Well I dragged my happy butt back to the crackpots. I thought of every conceivable reason to not go, I even told my wife to go back to bed that's how much I dreaded seeing these people.
In my opinion of doctors and having been to many of them through my trials and tribulations these crackpots are the bottom of the barrel. They are barely capable of practicing medicine and instead run solely on a solid business plan of over billing patients and insurance companies. In fact out of all my experiences with this clinic they have done one thing correct and that was referring me to another doctor for the pain meds side of my program.
This morning we drove all the way down to the offices, checked in and waited. My wife took the boys to go get something to eat from the bagel shop down the road as I did not know how long we would be. This clinic has a habit of telling you your coming in for one thing and then running a litany of tests or wanting to jam a needle into your spine. Today was no different and I suspected it before I even left the house.
From the start my visit went south. After having been made to drive all the way down south to see these people as I am checking in the girl at the desk, a new girl, looks at my address and tells me that they have a clinic in my town. Not only do they have a clinic it is in the hospital that is literally 5 doors down from my house. I could have been getting the same treatment from the same doctors and could have hobbled to and from the damn clinic.
The nurse calls my name and leads me through this mega complex they have, no other doctors but there own, with marble floors and walls trimmed in gold. As she is leading me through I can't help but think that perhaps if they spent less money and time on opulent fixtures they could afford staff that know what they are doing. While I am dreaming in la-la land the nurse is asking me about my epidurals, saying "so this is your third epidural in the series, right?" I am stumped and tell her "no, I have not had any with you before" which was funny because at this point I had not even decided to have one at all. This more or less just reinforces my beliefs that this clinic is run in the most slipshod manner possible and their whole goal is to get people in and out so they can bill the insurance. It only got worse when she asked me the same question again as did the second nurse and the doctor. Now I was starting to wonder and made them let me look at my chart to ensure they had mine and not someone else's.
We finally get to the exam room and she takes my vital signs and then tells me "to wait, the doctor will be right in". Thankfully the wait this time was not long and the doctor was congenial. He quickly checked me over and then made the comment of "you're the one who won't take his shots." I was perplexed but figure he read my charts, I have been adamant in my past visits about holding off on epidurals as long as possible. I told the doctor that "Yes, I have refused them in the past but it has come to a point where I can no longer go forward without them." So of course I had to take an epidural this afternoon and of all the epidurals I have ever had, this one was by far the worst. He did not even bother with the lidocaine before the shot and instead he went straight in with the ESI.
The pain was not bad but it is also not something that I would want to do again nor will I let them. After the doctor was finished the wheeled me on the gurney to a recovery area where the rest of the torturees were waiting out there time. After having an epidural you have to wait XX amount of time to check for reactions. If you are asymptomatic then you are cut loose and sent home. Of course while I was lying there waiting to get out the nurse came back to tell me the doctor wants to do an MRI. No remember I said they like to spring crap like this on you but I was ready. I told them that they would have to reschedule the appointment for a week from Monday. With my back killing me and my family waiting downstairs there was no way I was going to have them waiting around for another hour or so while they jammed me into the tube.
Anyway, nothing has changed since my last visit with them. I am still not at all convinced that they are truly a clinic I want to continue seeing though. They have failed to impress me yet and instead I find myself having to double check them to ensure that I am getting the proper care. If that is going to be happening every single time I visit them then I need to find someone else.
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