Walk-In Woes

YOU MAY WRITE this off as just another horror story about the University Health Service (UHS), but a few nights ago my roommate and I were horsing around and he accidentally ripped off all of my limbs. I couldn't get an appointment with my real doctor until early in the fall, so I had to pick up the pieces and walk over to UHS.

I had seen the place before but never used it. Boy was I right not to. Now that I was forced to enter the monolithic health facility because of the extreme condition of my extremities, I got just the kind of treatment I had always feared. Some woman forced me to fill out a form stating my name and the nature of my affliction.

Then she herded me into a huge, ugly waiting room with all these other people--as if I was just another emergency case. They didn't even have a copy of National Geographic, probably because it costs too much. That's the kind of cheapo place UHS is.

After a little while--it seemed like forever--some doctor, probably only an intern, who didn't even have the decency to hang a comforting, prestigious diploma on the wall of his office, took me to the operating room, probably disinfected with Lysol, and sewed the detached attachments back on to my torso--probably with an old knitting needle and a piece of string he found on the floor.

SURE, EVERYTHING WORKS again for now, but that's just like UHS. They make you look like you're cured but deep down inside you know that they did a cheap job.

You just sense it somehow, and it's not like it's just me because everyone says that you have to be pretty desperate to go there for medical attention. Now I really know what they mean. I won't be surprised when I get sick again, because UHS will have caused it. They probably give out more diseases than they take in.

In fact, I heard of this guy who went to UHS to get his temperature taken and they gave him a facelift, and then the next week in lecture everything came undone and his whole face fell off and rolled under the seat of some girl sitting in front of him. I can believe that.

I also know this guy who had a friend who spent so long in the waiting room that he missed his own graduation and they couldn't even figure out what was wrong with him when they finally saw him. Then just a few months later he went to a doctor in private practice who knew instantly that he had been run over by a freight train. You do not hear stories like that from people who were smart enough to get decent medical care in the first place.

Actually, I figured out why UHS is so cheap. It is because they are so cheap. A doctor who will see a walk-in patient and not hand him a $75 medical bill and harass him 'til he's paid it just isn't a very good doctor. If the UHS doctors were good, they could charge a lot more and they would be too busy to let anyone get away with just walking in any time.

Also, good doctors get good patients. Their patients are all wealthy which means they are smarter than the average guy who just happens to be the turkey waiting at UHS to get inferior treatment, which proves how dumb he is; and he is the kind of patient UHS gets, which proves that their doctors are not any good or they would get better patients.

Frankly, I do not care to be lumped in with the type of people who have to go to UHS. So the next time my roommate tears off any significant portion of my body, I'm going to wait until I can see a real doctor, because when I park next to the expensive cars outside his expensive office I will know deep down that I'm headed for some quality medical attention.