I am well satisfied

In Australia - and Vienna – if you want to see your primary care doctor you go to their surgery and sit down and wait – usually not long. If you need to speak to them you ring and they speak to you.

This is a concept I have not encountered in Indianapolis. To see my primary care doctor I have to ring and make an appointment – and it will almost never be for the same day or the day after. One time I was offered an appointment 10 days out.

I cannot speak to my primary care doctor. If I ring his number I - after going through the usual hoops -  I am told ‘the doctor is with a patient at the moment can I take a message?’

This is said by a person who I know is not in the same building as the doctor.

If I leave a message I am required to give my full name, birth date, address, phone number, and the nature of my request. My file will then be perused online by the telephone person who will ask me questions about my health, medications and current problems.

She will then – I assume – delete all the information - because no one has ever called me back.

You can go to a one minute clinic in a pharmacy. I am nor sure what the one minute refers to – it is certainly not the waiting time. However – the scope of their ministrations is limited. As I discovered last time - they do not do headaches. I was advised to see my primary carer or go to a medical center.

If you go to a medical center you can expect to send a lot of time filling out forms and waiting. Do not bother if you have a brain abscess. There will always one person in the waiting room who is dying and wants you all to know about it. If you have a brain abscess there will also be a child who will bang blocks on the kiddy play table every five seconds for an hour.

If you are really sick in America you have only two options – die or dial 911.

If you dial 911 the nice people will take you to the nearest emergency room ($600 per mile). There – if you are really lucky – a nice doctor will save your life. 

This happened to me and I am well satisfied with the way things work here.  

It snowed yesterday

So today I saw my infectious diseases doctor. He is very young and I am astonished by the amount he knows at his age. He must have started very early.

He does not want to see me again. This is good news indeed. He says there is no sign of infection and that I can stop the IV stuff on 26 November - so we can go to Washington for Thanksgiving.

We were thinking that we would have to carry the stuff to Washington – but it has to be refrigerated so we would need ice bricks – I shudder to think how we would have gone with the TSA.

No the doctor does no know what caused the problem.

The doctor says there is no reason I cannot drive but Cate says I am not allowed to drive. Cate wins. There is still no date for me to be allowed to visit the basement. I have almost forgotten what is down there and sometimes stand at the top of the basements stairs trying to imagine what it was like.

The cats are allowed down there to visit the litter so I am thinking of attaching webcams to their collars.

Indiana University Hospital has valet parking. I think this is very civilized and is right up there in convenience terms with drive in pharmacies and drive in banking and pre-cooked bacon. 

Beanie man is walking his dog next door. He does this a couple of times a day. Yesterday he was accompanied by another beanie man – who did not have a dog.

It snowed yesterday and is below freezing today. 

I will send him a Christmas card

I had a scan and also saw my surgeon yesterday.

He explained to me how lucky I was to be alive and showed me pictures of my abscess. It had a diameter of 4.5 cm – this is bigger than a golf ball - Holy Toledo. 

He explained how pleased he was when he got inside my head and saw it  - and drained all the muck out. This apparently is one of his favorite things and gives him a great deal of satisfaction.

My scan was OK and he does not want to see me again. I thanked him for saving my life and said I really hoped I would never see him again professionally.

I said that under Australian tradition if you save a person’s life you own them forever. I promised to pop round and wash his car as soon as I was up to it.

He thinks my headaches are because of the trauma my brain suffered – but he does not really know – he is not interested in much except poking about in brains and said he didn’t really listen to anything in medical school unless it was about brains.

I got his bill a day or so ago – it was for $10,000. This seem to be a bit on the low side for removing a golf ball sized abscess. Perhaps this was just the first part of it.

I bought a filing cabinet from Amazon for my medical bills and when it fills up I will store stuff in boxes in the basement. I am working on a Dewey decimal filing system and may get a motorized wheel chair so I can move easily between sections.

I am still not allowed in the basement. I am not sure why.

I am starting to be allowed to cook and made Mrs. Henderson's famous hotpot yesterday.

Tomorrow  see my infectious diseases doctor. He also saved my life but I am not washing two cars. I will send him a Christmas card.