Eye Doctors and Douchebags...a rant.
In the last couple of months both my wife and little girl have had to go to the Opthamologist for one reason or another. But of course this is modern America and so instead of this being a small matter and the girls being merely examined and treated it became two separate journeys into the land of the over-educated douchebag doctors.
My wife is a nurse, she graduated from Colorado College with honors and then attended Nursing school and became an Registered Nurse. At her place of employment she reads charts, dispenses medication and turns in reports to doctors..you know so they can find out what is going on with their own patients. When she started her career several years ago she noticed she was having trouble focusing on some paperwork and was suffering from headaches. She went to the eye doc and got a prescription for eye glasses. A year goes by and we move from Colorado Springs, Colorado to the Denver area and she goes to a new eye doc to have her eyes checked and perhaps to update her prescription. The new doctor calmly tells her that she does not need glasses and refuses to write her for a prescription.
My wife proceeds to give the doctor the "what'choo talkin 'bout Willis" face and explains that she does indeed need the glasses and has already been using them for some time. Not only that but that they are terribly important for her work and the care of the patients she is responsible for. She asks the douche, er...eye doctor to reconsider and he stands by his decision. She leaves the office with a good sized bill and no glasses. She then attempts to leave the Opthamologist's office but she cannot find the door BECAUSE SHE NEEDS GLASSES. Nothing is sweeter than going to your chosen doctor's office, having he or she not really help with your health issue and being charged for the whole experience.
Next up in the tales of Opthamology gone bad is the woeful tale of my four year old daughter going to a different eye doc. A few months back my little girl had a red spot on one of her eyelids, it was not going away so we went to the Pediatrician. The Pediatrician sent us to an Opthamologist because she was sure the red spot was a small harmless cyst and may need to be removed by an eye specialist. We made the appointment.
First thing to suck was they could not take us for three weeks, we called around, this was the case everywhere we called, apparently Denver is full of practically blind children, or kids with crud oozing from their eyes. The horror, the horror. We waited three weeks as the small red spot grew to a larger size, we became concerned. I was out of town for work when the appointment day came so my wife took our daughter. Second thing to totally suck was a nurse came in the exam room to check out my daughter out, she looked at both eyes and then turned to my wife and asked "So where's the problem?" my wife took a deep breath and pointed the red, swollen eyelid out to the nurse. I can only guess that this particular nurse did not have the eyeglasses she truly needed due to the hack work of the same above mentioned adult eye doc. Needless to say this was bothersome. The third thing to go wrong was the eye doc himself, he finally comes to examine my daughter and sits down and starts poking and prodding my four year old without so much as a "Hello."
He then barks that she needs glasses and wants to do a full eye exam and dilation. He leaves the room abruptly and is gone for a time. The nurses continue with a full eye exam and dilation, the doc returns and says "Yep, she needs glasses." My wife goes "Okay, but we came here to have her eyelid looked after." The doctor huffs and explains that the cyst will heal on it's own in time and goes back to talking about glasses. He leaves again, the half-blind nurse returns and she too talks about glasses...talk about irony.
My wife leaves with a prescription for glasses for a child that has not yet learned to read, and a lecture on the time it takes for a small eyelid cyst to heal..oh and another large bill for the whole experience. As an American living in the most advanced society in the world one has to wonder why we have to go the doctor and for these prices have such a mediocre experience, and why the system has become less about care and more about billing.
Official ITD Rating: These various Denver-area Opthamologists receive one poke in the untreated infected eye out of a possible five.