EDITORIAL: An Apple A Day...

By Rebecca Rose

This week we bring you a special section, focused on Your Health, with issues directly relating to our community. This feature couldn’t have been timelier. People keep asking me if I’m getting homesick. Well, this week I just got plain sick. I was laid up for almost five days. It was awful.
I’ll admit. I don’t like seeing the doctor. I’d rather be dragged on my belly through a cactus field.
I know I’m not alone; there’s a lot of you out there who can’t stand getting sick, mostly because it means exposing yourself to a process that only slightly rivals the humiliation and frustration of an IRS audit.
When I grew up, my doctor was a family doctor. His name was Dr. Wachs and he saw me regularly from the time I was 5 years old until the day I left for college. (Seriously, it was the exact day, because my mother made me go see him, so he could warn me about all the “bad things” that happen when college kids “get stupid”.) Dr. Wachs didn’t need a chart or a medical history; he remembered the last time I got the flu, all the bones I had ever broken and how many teeth I had pulled. He didn’t just treat me. He cared for me.
A lot has changed since then.
The last time I went to a doctor was in California. The office was in a medical building that more resembled a military base than a health care center. There were a lot of very angry, menacing signs that said things like “STAND BEHIND THIS LINE” and “DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE” and ‘SERIOUSLY WE MEAN IT ABOUT THE LINE”. Area 51 is more inviting than this place.
I had to wait in one line for 45 minutes so I could get my “forms”. The forms were baffling, filled complicated questions about the medical history of my ancestors dating back to the Crimean War. You need the Rosetta Stone to translate these things. Plus, they had very little to do with my actual physical health. “Please list your last six employers” does not seem like a question that’s going to help someone figure out why my head feels like it’s going to blow up whenever I blink my eyes.
On top of everything else, this visit means that at some point I’m going to have to call my insurance company and file a claim. I dread talking to them.  Vlad The Impaler was friendlier than my health insurance provider.
I didn’t give these forms to an actual person; instead, I deposited them into a drop box like the ones gas stations use in really bad neighborhoods to keep robbers from murdering their employees. A red light flashed and a buzzer sounded, which either meant I was approved to get treated, or they had reported my presence to Big Brother.
When I finally made it to the actual treatment room, I waited for another 20 minutes, reading a Glamour magazine from 1987 until my alleged doctor arrived. He looked like he should be reading X-Men comic books, not the intimate details of my complex medical history. I wasn’t sure he was old enough to know how to spell “doctor.” He called me “Rachel” at least 3 times. I think he looked up at me once during the entire five minutes he spent “examining” me. I use the term “examination” here loosely, because I’m not sure how exactly you can “examine” someone when you sit 10 feet away from them and never actually put your hands on them. I might as well have been a dinosaur wearing a Wonder Woman outfit for all he knew.
Anyway, after three hours and 1200 forms, I was told I to stay in bed...which is pretty much where I wanted to be in the first place.

EDITORIAL: An Apple A Day...