Hippocratic Oaf
Going to your family physician may not be the most thrilling or enjoyable adventures that you will ever have to endure during your life, but I tell you here and now - it’s the trip to the pharmacy afterwards that is the REAL humbling experience! What happens in the doctor’s office STAYS in the doctor’s office; but what happens in the lobby of your local drug store is public bidness. Doctors are bound to a degree of confidentiality – pharmacists, however, observe no such code.
Maybe they have a superiority complex since they work a foot higher than everybody else in the store and they get to look down at their customers, or maybe it's just because they honestly enjoy making you skirm as they loudly describe, in great detail, the proper application techniques and/or possible experienced side effects to your condition so that everybody in the store can hear. Gone are the days of salons and nail boutiques - I bet nowadays, lonely women hang out in the waiting lobby of the local pharmacists to catch up on their gossip and to hear how your case of crotch rot is progressing.
But I digress...
Not only does my doctor require that you get past his megabitch receptionist unscathed when you arrive, but I’m now sure that he also sets me up after each and every one of my physical checkups as well. It's like his own personal private joke. This time, besides refilling my normal prescription for my beloved anti-fungal cream, I was also instructed to pick up a bottle of baby oil and a sterile eyedropper; which he assured me was available upon request from the pharmacist*.
Oh goodie. Just the kind of thing that a single heterosexual male loves to ask for from a complete stranger, much less seen purchasing at the front of store checkout! It reads like George Michael's shopping list. Good lord – why not just strip me naked, strap a saddle to my back and ride me around the parking lot?
I think if I were a checkout cashier ringing through anti-fungal cream, a bottle of baby oil, and an eyedropper for some anxious, twitchy guy who keeps periodically scratching at his shiznits; I might just be slightly, shall we say, unnerved. Of course, I’m not going to automatically consider that this poor sweaty bastard is only dealing with a case of blocked ear canals and a lingering case of joggers rash and is only rightfully embarrassed about the disparaging looks being cast his way from the other curious shoppers peering into his shopping basket. Noooo, I’m going to assume that this guy is some kind of fucking pervert for whose the heights of profound unabashed kinkiness are the direct root cause for the severe degradation in the moral fabric of society. I may even be drawn to put up his picture behind the counter afterwards under the bold caption: “BEWARE OF THIS MAN: HE MAY BE LUBED AND DANGEROUS!”
As I said before, I’m sure that my doctor gives me these awkward remedies as some kind of cruel punishment as I doubt there is, was, or ever shall be such a thing as “Embarrassment Therapy”. And if there is, I just simply can’t endorse this health-through-public-embarrassment school of medicine. I’d rather have holes bored into my skull with blunt sticks to release the demonic spirits therein rather than continually suffer the shame of being ordered to pick up a measured funnel, a tub of cocoa butter, and a pack of pink rubber pencil erasers from the local pharmacy by some sadistic physician bent on ruining my street cred.
Here's the best part: all this is just a prelude to the follow-up appointment this coming Friday afternoon in which, somehow, I’m going to miraculously have all the obstructing wax removed from my inner ear.
Sounds like fun, huh? Perfect way to begin the weekend - if your the Marquis de Sade maybe!
I also have to say, if I didn’t feel totally comfortable purchasing baby oil and an eyedropper from my local pharmacy, I’m sure not relishing this next appointment at the doctor's office! I fail to see how either baby oil or an eyedropper is ever going to assist in this procedure. I’m more afraid more that this is the doctor’s idea of foreplay and that I’m going to end up playing ‘Hide the Sausage’ on a cold examining table**. My instructions until then are to lube my ears with baby oil four times a day up until that fateful appointment at the end of the week.
Great. All I ever wanted was to hear properly again and now here I am fearing that there's a chance that this quack sadist is going to slip some roofies in my medication before spending the afternoon banging the side of my head like a horny terrier.
Let's review the first two rules to the Hippocratic Oath, shall we?
1) treat the sick to the best of your ability
2) preseve patient patient
Nowhere, does it say: "make your patients look like deviant ass hats in public buildings". Surely my rights as a needy patient have been violated in some way here and that my mistreatment and public embarrassment are not what Hippocrates intended!
I think my doctor, my phamacist and the devil all must sit around on Saturday night and have a good laugh at my expense over a game of cards. Somebody just shoot me.
