Addendum To The Barium

I just want you all to know, I really like Kaiser, and I really like my personal doctor. In my last post, it seemed as if I was complaining. I wasn't really. I was mad that I had to spend 5 hours away from Nicole and Sean Patrick and have it result in nothing. But I also realize that, well, sh*t happens and we deal with it.

For me Kaiser is a great hospital and a great health care provider. For most of my life (except for that time when I thought I was invincible and didn't need health insurance, let's call it late 20's to early 30's), I've been a member of Kaiser, even in Hawai'i. I've heard Kaiser getting a bad rap lately for being an HMO, or something, and when I first started going back to the doctor, the Kaiser facilities in Hollywood were not top notch.

But now, I have a doctor I like, it does take me a while to get a non-urgent appointment with her (sometimes two months), but Nicole, who's on a PPO, seems to be having the same problem. She has an appointment with a new doctor today.

We had an appointment yesterday for Sean Patrick's 9 month check up. Of all the doctor visits we've had with him, this one was probably the shortest, but we still had to wait for long periods of time.

I remember hearing once on TV, when some commentator (was it Dan Rather Reports, again?) was talking about President Obama's sweeping health care reform, he need look no further than Kaiser Permanente for an outline of how to do it. That makes me happy to hear.

C'mon Mr. President, push through that health care reform. We need it.

And just to end on a humorous note...

The ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher was giving final oral exams to her students when she called up Luis Telebang, a recent arrival from the Philippines answer a few questions.

"Okay Luis, use the following words in a sentence- Tennis shoes."

Luis thought for a minute, "De Shahrk was bery tennis shoes when eating de pish."

"Uhm... okay," replied the teacher, "How about this, use 'barium' in a sentence."

Luis thought for a minute, "We pound a dead body by de riber, so we barium."

I don't remember the rest of the joke, and this only really works if you read it out loud, so never mind.

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