4-16-09

A quick trip to the doctor’s office; how to get in and out STAT

I recently told you about my long overdue, run-in with pink eye. It lasted about a week and was a pretty bad case. I had to see my family doctor to get a prescription for some eye drops that would knock out the infection.
I waited until 8:30 a.m. before I called my doctor’s office. Calling first thing in the morning would assure me the first open slot that they might have free.
Fran, at the front desk, answered the phone and told me, “Your doctor is off today. I can get you in to see another one at 10:45.”
“I’ll take it,” I quickly responded and made a mental note of the time knowing that I would forget and have to call back about an hour and a half later to confirm.
Now for the record, I love my doctor. Not in the run off and elope kind of way, I just mean that she is a great person who I feel comfortable talking to and not only trust, but also value her opinions and suggestions.
So, I didn’t really want to see another doctor, but this was something that was textbook so I didn’t care too much.
While I was waiting for the “new” doctor to come into my room, I thought this would be a great time to catch up on some rest. My eyes were sore and felt like they would enjoy being shut for ten or fifteen minutes.
Reclining back onto the crinkly white paper that covered my exam bed and airline style pillow, I quickly found myself drifting off into a nice little nap.
Some time must have passed because I was awakened by another patient opening his exam room door and calling down the hallway. “Mam, how much longer is it going to be until the doctor comes in?”
A nurse answered back, ”Sir, when was your appointment?”
“11:30,” The male patient quickly barked.
What the what? I shook the cobwebs out of my head and I realized that I had been waiting for at least 45 minutes! Now, I might be from out of town, but that seems a little long.
There wasn’t much that I could do. I had to get my eye drops and they did squeeze me in. All I could do is sit and wait... and think up funny scenarios about people waiting for their doctor to see them.
Imagine this. Doctor comes in the door, “How are you doing, Mr. Pinkey?”
“Good, but something doesn’t taste right with those marshmellows over there in the jar on your counter.”
I thought about running out of my door and screaming that I used my cell phone and it caused a pacemaker explosion in the exam room next to me.... Get the doctor here STAT.
How about this, Simply call the front desk and ask them if they have forgot about you. I am sure they would find that real funny.
I was thinking about ripping off a piece of the crinkly white paper from the table that I was resting on and writing out a bill for the doctor for every fifteen minutes that I had been waiting past my appointment time. After all, I did take off from work.
Now I know my doctor is reading this right now and picking up her cell phone to call the head doctor. “Tomorrow, can I drop Mr. Pinkey as my patient?”
So, in all fairness, the “new” doctor did apologize and told me that they were trying some new set-up or something and that he appreciated my patience.
Doesn’t mean that I can’t think up great ways to laugh about the situation.
Next time you find yourself waiting for a long time, try this.
Lean your head out the door and loudly ask “The bottle of pills and the morphine drip bag in here, are they free samples?” I bet that “The doctor will be right in.”
Bryan Pinkey can be found picking his medical file up off of the ground outside of his doctor’s office or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

4-9-09

A house of pink-eyed Pinkeys, Wal-Mart and daycare provide family fun

I joke around with my wife about the fact that she brings home all kinds of germs from teaching all of her elementary school kids. I like to call them a bunch of germ-carrying window lickers.
I owe this in part to the fact that one of my memories of elementary school consists of kids riding the school bus with their heads resting on the glass of the windows and their tongues slowly cleaning the grime off of the bottom pane of glass.
Window Licker.
Now that I have children of my own and can actually watch my daughter rest her head on the front window of our den and run her tongue across the glass, I have the authority to use the said title.
I am digressing a bit.
About a week ago, my daughter came home from day care not only with a bag of soiled clothing and empty sippy cups, she came home covered in an invisible layer of pink eye covering her cute little outfit, hands and face.
We have had numerous run-ins with pink eye. It seems like every time we come home from Wal-Mart, one of our kids wakes up the next morning with crusty red eyes.
I truly think that Wal-Mart is just a 30,000 square foot petri dish. If you want to catch something that will put you out of commission for a few days, take a quick stroll down the toy aisle with your hand out, gently brushing against a few colorful boxed items as you walk. If you want to make sure you walk out of there with something extra, just touch a few shopping carts and door handles.
Throughout all of the cases, I have never come down with it. I don’t think that I have had pink eye since I was a child. Leigh gets mad because she thinks I have some sort of immunity to the infection.
Not this time.
Wednesday morning at about three a.m., I woke to Nash crying and my eyes were crusted shut.
Son of a ....gun!
I finally got it.
When we all got up at six thirty, I told Leigh, “I got it. My eyes are slam shut.”
“It’s about time, but I’m sorry,” she said with a little bit of reassurance because now she knew she wasn’t crazy.
As soon as the doctor’s office opened, I made an appointment. I got my eye drops from our family pharmacy
By the end of the day, both eyes were red and burning. Leigh, who has lots of experience with getting the infection, stepped back when I walked into the house from being at work all day.
“Whoa, you got it bad. You caught up for never getting it in the past. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!”
It has now been a solid week. I have had this annoying infection for seven days. I have avoided the public and coworkers as much as possible and have been washing my hands about every ten minutes.
Everyone in the house came down with the infection throughout the course of the week. Everyone’s hands are as dry and cracked as can be from washing and the house smells of bleach thanks to a germ-a-phobic wife.
Leigh had the bathtub filled with bleach water and all of the children’s toys that could handle drowning in the toxic bath. At first glance, I thought a Toys-R-Us tanker ship had been T-boned by a torpedo in the kids’ bathtub.
I think that we have officially eradicated the Wal-Mart /daycare / window licking infection from our house. It was just in time, too. I saw a C.D.C. truck driving by our house a few days ago. Our house is no longer a petri dish and my hands can start to mend.
I think that the next time we go to Wal-Mart, I will disburse rubber gloves and some respirators that I have stored down in my shop. I might even consider installing a contamination bath for the kids to walk through when they get home from daycare.
If I don’t get that infection for another thirty years, it will still be too soon.
Bryan Pinkey can be found coating his hands in Neosporin or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

