cheapseats

15 April 2008



Mercy West Medical Center
Urgent Care Walk-In Clinic
1601 N.W. 114th St.
Clive, IA 50325



Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

I traveled for two days last December to get to Des Moines to witness the spectacle of the Iowa caucuses, but I picked up killer bronchitis on the way. I'm exaggerating, but not. My chest seized up so tightly and so painfully on the train that I was obliged to consider the possibility that I would take ridiculousness to new levels by dying anonymously somewhere outside of Topeka, Kansas on Christmas Eve, no less.

By the time I arrived at your clinic, I was...what's the word I'm looking for...ah, A Bitch. More precisely, I was overbearing and impatient and unpleasant and uncooperative. I regret that, and I apologize. You took care of me anyway. I appreciate that, and I thank you.

In the time-honored tradition of rationalization, I would like to clarify that I wasn't overbearing, impatient, unpleasant and uncooperative on account of having to wait to see a doctor. Even I am not such a bitch as to expect instant service wherever I go, whenever I arrive.

For Universal Healthcare, believe you me, I am prepared to wait to see a doctor in the state-run clinic nearest my need to see a doctor.

It's the paperwork that sends me around the bend...well, that and having to see a doctor at all when I knew, from experience, what was wrong with me and what I needed.

I am TWO AND A HALF YEARS into ongoing, painful, frustrating, painful, expensive, painful, disappointing, painful medical issues pursuant to surgeries that made my feet, plural, substantially worse than they were when I was motivated to have corrective surgery in the first place. Again and again, over and over, I fill out the same paperwork. I actually cried at a clinic in Georgia when they handed me The Clipboard...twelve pages, that packet was.

This pain, aggravation and expense...combined with the bitterness I feel toward surgeons who hid behind attorneys rather than assume responsibility for committing me to this misery...render the medical arena one in which my language is consistently Rated R. Ask 'em at my new podiatrist's office, they'll confirm it...Bitch.

It is my understanding that my Government already knows everything there is to know about a person. I am not one bit troubled by a central banking system for such personal information as will expedite my receipt of medical treatment at any clinic or hospital in the country. Name, rank and serial number, as it were. Allergic reactions, blood panel, x-rays, in-case-of information. It is the most amazing waste of time-read-that-life filling out the same forms again and again and again. Not to mention, except I will, it is a colossal waste of money and natural resources.

I am not one bit troubled by centralization of medical information, if it has the security and reliability of an ATM. I have never had an error dispensed at an ATM, not once. And if anyone was snooping around to see whether I had one or ten thousand dollars in my checking account, I never heard about it.

"Here's my I.D.," the one that I, as a citizen, can produce. Or maybe I can't, because I left it at home. No problemo, because when I give you my social security number, you can easily verify that I am, in fact, me.

"Please have a seat...a doctor will be with you in approximately 40 minutes. Magazines in the rack, drinks down the hall...take your cell phone calls outside."

Back to that apology angle, it is obvious that you are not responsible for the plethora of paperwork that hovers over people like an albatross, that shits on them. The regular abuse that front office managers and customer service representatives suffer...shooting the messenger, I have found, is become a blood sport...while the Money Men seclude themselves in back offices and ivory towers is exactly why front office managers and customer service representatives should be better paid, with ample staffing to shoulder the burden of a steady stream of people who are out of sorts. Man oh man, there can't be one in a thousand people who enter an urgent care clinic for a not-icky reason. That's hard work. Normally I'd say "that's hard fucking work," to better emphasize how hard, but my Government is clamping down on what is euphemistically referred to as "salty language." Salty...who came up with THAT?

While I was in Iowa, I was told that there is a notable Crystal Meth problem in your state, particularly in rural areas. Actually, they used the word epidemic, as have others since. I am hoping that the Iowans who inexplicably kick off an entire nation's presidential politics are more concerned about a Crystal Meth epidemic than they are about salty language.

Let me re-phrase me. I recognize that your jobs are exceedingly difficult...comprised largely of regular attendance on people who are unwell and/or on people who are attending people who are unwell, which I imagine is sometimes worse...and so I am all the sorrier for being not-nice. At Christmastime, in particular.

I can top that. After behaving like Scrooge, I have returned from an absence of several weeks to find that a bill for my co-pay sits among unpaid bills. As a practical matter, a people who behave in overbearing, impatient, unpleasant and uncooperative manners are well advised to pay their bills promptly.

I spend my limited discretionary income on travel, yay...and podiatrists, alas...also on the many homeless people who continually hit me up on the streets of Los Angeles. Who would ever have thunk it? So often am I approached for money by people who are clearly not faking living on the street, separately from whether or not it is their fault that they live on the street, that it is a bona fide budget item. How can I NOT give to people who so obviously have so much less than I do? Anyway, a variety of circumstances prevent my treating y'all to some great thing, as I would like to do...perhaps an air hockey table for the employee lounge, how fun would that be? Plus, it would constitute exercise. The presidential fitness challenge kicks off today, did you know?

Quarterback Eli Manning kicked off the challenge: Thirty minutes of exercise five days per week for six weeks, from 4/15 to 5/31. I can do that.

And if I'm already gonna do that, I may as well eat light and healthy.

Then, if I'm gonna eat right, I really oughtta give up cigarettes. And Starbucks.

You are perhaps familiar with If You Give A Mouse A Cookie?

If I'm already doing all that, I may as well boycott Exxon Mobil while I'm walking more and driving less. It is really very unseemly that Exxon Mobil posts record profits, quarter after quarter, while we are at war in the Middle East...where the oil is.

If we boycott one company, it will be obliged to lower its price in order to lure back its customers. The others will lower their price to keep them. For real. You don't even have to cut down on gas to boycott Exxon Mobil. Of course, given the prices we pay for gas and our vulnerability because of oil, clearly it is a good idea to cut down on gasoline consumption.

THAT gets me thinking about how Iowa could be making a lot more money in the lucrative alternative bio-fuel business, if the Government would not hamstring farmers from growing hemp. But that is a whole other subject, and I have already gone on. There is a quote that I love, and that I may have printed on future stationery..."I am writing you a long letter because I lack the time to make it short."

Please accept these candy necklaces as an absurd token of apology. I was at a candy concession at Farmer's Market in Los Angeles, wondering what I could send to a front office where individually wrapped would be particularly important, when suddenly these caught my eye. Perfect. Partly because they were right in my price range and partly because they provided a gimmick to explain why I am sending a box of anything to people who may not actually be the people who attended me and/or who I am unlikely ever to see again. Although, I could. I DID tell 'em at the Flying J that I'd be back, but I certainly hope it will be without a condition requiring medical attention.

Sooo, here's the not-party affiliated line...the reason I am sending candy necklaces is because they are reminiscent of my childhood, when I was taught the manners that I did not display in your clinic, and because they always seem cheerful, a trait to which I might better aspire as an adult. Yeah, okay, I know they aren't among healthy snack choices for the Presidential Fitness Challenge but, in the same we that we don't look a gift horse in the mouth, we don't look at gift candy in the sugar content. , as they say online.

Which is where this letter is viewable, along with an assortment of other material some part of which I hope may be of some interest or entertainment to some of you:

ImplausibleEndeavors.com
click on Main
click on The Word
click on cc: God
click on Sorry & Sad



All best this year and beyond,



cc: anhailla

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