A votre santé, mon ami!   (Your health, my friend!)

I hope the patient didn’t pay up front for the good Doctor’s services.

Herman Thorbecke (word count: 770 – June 2024}

“You must be joking, Sir. That’s not our job; we are just here to rob insurance and accumulate funds towards the purchase of our next yacht and/or sports car. So, if you feel the need to have some surgery or other costly procedure, feel free to get in touch. 

I have to admit that I will occasionally have the tendency to overstate the facts a little, but I’m sure you will forgive me for doing so after you learn more about the events that led me to my extreme view of the medical profession as it is practiced now-a-days. My Dad was an MD who received his medical degree in 1926 when the Hippocratic oath still had some meaning.

Lately, my experiences have been especially dismal and I would not be surprised if you had similar experiences, in particular, if you live in the backwoods, in some obscure rural district, like NorthEast Georgia. It’s lovely here, but God help you if you need some serious health care.

My latest medical misfortune started a few years ago when I decided to have a painful bunion removed from my big, very big, left toe. This was done by a sweet young woman who charmed me into doing the job. Even at my very advanced old age,  I’m still susceptible to the wily ways of young women.  Don’t get me wrong, to me anyone under 70 is young. During the post-op visit, two weeks after the deed was done, she removed the stitches and the wound opened up like a pretty pink flower that shortly turned crimson with blood, my blood. 

The Steristrips she stuck over the wound never made a difference and in the end it took a wound vac two months to heal. I do admit to being afflicted with poor circulation in my legs. For the uninitiated, a wound vac is a somewhat noisy machine you carry around with you day and night. It sucks, and it also sucks a vacuum over the wound, drawing healing circulation, and blood flow. The wound closed up but left a hard scab that eventually opened up again and before I knew it I was in the hospital with a blood poisoning sepsis.

After pumping me full of antibiotics, and I admit reluctantly, saving my life, all the good doctors conferred and agreed that the toe should be amputated. I disagreed and consulted an Orthopedist who declared that he could straighten the big old toe and that I would be happy ever after. And while he was about doing the big toe he promised to address an infected blister I had on the adjoining index toe, also known as the first little piggy.

That did not work out too well. Big old Joe did not straighten and the piggy looked limp and very ill. Next visit was to a wound clinic in the hope they might have a way to fix my festering wounds. They suggested I might suffer from a bone infection and prescribed an urgent MRI. I duly received a call from the imaging center, where they wanted to know my weight, height, color of my eyes, my mother’s maiden name and a lot of other unrelated stuff, just to come to the conclusion that because of my pacemaker they could not perform the urgent MRI within the next 6 weeks.

Now I have decided to chop off the first little piggy with a sharp chisel and save Medicare a load of money. That’s how my Dad used to amputate fingers or toes when he was a country doctor. Old-fashioned emergency surgery.

That brings me to a suggestion my wife made recently. To keep the doctors honest she suggests they should be made to agree to only getting paid for successful treatments. Particularly in case of surgeries for which they bill ridiculous amounts of money. When you die on the operating table, the quack shouldn’t get paid. When you survive but end up the same or worse, don’t even bother to bill me or my insurance. Just think of what that would do to the premiums we pay.

Another cute suggestion she came up with is as follows. Before you award a doctor the privilege of cutting you up, you make her agree to sign over to you or your dependents, fifty percent of the claim she bills your insurance with. In most cases that would cover the price of a nice new luxury car, perhaps even an EV.

In the event you have an even brighter idea on the subject, please let my wife know.

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