High Quality Doctors

One of the conditions of my leaving the hospital was that I had to have a primary care physician in Connecticut lined up to manage my care. Well, as it turns out, the last doctor I had here was my pediatrician. So we make the appropriate appointments, and out I go. Well not quite, but bear with me here.

I had my first (and subsequently my last) appointment with my pediatrician--who shall remain nameless--on Friday. Apparently it took me a couple of days to write about it. Regardless, My mom and I go in for a quick checkup of my leg (which has two gigantic incisions in it) to make sure it was healing properly. Just to get you, fair reader, up to speed, on my inner-left leg, I have about 10 inches of "linear" a.k.a. normal stitches that honestly looks like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. The surgeons couldn't close the other side so they had to use a skin graft, which makes the wound look like an eye. Delicious. The only things protecting my wounds from the outside air are some Vaseline gauze, some non-stick pads and an ace bandage.

Anyway, my mom and I begin unwrapping the ace and taking the wrappings off, and Dr. Weak Stomach just begins backing away. He looks at my leg (from across the room) and made the determination that everything looked all right from a medical standpoint. He then added--and this is what kills me--"but man does that [my skin graft] look gross." I mean, don't get me wrong, it does indeed look gross, but that is definitely not what you want to hear from a medical professional regarding your body. I'm sure our faithful doctor made a similar comment the last time he saw a wound like that--in his textbook in med school.

I mean look, the man is a good pediatrician, but he just wasn't set up for this. At this point, I attempted to end the appointment as quickly as possible and get the hell out of there. I quickly discard all the information that Dr. Bedside Manner had annunciated to me and made a mental note to never go back there again.

Since then, and say what you will, I've decided to keep my care within the Ivy League community. Elitist? Yes? But I didn't spend 24 days in the hospital to have some joker with a degree from the back of a cereal box fuck it up in the last quarter mile. Is that even an expression? I doubt it.

So now that I've officially decided I'm rambling, I bid you, dear reader, adieu.