4-2-09

Stock broker, dinner guest, and taxi driver; the best Boston friend around

I have used so much of Cox Communication ink to print stories about my hardships, good times and family life. We all know each other well enough for me to tell you some stories of my unusual friends.
I would not be the man (most would still say I’m a kid) that I am if it wasn’t for my friends. Combined, they have taught me so much and have helped to mold me into the strange and politically incorrect person I am today.
Robert Nagel is in the top five of my list of best friends. An odd person that part of me wishes I could be, he reminds me of a cross between Seth Myers from Saturday Night Live and, sadly, was a spitting image of Daniel Pearl, the journalist that was killed overseas by terrorists in February ‘02.
Anyhow.
Robert, Leigh and I all lived in the same pink-painted building on Michelangelo St. in Boston’s historic North End. The first time I met him was at 1:30 in the morning on a Tuesday. I stomped down a flight of stairs to the “New Guy’s” apartment who thought it was appropriate to blast the Red Hot Chili Peppers after coming home from an evening out with his friends. With a tight fist, I tried to bang a hole through his apartment door. The volume on the radio went down and he opened the door.
“What the h*!!’s wrong with you, I’m trying to sleep up there,” I yelled and pointed towards my apartment door. I could tell right away that he was upset that he had upset a fellow neighbor and responded, “I am so sorry, we just got back from a party and had a bit too much to drink. I am so sorry, I’ll turn it down. Sorry.”
I turned and walked away without saying another word. I laid back down in my bed and felt bad now because I just yelled at a very nice, polite neighbor.
I’m unsure of how the next few weeks unfolded, but somehow we ended up spending a lot of time together on the roof of our six story apartment building. We would sit up there drinking beer, talking, and watching the lights of Boston. We just hit it off famously.
Robert was a stock broker by day and worked in the financial district in town. He loved making money. Robert was good at it. All day long he would be on the phone with clients, trading information, stocks and a ton of money. Funny thing is, he couldn’t do it for himself. He lived off of commission. Some weeks he was living high on the hog, dropping by with Chinese food for all of us and other times he would poke his head in our door and ask what WE were having for dinner. Leigh and I didn’t mind, he had turned into the best friend anyone could ask for.
When the 9/11 stuff happened, he was having a hard time making money during the day, so he decided to find another way to make ends meet. Robert had a friend that owned a cab company and said the he would give Robert a route if he got his license.
He did and got his route.
Now, Robert wasn’t happy with just making the normal fares like every other cabbie. He decided that there was more money working the late night / early morning shift. Robert would catch the “T” (Boston’s subway) to the cab station, get his car and drive to the “packie” (package store, liquor store). Robert filled his trunk with beer and liquor.
He would drive by all of the high end clubs and hang outs around closing time to find his fares. When driving them to their end-of-the-night destination he would remind them that all of the beer stores were closed. Once he hooked them, Robert told them that he could get them whatever they wanted. Pulling over in the next parking lot, he would open his trunk and sell them whatever they wanted to drink to finish off their evening at an inflated cost. Supply and demand. A man after my own heart.
One of the advantages of having Robert as a friend was that we had a free cab ride anytime, anywhere during the weekend. Leigh and I would call him on his cell and he would answer on the first ring. “Where you at?” I would give him my location and in about fifteen minutes he was screeching to a halt in front of us.
When Leigh and I left Boston, Robert was the only friend that showed up to help us load the moving truck. Jessica, my sister, did fly up to help us and I need to say that or else she would hit me next time I saw her.
Robert drove his cab to our house at eight in the morning after driving all night long. He made sure we were all set, loaded up, hugged us good bye and drove his cab back to the shop.
That was the last time I saw him.
I have exhausted every avenue that I can think of to find him. Google, Facebook, calling mutual friends, I can’t find the man anywhere.
During one of our late night conversations on the roof overlooking the “Old North Church,” (the tower that Paul Revere hung his lanterns in at the beginning of the Revolutionary War) he told me about his sister who was married to a man in Mexico that owned a copper mine. He said that the living was good down there and the copper industry was lucrative.
After all of these years of looking for him, I think that Mexico may be the last stop in my quest for contact with Robert Nagel. The only problem with this is that I don’t plan on heading down there anytime soon.
I don’t do the “Spring Break” stuff anymore, I don’t surf and I refuse to travel farther than Food Lion for a good price on alcohol.
The only way, I think, that you will find me driving fast across the border into Mexico is if I am running from the law in a ‘62 Caddy, and I don’t plan on doing that... anytime soon.
Bryan Pinkey can always be found searching for a ‘62 Caddy or at bpinkey@nccox.com. You can also read an archive of his past articles at www.jbryanpinkey.blogspot.com.