it again.

More info can be found at: http://www.locksoflove.org/


Bout a month or so ago, I had a "meeting" with the VESID counselor (my fourth in four years) and the job developer. They decided that I want to be an advocate. Getting into any sort of investigative work does not fit in with their limited ability to see beyond my brain injury. During the meeting, I was asked if I would consider full-time advocacy work if I were to make "twenty-five dollars an hour." I recognized this number as being pulled out of a hat (i.e. not based on reality) immediately. I told both of my professional "helpers" that my health and well-being has to come first. Quite frankly, the fatigue is the real killer for me. Lack of imagination is theirs.

Thanks to the friend who came with me who also has a brain injury, I was able to remain calm. That is to say, I was able to refrain from telling these two to feck off. I am the first to admit that I am somewhat obsessed with the "VESID problem."

I was supposed to send off my resume to the job developer. I haven't. I am currrently suffering from lack of belief that this agency which had put "my case" on hold for a year without informing me of that fact (?cuz I refused to get a "return to work" order from my doctor after a routine vertigo attack?) is able to help me. I waited a year for them. They can wait for me. The truth is less glamorous. It took me awhile to remember that my resume is in the computer files.

The job handler to her credit did call me once, leaving a message. Usually she calls from a blocked number and refuses to leave a message, but she counts it as an attempted contact anyways. When I called her back, she asked if I "still want to do advocacy work." Well, no actually, I thought, that is what yous want me to settle for. No matter, I couldn't talk right then anyways. She asked if I want to meet with her. I said, after I send out the resume I will call you. That is how I left it.

Now that I know where the resume is, I can quit tearing the house apart looking for it. I can print the resume out and send it off. I understand there is something there about allowing the professional helpers to help me. I have not been very co-operative. I acknowledge this fully and completely. Yet I also understand that I have to find my own way. As I am able to let go of the problems I've had with VESID, perhaps hope will then be able to return. Yeah, I do feel hopeless.

I feel hopeless because I want to write and I want to write badly. I've had lots of stuff published. Yet there is no current book in my brain. Just a chapter and a vague idea about where to go with it. And a real sense of loss. As in, "I was finally 'making it' career-wise and everything blew apart in a matter of seconds."

So I will send the job developer a resume. I will even meet with her and make nice. I will even listen to the things she suggests, even if they are not things I can do. The last suggestion involved being a home health aide at the agency that is run out of her agency. The biggest problem with that is my back. I can't lift more than ten pounds, period. One of my friends got pushed into doing that, along with being a nursing assistant substitute on call-- and her back is worse than mine. And quite frankly, there are other problems with that line of work. Like I can't do housework for more than ten minutes at a time. I've forgotten how to cook. And I am beyond disorganization. There is that inability to multi-task too that I've been stuck with. The neuropsych told me that my "ability to multi-task has shit the bed and it's not coming back." The shrink explained that I am highly distractible. Uh wow.

The thing is, I am not an advocate. I am an investigator. I've got total attention to detail (in spite of my disorganization and inability to multi-task). I know how to investigate. It's in my blood. I know how to ask questions. And I know how to write up my findings. I know this about myself. If the job market will not bear with an investigator who functions a bit oddly socially and can only work part-time, then I have to come up with some other way to use my investigative skills.

sapphoq healing tbi

Dawn 5/22/07

This morning I got up at 5:23 a.m., threw on some clothes, and waited impatiently for husband to finish his routine game of Civ III so he could follow me in the broken car down to the place where the car supposedly had an appointment "first thing." I got there. I could see the three mechanics inside the building. The one I had spoken with on the phone Sunday morning, so I thought, came out insisted that he hadn't been there on Sunday and he is "backed up" today. It left me scratching my eczema-filled scalp. I know who I had spoken to on Sunday. I've known the head mechanic for years, since before his dog was hit by an errant car whose driver was in a hurry to get away. I left my car there anyways.

