Further frustrations of living in North America

If you have been reading my ramblings for long enough, you might remember my complaining about my rheumatologist, a person so abstract he might be a figment of my imagination. Unfortunately for me, he isn’t. He’s my rheumatologist; and he is about to retire. This I found out from his assistant Maddie, who had called me three months ago to tell me that if I wanted to see him for anything at all, I had better make it quick. I made an appointment just before leaving for Portugal, I think – February 4 seemed impossibly far in the distance at that time, and I figured something might happen to make it not, er, happen. Nothing did – and so, at 10am, I found myself driving to his Main Street office for a 10:30 appointment. I arrived at 10:20, signed myself in, and asked Maddie the inevitable question: “How late is he running?”
 
The answer, it transpired, was about 30 minutes. There was one person in front of me, who was there, apparently, for an injection. I told Maddie I had a noon appointment elsewhere, so couldn’t hang around past 11:45. (This was only a half truth, but it helps keep a semblance of control over an otherwise uncontrollable situation.) “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll make it.”
 
And so, I sat, reading Ryszard Kapuściński’s The Shadow of the Sun while I waited. 10:30 turned to 11am. 11am turned to 11:25… I started making noises. In the end, I got up and went to Maddie’s window and said, “He’s not going to be able to do it, is he?” She looked at the clock and blanched, and then said “come with me”. So, I followed her into a waiting room while she knocked on his door and dragged him out. The conversation, when it started, (i.e., after she had left), was rather surprising. It was as if he sort of recognized me but couldn’t quite place me. I was there, in a chair next to a bench, a tangible enough presence for him. But what the actual fuck was I doing there?
 
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Have you had your hips done recently?”
“Yes,” I said, “in 2005 & 2006.”
“Was that the left one?” he asked.
 
I looked at him, trying to figure out if he was taking the piss or whether he actually thought a hip replacement operation might take more than 3-4 hours to do - in fact, might take a week or a month or a year. In the end, I took a deep breath and decided to play nice. “Yes,” I said. “Actually, it was both.” We then went through my various ailments and he started to ask more general questions about each of them. This was when I cracked.
 
“Look,” I said. “I have an urgent appointment at noon and have to be out of here in 5 minutes. We have talked about this ad nauseam in the past, and you have all my records on file. All I want from you today is a requisition for x-rays. I need x-rays on my wrist, my ankle and my spine. If you do it quickly enough, I can come back for a follow-up appointment. But now, I said, I really have to go. Unlike you, I cannot be late.”
 
In fairness, he went and printed the requisition quickly enough, so I was able to leave, and get home by noon. (My “appointment” was to drive Mrs. Ottawacker into work for a meeting; it wasn’t a fixed time, but he’d pissed me off.) However, as I handed over the requisition to my wife for safe keeping, I noticed he had only done it for the spine. You can imagine what I said. But then, I called Maddie.
 
“Can you tell the Late Dr. T that he has not included the wrist x-rays on the requisition please? Or the ankles. In fact, he has also put down some unknown person down as my doctor and…”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll tell him.”
 
It was hard to not recognize the note of irritation in her voice – and I hung up a little annoyed, until I realized she was probably more irritated with him than with me. It can’t be easy cleaning up all of his mess all the time. As I was driving Mrs. Ottawacker to her meeting, I once again expounded on the theme – much, I imagine, to her pleasure. She pointed out that he might be retiring on health grounds – perhaps he has incipient dementia or something? I harrumphed and sat quietly for a couple of minutes before conceding that she might have a point. “Of course I have,” she said.
 
The rest of the day passed quickly enough. Ottawacker Jr. seems to be on the mend, and so we had tandoori chicken and home-baked fries for dinner, with green beans.