* Since when did pharmacists aquire the monopoly on eyedroppers?
** Review Rule #1 of 'Rules to Live By'
Maybe they have a superiority complex since they work a foot higher than everybody else in the store and they get to look down at their customers, or maybe it's just because they honestly enjoy making you skirm as they loudly describe, in great detail, the proper application techniques and/or possible experienced side effects to your condition so that everybody in the store can hear. Gone are the days of salons and nail boutiques - I bet nowadays, lonely women hang out in the waiting lobby of the local pharmacists to catch up on their gossip and to hear how your case of crotch rot is progressing.
But I digress...
Not only does my doctor require that you get past his megabitch receptionist unscathed when you arrive, but I’m now sure that he also sets me up after each and every one of my physical checkups as well. It's like his own personal private joke. This time, besides refilling my normal prescription for my beloved anti-fungal cream, I was also instructed to pick up a bottle of baby oil and a sterile eyedropper; which he assured me was available upon request from the pharmacist*.
Oh goodie. Just the kind of thing that a single heterosexual male loves to ask for from a complete stranger, much less seen purchasing at the front of store checkout! It reads like George Michael's shopping list. Good lord – why not just strip me naked, strap a saddle to my back and ride me around the parking lot?
I think if I were a checkout cashier ringing through anti-fungal cream, a bottle of baby oil, and an eyedropper for some anxious, twitchy guy who keeps periodically scratching at his shiznits; I might just be slightly, shall we say, unnerved. Of course, I’m not going to automatically consider that this poor sweaty bastard is only dealing with a case of blocked ear canals and a lingering case of joggers rash and is only rightfully embarrassed about the disparaging looks being cast his way from the other curious shoppers peering into his shopping basket. Noooo, I’m going to assume that this guy is some kind of fucking pervert for whose the heights of profound unabashed kinkiness are the direct root cause for the severe degradation in the moral fabric of society. I may even be drawn to put up his picture behind the counter afterwards under the bold caption: “BEWARE OF THIS MAN: HE MAY BE LUBED AND DANGEROUS!”
As I said before, I’m sure that my doctor gives me these awkward remedies as some kind of cruel punishment as I doubt there is, was, or ever shall be such a thing as “Embarrassment Therapy”. And if there is, I just simply can’t endorse this health-through-public-embarrassment school of medicine. I’d rather have holes bored into my skull with blunt sticks to release the demonic spirits therein rather than continually suffer the shame of being ordered to pick up a measured funnel, a tub of cocoa butter, and a pack of pink rubber pencil erasers from the local pharmacy by some sadistic physician bent on ruining my street cred.
Here's the best part: all this is just a prelude to the follow-up appointment this coming Friday afternoon in which, somehow, I’m going to miraculously have all the obstructing wax removed from my inner ear.
Sounds like fun, huh? Perfect way to begin the weekend - if your the Marquis de Sade maybe!
I also have to say, if I didn’t feel totally comfortable purchasing baby oil and an eyedropper from my local pharmacy, I’m sure not relishing this next appointment at the doctor's office! I fail to see how either baby oil or an eyedropper is ever going to assist in this procedure. I’m more afraid more that this is the doctor’s idea of foreplay and that I’m going to end up playing ‘Hide the Sausage’ on a cold examining table**. My instructions until then are to lube my ears with baby oil four times a day up until that fateful appointment at the end of the week.
Great. All I ever wanted was to hear properly again and now here I am fearing that there's a chance that this quack sadist is going to slip some roofies in my medication before spending the afternoon banging the side of my head like a horny terrier.
Let's review the first two rules to the Hippocratic Oath, shall we?
1) treat the sick to the best of your ability
2) preseve patient patient
Nowhere, does it say: "make your patients look like deviant ass hats in public buildings". Surely my rights as a needy patient have been violated in some way here and that my mistreatment and public embarrassment are not what Hippocrates intended!
I think my doctor, my phamacist and the devil all must sit around on Saturday night and have a good laugh at my expense over a game of cards. Somebody just shoot me.
* Since when did pharmacists aquire the monopoly on eyedroppers?
** Review Rule #1 of 'Rules to Live By'
1 Comments:
They should have privacy pharmacies where you enter a booth, type what you need into an ATM-like computer, and your stuff is delivered to you in a super-opaque plastic bag.
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