Visit to the doctor means long wait, few answers

We were sitting on two of the three chairs, lined up in a row, in a small, nearly airless room where doctors were to examine patients, or so the sign on the door said.

It was one of many such rooms that lined two long hallways, so we suspected there were many doctors at work. Except, from what we could determine, there was just one.

We sat and sat and sat. For an hour and a half after our appointment time we sat, until we needed to take a restroom break. So we took it hurriedly, leaving a note on the door saying we’d be right back.

A few minutes after returning, the doctor, whom we discerned had been making her way down the hall from exam room to exam room, came bustling in.

She was a small woman with a breezy greeting.

“Hello,” she said, with a wide smile. “It is so good to see you again.”

Twice during the previous year we were scheduled for such meetings. Twice the doctor failed to show. Her physician’s assistant, or whatever, filled in instead.

We had never met before, even though she was listed as our doctor at the treatment facility. Not only had we never met, but the substitutes sent in her stead really didn’t know why we had been called in.

We introduced ourselves to the doctor and she asked how Janet was doing. Janet remarked, nicely, that she was not pleased with the long wait. The doctor apologized, saying they were very busy that day, a bold-faced untruth.

The fact was that there were too few doctors for the scheduled patients.

We tried again. We asked the doctor what was the purpose of these meetings.

The doctor mumbled something about having to check in every so often.

She did not say why. She never gave us a reason.

She asked Janet how her treatments were going.

Janet said there were problems being stuck by a needle every week; sometimes she had to be stabbed several times, as many as nine.

The doctor said it was because she had small veins.

That’s when I lost it for the first time.

Don’t blame the patient, I shouted. Hire technicians who know how to deal with small veins.

Then the doctor asked Janet why she didn’t have a stent so they wouldn’t have to stick her every week. Janet said that her doctor had told her not to do that.

She then asked why?

I lost it again. What does it matter? I asked. He is Janet’s doctor, he said no stent.

The doctor said I was getting too close to her as I leaned forward to make sure she got my point. She said I wasn’t nice. That was true. Between the unexplained meeting and Janet’s treatment, which takes 10 minutes, we spent more than five hours at the clinic.

This is my latest experience with health care in America.