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illness, healthcare, TV
Jan. 23rd, 2018 11:14 amI have the flu.
I started feeling fever on Thursday afternoon and thought I just had a cold. Friday, late morning, I started getting chills, even when sitting next to the hot radiator. A long hot shower helped, but only temporarily. And a few hours later, a small ache in my back. My friend told me that I should go to urgent care, because I was still in a window where Tamiflu would be effective. I wrapped myself up and walked the few blocks to a neighborhood urgent care place, and they treated me nicely and tested me and told me I had the flu and prescribed oseltamivir. I asked them to check with my little independent neighborhood pharmacy to make sure they weren't out of stock. They called and told me: they have one left and they're now saving it for you.
I picked it up and took it home and I don't think I've left the apartment since. I've been trying to rest, drink fluids, you know, all the usual stuff. Yesterday I was well enough to look at social media again, I guess -- it does feel like work, which is something I ought to remember and take account of.
I evidently am some kind of alien to clinic receptionists because I actually want to read things before signing them and ask for copies of things that I am attesting to receiving copies of. This urgent care place was not an exception. "I would like the Notice of Privacy Practices, please. No, this says it's the Registration, it doesn't say it's the Notice of Privacy Practices. It says here that I'm saying I received it, so I would like a copy...." She had NO IDEA where this mythical document was. I looked around and eventually saw a privacy document in the row o' shiny brochures on a table nearby and decided this was probably it.
But the receptionist was trying to be nice, and other than this bit of kind-of-expected-friction, and other than having to pay, what, a $35 co-pay for the visit, the experience was pretty great. I got seen within about 20 minutes of walking in, the initial exam was kind and efficient (I asked whether he was a doctor -- no, he is an X-ray tech), the second person I saw was also kind and efficient (her name tag said "PA-C" at the end of her name, so, a physician assistant, I think -- I didn't know PAs could prescribe medicine, but evidently they can), and when he saw I was on the way out the door the X-ray tech reminded me that if things got worse I could come back, and that they would be open till 8 that night. I saw in the registration paperwork that some of the people seeing me would be independent contractors and not employees, and I don't know which were which, nor what effect that had.
Yesterday I got a follow-up call from the urgent care place asking how I was doing, and checking whether my medication was helping. I cannot remember the last time I got such a thing from a regular physician.
I'm thinking about something I wrote eleven years ago, about the competition urgent care clinics pose for traditional doctor's offices, where I said "US health care has the worst usability of any major industry or agency." And I talked about it a bit more in a 2014 keynote speech I gave, about usability as a social justice issue. I am once again thinking about the places in my life where I systematically make it harder or easier for people to do things I want them to do.
But I have the flu so I am also ok with trying to think about less taxing things. Forged in Fire is really fun. If I start a Forged in Fire fanblog it will be called "Not Including the Tang". And I kind of want a historical romance to read where one or both of the protagonists are competing in a blacksmithing competition in, like, 1830 Sheffield.
I started feeling fever on Thursday afternoon and thought I just had a cold. Friday, late morning, I started getting chills, even when sitting next to the hot radiator. A long hot shower helped, but only temporarily. And a few hours later, a small ache in my back. My friend told me that I should go to urgent care, because I was still in a window where Tamiflu would be effective. I wrapped myself up and walked the few blocks to a neighborhood urgent care place, and they treated me nicely and tested me and told me I had the flu and prescribed oseltamivir. I asked them to check with my little independent neighborhood pharmacy to make sure they weren't out of stock. They called and told me: they have one left and they're now saving it for you.
I picked it up and took it home and I don't think I've left the apartment since. I've been trying to rest, drink fluids, you know, all the usual stuff. Yesterday I was well enough to look at social media again, I guess -- it does feel like work, which is something I ought to remember and take account of.
I evidently am some kind of alien to clinic receptionists because I actually want to read things before signing them and ask for copies of things that I am attesting to receiving copies of. This urgent care place was not an exception. "I would like the Notice of Privacy Practices, please. No, this says it's the Registration, it doesn't say it's the Notice of Privacy Practices. It says here that I'm saying I received it, so I would like a copy...." She had NO IDEA where this mythical document was. I looked around and eventually saw a privacy document in the row o' shiny brochures on a table nearby and decided this was probably it.
But the receptionist was trying to be nice, and other than this bit of kind-of-expected-friction, and other than having to pay, what, a $35 co-pay for the visit, the experience was pretty great. I got seen within about 20 minutes of walking in, the initial exam was kind and efficient (I asked whether he was a doctor -- no, he is an X-ray tech), the second person I saw was also kind and efficient (her name tag said "PA-C" at the end of her name, so, a physician assistant, I think -- I didn't know PAs could prescribe medicine, but evidently they can), and when he saw I was on the way out the door the X-ray tech reminded me that if things got worse I could come back, and that they would be open till 8 that night. I saw in the registration paperwork that some of the people seeing me would be independent contractors and not employees, and I don't know which were which, nor what effect that had.
Yesterday I got a follow-up call from the urgent care place asking how I was doing, and checking whether my medication was helping. I cannot remember the last time I got such a thing from a regular physician.
I'm thinking about something I wrote eleven years ago, about the competition urgent care clinics pose for traditional doctor's offices, where I said "US health care has the worst usability of any major industry or agency." And I talked about it a bit more in a 2014 keynote speech I gave, about usability as a social justice issue. I am once again thinking about the places in my life where I systematically make it harder or easier for people to do things I want them to do.
But I have the flu so I am also ok with trying to think about less taxing things. Forged in Fire is really fun. If I start a Forged in Fire fanblog it will be called "Not Including the Tang". And I kind of want a historical romance to read where one or both of the protagonists are competing in a blacksmithing competition in, like, 1830 Sheffield.
