the return of the dentata

Can I tell you how much I hate the medical sitchie in California? First of all, I can’t deal with sub-par healthcare or insurance. Unfortunately it is my opinion I have both at the time–although some of my elections may have played into that, and hopefully things will improve next year with a different plan–and California has the most banker-like doctors I have ever encountered. Forget the fact that California is on the leading edge of healthcare, Cleveland was up there, too. The only difference was that I could find a doctor in Cleveland that took my insurance–or insurance at all–and who was open. Here, doctors work three, maybe four days a week and almost never past five. Who are they catering to because it’s not me? How ridiculous is it that you have to take off work EVERY time you need medical care? Oh, and it’s not fantastic care either, for the most part. Most of these docs share a tiny building with millions of other people and have, yes, an answering machine. I always get a busy signal. Dear 1985, thanks for voicemail…can you send a Pony Express message to California doctors? Is the overhead too much? Is it a struggle to provide a homey environment in a decent space along with extreme patient-centric care? Well, maybe it is, but if you worked five days like most people, I have a hunch it just might all work out fine. Cut out the “Business hours: 9-3 every other Thursday” and kick in some night and weekend hours. After all, it is about the patients, isn’t it? Or is it about having money? Shame on those doctors, and shame on this lazy Californian “banker” medical care. I’m not sure the financial industry is the best model for anything really.

L’histoire Dentata: Since a highly recommended dentist whose hours are (surprise!) less than full-time was not “accepting new patients,” I had to find my own. Well, the ones she recommended weren’t covered by my busted insurance. I did, however, manage to find the worst place ever. They had a cancellation and got me in today so as to fit me in before the end of the year, but it went south soooo fast. An unsupervised trainee/assistant/rebast took more than 20 X-rays of my face because she didn’t know how to do it (and she wasn’t shy about sharing that either). Well, whatever, I’m all for the learning process, and they were digital X-rays. Then, she was the one who continued on with my care–again unsupervised and clearly doing a horrible job. She fucking got toothpaste all over me too.  There was a lot of touching things and then my mouth, and I hated that. And THEN the dentist came in. He had visible dirt on his hands and a freaking crack nail on his pinky! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I got out of there as soon as I could. Luckily he said my mouth looked fine, but was he really paying much attention? UGH! I was disgusted, and that place should be investigated.

One year from now I had better have good doctors for everything or I’m abandoning my California plan. My need for medical care is way higher than most and I can’t handle these terror scenes for much longer. I’ll give it a year though.