Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Slamming the door

Recently, I was getting up to get ready to take my daughter to an event when my doorbell rang.  I got up and answered the door.  A woman was standing there with a clipboard.

Woman: "Hi!  My name is Christina!"

Me: "Um, hi?"

Woman: "What's your name?"

Me: "Who are you?"

Woman: "Oh!  I'm with Amnesty International and I--"

Me: "Look, I'm sorry, but I'm in a rush to take my daughter somewhere and I don't have time."

Woman: "Well, let me just tell you for thirty seconds about Amnesty International..." [goes on for about ten seconds while I'm standing there, trying not to be outright rude and also cold because she's letting all the cold air into the house and I'm in a short-sleeved shirt]

Me: "Look, I don't want to slam the door in your face, but I told you I'm in a rush to get somewhere, so I'm going to close the door."

The whole interaction really pissed me off because I've heard Amnesty International isn't a bad organization, but she got me so angry in that minute of interaction that I would never consider giving them money ever.  I assume this pushy approach must work on some people, but seriously, at the point that I said I needed to go, did she really think I was listening or going to hand her money?  

I give a lot of money to charity, but I would NEVER give money to a solicitor who showed up at my front door.  

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Lovenox

Me: "Hi, this is Dr. McFizz calling from My Hospital about a mutual patient RareFirstName RareLastName.  I have a question about the patient."

Receptionist: "Okay, can you spell his name?"

Me: [spells name and gives date of birth]

Receptionist: "And can you give me his home address?"

Me: "No, I don't have that."

Receptionist: "Well, we need it to make sure we have the right patient."

Me: "You mean there's another 81-year-old man in your system named RareFirstName RareLastName?"

Receptionist: "We need it for security."

Me: "Fine." [I find a computer, log in, get the address, and read it to her.]

Receptionist: "And can you verify his phone number?"

Me: [reads off phone number]

Receptionist: "And can you verify his insurance?"

Me: "No. I will not. This is ridiculous.  I have never once had to give this information to speak with a doctor's office to get medical information.  I just need to know how long your office would like him be on Lovenox for."

Receptionist: "Well, that's a pill, right?  I don't see anything about it here, so he should continue it till his appointment."

Me: "Lovenox is an injection."

Receptionist: "Well, it doesn't mention anything about it here.  So I'd say continue it until his appointment next month."

Me: "So you're saying he needs to inject himself with a blood thinner every day for the next month because you can't be bothered to ask anyone about it."

Receptionist: "Ummm.... let me get you his nurse."

OMG, I try not to yell at people on the phone, but seriously, if you don't know the answer to a medical question, don't just make something up! 

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Help!

Please help me!

If you read and enjoyed my new book, The Ex, would you consider leaving a review?? I have had multiple people tell me they left reviews but not even one of them has shown up yet in Amazon.  I think my book may be broken or god knows what.  So if you are at all inclined to help me, please do this and let me know if it posts!  I’d be eternally grateful!

Here's a helpful link.

Friday, February 8, 2019

The Yearbook

My medical school didn’t have an official yearbook.

For this reason, one of the students in our class, let’s call her Donna, decided to lead us in creating a yearbook. We all wanted a yearbook, so everyone was very eager. I myself dedicated a lot of my time to help work on the pictures and the design. We also sold advertising space to local businesses and a lot of people’s family members bought ad space to congratulate the graduates.

When graduation came, Donna told us that the yearbooks were not ready, in part because it significant number of people had not paid for them on time. So she didn’t have enough money and they missed the publishers deadline.

Over the next year or two, we got intermittent updates from Donna about the publishing process and had to keep giving her updated mailing addresses for when the book was finally ready.

It is now over a decade later, and I still have not received the yearbook that I worked hard on and spent $50 for.

At this point, I’m not going to make a thing of it. Donna is my Facebook friend, but not actual friend, and I can’t imagine bringing that up to her. And sadly, I’ve not really kept in touch with any of my med school friends.  So I suppose it’s possible some people did get the yearbook and it was actually printed. But the last time I asked somebody about it, which was years after graduation, nobody had.

So I have to wonder, what happened to all the money? I mean, we are probably talking about $10,000 or so.  Where are our yearbooks??  I don’t even want it that much at this point, but I’m just curious what happened!