Published by JPLand on 24 Feb 2008 at 09:08 pm
In Case of Emergency, Find Stamp
It’s rare, but occasionally, my wife talks me into going to the doctor. It just so happens that I need to go to a specialist in the upcoming months. Therefore, I have to fill-out a ton of forms about my health history and the history of anyone I’ve seen walking down the street in the past 6 years. Most of the things are “have you ever experienced stomach problems, allergies, blindness, sweating, death, etc”. You know, the standard questions. And to be honest, if I knew half of what they were asking, I don’t think that I’d need to actually be going to a doctor.
<Begin Side Note> We took Butterfly to the doctor over a year ago. She woke-up in the middle of the night with a severe allergic reaction. So, they sent us to an allergist (?). We’re sitting there in the room and he’s asking us questions trying to solve the problem and actually asks “Does she have any food allergies?” I tried really hard not to answer something silly like “Oh yeah, she’s allergic to peanuts, but she sure does love her peanut butter…” What came out was “If I knew that, we wouldn’t be here!” These people went to school for how long? <End Side Note>
At any rate, when filling out the form, I came across one part that made me really wonder if I wanted to consider this doctor. It said “The following line must be filled-out. Please write the name, address and phone number of someone for us to contact in case of emergency.” And below there, was one line to put this information. So, since there’s one line, there’s only space for one person. Let me paint a scenario for you:
There’s a medical emergency at this doctor’s office. So, quickly, they pull my file to see who to contact. There they have my wife’s name, address and phone number.
As the individual who is experiencing the medical emergency, I’m really hoping that they use the phone number instead of the address to contact my wife. Maybe three days later she’ll get a post card that says “Husband has internal bleeding, please come as soon as mail truck arrives…hopefully this message not delayed over a weekend.”
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe this explains the skyrocketing cost of medical care across the US. Every time the post office raises the price of stamps, doctors have to upgrade their emergency contact notification devices.