doctors raze some of them are pretty funny. "when you hurt yourself, you hurt yourself pink," dr. wong said. "what you do is, you wear tensor bandage twenty four hours a day. don't put any weight on it. i don't see any broken bones. but if you need to kick someone, you use other foot! okay?" 130812 ... nr they just so often wrongly believe nothing's wrong without doing the tests or research often the behaviour i don't understand makes me the angriest 200621 ... raze they killed my grandfather and my grandmother before him. you don't die from a broken hip. you do die when someone is so rough with you they make you physically sick and then they let you choke on your own vomit until aspiration pneumonia kills you. they're not killing me. comes to it, i'll operate on myself with whatever's handy around the house. 201023 ... nr we shouldn't be responsible for their well-being. we shouldn't have to worry about damaging their pride at the expense of our own well-being. my dentist said "i've been doing this for 30 years." i know; that's why i'm asking you and trying to understand from you why my teeth feel weird. 211013 ... unhinged are corruptible human beings with bias wired into their brains just like the rest of us doctors dismissed my grandma as hysterical when she told them her meds weren't working. she died at 67. doctors keep telling my mother that she is fat and needs to lose weight and basically refuse to do anything to help her until she is no longer obese. maybe she's been obese, on a dusting treadmill my whole life because there is an underlying medical condition like her hypothyroidism that is causing her to be fat and if the fucking doctors fixed that she wouldn't be fat anymore. but what do i know. i'm not a doctor. the status of being a doctor inflates the ego to the point that many doctors don't even tolerate questions anymore let alone tolerate a patient's right to refuse. medical mandates for all because doctors know best. nevermind the side effects. shut up and take your medicine. and when you develop heart inflammation or cancer or bells palsy we will give you another pill for that. nutrition? who needs that? quit your critical thinking while you're at it. that's dangerous for society. 211013 ... raze dr. hurst was my first family doctor. i always thought he would have been a great choice to voice "garfield" in an animated film until they got bill murray to phone it in for a fat paycheque. there's probably a picture of his bearded, bespectacled face next to the word "smug" in the dictionary. he told my mother she was stoic once. she had to look it up. she didn't know what it meant. after she figured out it was a compliment, she wouldn't stop talking about it. "i'm stoic. did you hear what he said? he thinks i'm stoic." he was good with crying kids. i'll give him that. when my sister was screaming and trying to get the hell away from him, he looked into her ear with his otoscope and said, "there's a potato in here!" that calmed her down. he rewarded me for being healthy enough that i didn't need to see him during a good chunk of my adolescence by destroying all my medical records and dumping me as a patient. i don't even know what my blood type is. and i'm thirty-eight years old. after that, it was dr. sinclair. he was great. sure, you'd sit in his waiting room for three hours before you got in to see him. scheduling an appointment for a specific time was meaningless. you might as well flush your whole day down the toilet. but once your ass was on the exam table, you'd have an hour-long conversation that touched on music, the legal profession, human nature, and courtney love. it was like having a few beers with a friend, only *this* friend could diagnose whatever ailed you in the time it took you to untie your shoes. when i couldn't get in to see him, i'd go to the walk-in clinic. i walked there once or twice, because sometimes i like to be literal. dr. sinclair came to both shows i played at mackenzie_hall. i don't think too many people can say a thing like that about their doctor. he was a big fan of "love_songs_for_nihilists". he requested "crustacean cancer survivor" at the first show. i played it for him, but i felt like it lost a little something without the harmonies and the second guitar part. he got busted for drug trafficking. i'm convinced it was a frame job. he was stripped of his medical license and handed a five-year prison sentence. so. back to the walk-in clinic. that was all right until my dad started having problems with his dominant hand early last year. he woke up one morning and it felt like the hand wasn't a part of his body anymore. he could move it, sort of, but it was weak and slow to respond to the signals his brain was sending. he had a hard time holding a comb, a toothbrush, a pen. after a week of that, he went to see dr. schwartz at the walk-in clinic. we'd both seen schwartz plenty of times before. he was always pleasant. this time, not so much. he asked my dad what was wrong with his hand. my dad told him. "do you know how many people i see here every day?" schwartz asked. "no," my dad said. "hundreds. do you know what we *do* here? this is a waste of my time. you should be going to see a family doctor for something like this." he was yelling. he was pissed. i'd seen him for meaningless shit like a wonky toenail and he was all smiles. now he was bitching at my dad for being worried about his unresponsive right hand. my dad told him we didn't have a family doctor. schwartz got even more belligerent. "why are you even here? you look fine. there's nothing wrong with you." my dad told him again what was wrong with his hand. schwartz had him do a few simple exercises. "i don't see what the problem is," he said. he had the nurse take my dad's blood pressure. "it's a little high," she said. "what's a normal reading?" my dad asked. "one-forty over ninety." "and what's mine?" she wouldn't tell him. schwartz left the room. he came back with a referral letter for an emergency room doctor. "i think you've had a stroke," schwartz said. "i want you to go to the hospital. but you should really have a family doctor. i don't have time for this." he didn't have a stroke. we never found out what the problem was. his hand got better on its own. it just took a while. we didn't go back to the walk-in clinic. dr. sinclair was out of prison by then. we asked him who his family doctor was and got him to take us on as new patients. he's scottish. he's nice. he doesn't yell at us for wasting his time. so there's that. 211015 ... tender_square “i walked there once or twice because i liked to be literal.” what a great line. i’m sorry to hear about your dad’s hand, that must’ve been so scary to go through. both of my parents have had serious hand issues that started last year, too. my dad’s had a couple operations to fix the trigger fingers he keeps getting, but that’s only after the cortisone shots stop working that they’ll refer him. my mom’s persistent numbness in her right hand hasn’t gone away—she has difficulty writing for long stretches now. dr. schwartz sounds like an absolute prick. it angered me so much to read how he treated your father. fuck, my blood pressure is high now thinking about it. i’m sorry you guys went through that. shit like this pisses me off to no end, your dad needed legitimate medical care and was rejected. meanwhile, my sisters show up at the er constantly because they’ve had too much to drink, taking beds away from people who need them and they’re NURSES. they would not be pulling this shit in the us if they had to pay $1,000 every time they went to the emergency for care (i know because i paid this once for an asthma attack and that was with insurance). 211015 ... nr a doctor once recommended a psychology book after seeing positive uti results. on the plus side, it inspired me to write a fun satire piece... 211015 ... kerry recently a doctor said to her nurse (in front of me) that i would make a good case study. she’s probably right but i still thought it was rude. i miss dr meuse. he had the tiniest pupils i’ve ever seen on a stone-cold sober person but had a soft voice and when i complimented him on his spotted socks he said “yeah these are my crazy socks” and blushed. 211015 ... kerry (also, nr, that is hilarious and i’m glad you took advantage of it) 211015 ... unhinged i would rather be able to walk into an emergency room whenever i thought i needed it (even if i didn't) instead of avoiding it because i know i wouldn't be able to afford the bill. the sickcare system in america is a joke. about a third of covid deaths can be attributed to the fact that most people avoid medical care until it's too late because they would rather be dead than bankrupt (not to mention the amount of people who stay in jobs that they hate just for the healthcare) 211015 what's it to you? who go blather from