I got dropped off back home and took Her Delightful Self for an early morning walk. There was little to no traffic. That was really nice. Just lots of birds chirping away, a couple of lone joggers, one or two people backing out of their driveways leaving for work I guess. The dog was Ecstatic With Happiness to be out so early with the dew still glistening on the grass and the sun like marmalade in a clear sky.

Yesterday, the water department was draining some of the fire hydrants. Ecstatic witnessed their gushing into rivulets pulsating down the dusty streets. There was none of that today, save for the one yard where the pool [must be nice] has been draining through a hose along the grassy boundary into a waiting sewer.

The news flashes pictures of Katrina and Kansas. The kitten, the youngest and most confident of the three felines in residence, pounces on his favorite green "mouse" and then stalks off to do battle with a spider plant whose only crime is also being green. Weather will be sunny today here but rainy again in Kansas. I had grieved long and hard for New Orleans after the rains came and the levees broke. I remember her bright shining like the sun. Years ago, I had walked somewhat stoned and drunkenly up and down her streets with some people who I used to call friends. She had captivated me then. New Orleans of the zoo with the white tiger, Bob Marley and the Whalers playing before the crowns at the Warehouse, glittering things discarded in the gutters the morning after. One morning, we sucked the heads out of crawfish and swizzled beers headed to the Blues Festival where we saw Z.Z. Top. Another, we had dropped acid. I freaked out cuz the youngest woman of the bunch was obviously pregnant. I wrecked her trip, I guess. Did she care about the stuff in her veins flooding the placenta barrier and bringing physical distortion or possible death to the developing fetus inside?

When death stalked those streets last year, I felt the death cries of the vodousaints rising up as one. The dikes have been patched. A shiny casino went up along the wetlands, once again defying the Earth our Mother to do her damnest. Wetlands are nature's defense against flooding. The French had build New Orleans on the wetlands years ago. We who have harnessed technology as our slave have not learned from that mistake. After Katrina, I wanted so to be part of the volunteer rescue effort. But I could not. Physically, I was in no condition to help. Knowing that, I wept bitter tears and stayed home. I convinced husband to send a pittance off to the Red Cross. I made a photolage on one of my blogs and wrote bad poetry. None of those things were enough.

New Orleans was re-built with the sweat of illegal aliens. There are so many jobs there now. Jobs going begging. Not enough people willing to live in a zone where Katrina is bound to happen again, any year now. Maybe this year. Maybe next. Within the decade for sure. Thanks, army corps of engineers for the information. Taco stands replace steaming plates of red beans and rice. Spanish supplants Creole. The destruction of one culture and rising up of another. This is the way the world goes. Knowledge does not always make things easier to bear.

Construction crews all over the States have their share of illegals working on them. When in Illinois, I heard about locals not being able to get those usually higher-paying construction jobs. Better pay than the tire factory even. The bosses were hiring wetbacks at lower wages. More ummph for the buck. In a train cresting the Rockies, my dinner mates concluded that we "have to" provide prenatal care for those women who are bearing United States citizens in their wombs. The Senate is debating the annexation of Mexico and Texas this month. Newt Gingrich read the Mexican Immigration Laws and the mediacs jumped all over him, accusing him of discrimination. They didn't know. Mexico does not want illegal aliens crossing the border either. Unlike the United States, Mexico takes meaningful action against those who would flaunt her boundaries. Time spent in a Mexican prison is time spent courting death, Mexican style. We imperialistic Americans forget that we are subject to the laws of the territory that we travel in. Our "rights" to violate the earth, trample over her sacred lands destroying the delicate balance between flora and fauna stops at our sovereign borders. We citizens of the United States forget.

We have forgotten how to live. We have forgotten the sheer joy of movement, of a dog delighting in an early morning walk. We have forgotten how to live. Broken cars aside, life is rich and succulent like the juice of platanos dulces running down our chins. The kitten warrior is strangely silent, staring out an open window at paradisio. The dog, sated, sleeps on top of the coverlet with the lilac print on her back, feet in the air like some strange apparition. It seems I've forgotten my breakfast napkin. I do not get up from my chair.

spike q.