So I drove across town to an urgent care clinic on the southern fringe of the affluent Arcadia district (on the northern fringe of a barrio) because the nearest urgent care clinic to me has gawdawful customer reviews.
Along about 5:00 p.m. my temp suddenly spiked and I thought “yipe!” Grabbed a flashlight, ran to the bathroom mirror, peered into the throat, and saw much more scary-looking white crud than the last time I worked up the courage to look in there. Since this is in the running for the worst sore throat I’ve ever had, naturally I figure the streptococcus had its tiny tentacles around my neck.
There’s an urgent care clinic closer to me, but it’s had some pretty negative reviews.
Okay. I suppose one ought not to take consumer reviews on the Internet as worth the pixels they’re published in. But that place sent some very angry people out onto the Web.
So off I go across the city, about a 20- or 30-minute drive, to a place with many happy reviews. I took a sheaf of Medicare open-enrollment paperwork, about fifty poorly reproduced pages that one is required to plow through by way of figuring out if one should keep the current providers, look for someone cheaper, or opt for someone more expensive who provides better benefits. Figured it would take about an hour to sift through all this bureaucratic excrescence, which, I expected, would occupy around a third of the time I’d be sitting in the urgent-care waiting room.
But…
To my astonishment, there was NO WAIT!
I couldn’t believe it.
By the time I got to their screening tech, the temp was back to normal. Either that or something’s wrong with my mercury thermometer.
They took me right in and plopped me in an examining room. Naturally, I expected about a 45-minute wait there, so I went back to sifting through pages of Medicare comparisons.
About two minutes later the doctor surfaced. Examined. Opined that it’s not strep throat.
Did you know that if you have the head congestion, cough, and sinus headache typical of a cold or flu, a sore throat is probably not streptococcal but viral? Who knew? Not moi!
He remarked that if it was worse tomorrow I should come back. He must have seen the subliminal wince, because he said, “If you want, we can do a strep throat test now. If it’s negative, you’ll know you don’t have strep.”
Uhm…”You’re the doctor. Whatever you think is best is fine by me.”
So he did the unnecessary test, and yes, it was negatory.
Thank goodness!
They sent me out into the night without once asking for payment. They accepted Medicare (that alone is a miracle), and they asked for nothing. No doubt a bill will come in the mail. But for the nonce, at least I didn’t have to run up the credit card on the last day of the billing cycle!
Now to get back to work…
I didn’t know that about strep throat. At one point I had strep throat about three times in five years. Come to think of it, I had no congestion, cough or headache, just a fever, pain, and extreme tiredness.
I got to know exactly what it felt like, so I was surprised the final time I went to the doc and they did one of those instant tests that came up negative. I told them I knew it was strep throat, but they wouldn’t treat me for it with a negative test. They did take a culture, though. A day later when the culture results were available they called me and said “You have strep throat.” I felt like saying “I told you so!!” This was about 20 years ago so I guess those instant tests weren’t completely accurate back then.
No, they’re not 100% accurate now, either. The definitive result is from a culture.
Sorry you’re ill, but glad you now know of a place that accepts Medicare. Mirabile sick-tu? 😉
Yeah. I’m afraid I’m going to have to recruit a bunch of doctors that a) are closer to my house than the Mayo (which is halfway to Payson from here!) and b) will accept Medicare assignment.
My ole Doc is even more aged than me. It’s hard to believe he’s still doddering into the clinic…certainly, if I earned a doctor’s income, I’d have jumped off the treadmill a LONG time ago. Since seeing him is now more of a social event than a doctor-patient consult and I now get shunted off to whatever resident is available, it’s really no longer worth the traipse, the hassle, and the expense. {sigh}
Problem is, the Mayo’s hospital saved my life when I couldn’t even get St. Joe’s to triage me when I stumbled in there in an advanced, critical stage of appendicitis. If you don’t make an appointment during a year, you fall off the Mayo’s rolls, and they won’t take you back at all if you’re on Medicare. The only Medicare patients they’ll see are people who were existing patients when they were forced onto Medicare, and so if they decide you’re not a patient anymore, you’re not gettin’ into their hospital. Ever again!