...thanks to the rotting infrastructure ...
Rotting infrastructure - you sound like my Doctors!
der Brucer
Well, they are trying to fix it, piece by piece. On Friday I return to the surgeon to get the final staples pulled from the spot on my waist where they took the chunk of skin to graft into the large hole they left on my chest from cutting out the basal cell carcinoma.
In two weeks I go to the Ophthalmology Surgeon to have a Laser treatment for the Glaucoma in my left eye ( and he can look at the cataracts in both eyes).
Some interesting side-notes.
I have had a slowly "creeping rash" on my chest for years (My first treatment for it was in 1999) - the Internist figured it was a fungus.
Since I have been here, I have been seen by a variety of Drs - all of whom asked "what's that" and I'd say Dr, so-and so thought it might be a fungus - and he would proscribe a different cream. Even when I was in the hospital for the heart surgery they put on steroid cream on the sore. My new GP who is "only" a nurse practitioner looked at it and said "I don't like the looks of that, it could be basal cell, we should get you to a Dermatologist to check. The Dermatologist took one look and groaned - to him it was basal cell and a very large advanced case at that (he even asked to take pictures to use for a lecture. He took a punch biopsy to check; when the results came back as expected I was scheduled for surgery.
Now folks make fun of us living in the sticks far from big city care...well...
The Doctor scheduled the Surgery to be done in his new office down here and they set up a pathology lab in a nearby suite where the visiting pathologist could do a frozen-section evaluation while I was still on the table.
So the farm boy just travelled five minutes from home to have the citified surgery.
My Optometrist referred me to the Delaware Eye Institute (4 minute drive) where an expert from Wills Eye Institute in Philadelphia visits to do specialized Glaucoma surgeries.
Also please note - city specialists from both coasts let me dribble through 12 years of festering crud - it took a local young lady Nurse Practitioner to get the problem fixed!
Also note - Medicare saves big bucks by bypassing all the intermediate referral costs - I went straight from Nurse Practitioner to Surgeon.
der Brucer
