I started coming down with a cold five days ago or so. It seemed like a normal cold at first, but then my eyes started feeling kind of itchy and watery. And on Monday they were discharging gunk a couple times. So I suspected pink eye. Yesterday when I woke up with eye crustiness and I took a hard look at my right eye because it felt inflamed, I discovered it was inflamed beneath my eyelid. Kind of like so (only it looked more angry red that morning):
This was worrisome as I haven't had that happen with a cold before, so I decided a doctor visit was in order. Of the available appointments, I chose the 11:00 one because it seemed like the best choice at the time. It would be after my morning meetings at work, and if it ran into lunch a bit, it wasn't a huge deal. I should for sure be done by 1:00, right? Wrong.
When I got to the doctor's office, they had me come right in to take my vitals. But when they took me to the exam room and asked if I was a new patient and I told them I wasn't, then the nurse realized she had called the wrong patient back. So it was back to the waiting room for me. Good thing I brought my Kindle. Then they called me and took me to the exam room again. We did the usual 100 questions and went through the pink eye "decision tree" (at least that's what I call it). When did it start? Were my eyes sensitive to light? Sore throat? Mild or severe? Sinus congestion? Green or yellow snot? Light headedness? Tremors? Feelings of weakness? Fainting? Diarrhea? Constipation? Was I taking any medications? Any allergies? etc., etc., etc. The doctor would be in shortly. Not.
At about the 45 minute mark of waiting in the room alone with not even a nurse checking in on me, I was getting pretty antsy and had to go to the bathroom, so I peaked my head out. Since it was like 12:30, some people were probably at lunch, and things seemed pretty quiet. No one was in the hall. I found the bathroom on my own. As I returned from the bathroom, a nurse was waiting for me and assured me the doctor would be in soon. "We didn't want you to think we had forgotten about you." Yeah.....I badly wanted to say, "Too late for that," but I held my tongue and didn't say anything. I was getting really hungry and thirsty by then too. Waiting forever, hungry, and thirsty is not a good combination. It makes me (and probably everybody) a bit owly. But I tried to keep calm and have a right spirit. As the sign in the room said, they give all their patients personal attention, so I should be patient until it was my turn for the same personal attention.
One full hour after I entered the room, the doctor was in the room. He apologized profusely and said he ran into some unexpected complications. What do you say to that? I said nothing because I honestly couldn't say it was OK for him to be an hour late. That is a lot of my time wasted. Saying "apology accepted" seemed weird. And if you don't say one of those things, what do you say? I had also overheard one of the receptionists calling to reschedule the doctor's appointments for the next day because of some family surgery or something. So I didn't feel like I should give him a hard time if he was already under stress. And what if some minor thing like a wart removal earlier in the day had resulted in somebody nearly bleeding to death or something? Who knows what the complication could have been? Or maybe he went to lunch and forgot about me.....
It seems like there would be a better solution than making a patient wait for an hour. But I don't know all the ins and outs of how doctor offices work. Maybe they could have sent the PA in to do an extra patient. It was only pink eye - not all that complicated really. Or maybe they could have told me it was going to be a while so I could have gone to get lunch and then come back.
The final conclusion after the examination was likely viral conjunctivitis (pink eye) because it occurred at the same time as my cold, which you pretty much just wait for it to clear up. And they gave me some antibiotic eye drops to take anyway just in case it was bacterial because there's no way to distinguish from examination whether it's viral or bacterial. And that was pretty much it. He also prescribed some nasal spray if I wanted it to help my sinus congestion.
And this is why I try to avoid all doctors as much as possible. I really hate waiting rooms. Because as you sit there you wonder how many contagious germs you're picking up from the other people in the waiting room. Or you pass the time by speculating on why others might be there. Like the one guy who came in as a new patient and didn't have insurance. Obviously he must have been feeling desperate about some ailment. It wasn't immediately obvious what it might be though.
