Of Course This Is Not Val's Fault

Val cannot perform even the simplest task without having to face the fact that she's a weirdo magnet.

Take a call to the doctor's office, for instance. Can Val get service in a professional and timely manner? Not-heaven NO! Val must jump through hoops and endure sarcasm dripping from that secretary's mouth like slime dripping from THE ALIEN. If only Sigourney Weaver had been holding her head to my work phone receiver, she would have interceded on my behalf: "Get away from her, you B*TCH!"

I only called to double-check my six-month appointment. Seriously. How much are we supposed to remember? I knew the day. That's because it's on Hick's birthday. But somehow over the past six months, the time of the appointment escaped me. Criminy! You'd think we should be writing it down or something.

Secrete-ary verified my appointment date, and told me it was at 9:15. Then I asked about the lab I was supposed to have the week before. This crappy insurance of mine is not one that lets the doctor's lab take my blood. Nope. I have to hike down the elevator one floor and sit with a million other people with crappy insurance to have my blood drawn. So I could not remember if they had given me a form to take to the lab telling which vital levels should be tested.

"Didn't we give you a form?"

"I don't remember."

"Well, if you don't have it, you will need to call our office the day before, and we will send one down to the lab."

That sounded like a recipe for disaster. They are not the most efficient of staff since Doc switched over to the dark side and joined the hospital clinic. In the past, they wrote up the order, and somebody like my mom or even my own self dropped by to pick it up in person.

"Okay. Call and you'll send the order down the day before. Are you closed any days?"

Silence. "It's a DOCTOR'S OFFICE. We are open Monday through Friday."

Well, excuuuuuuuse me! The doctor used to be off on Wednesday, and nothing could get done because he had to approve it himself. So pardon me for asking, lest I schedule a day off work, fast for 12 hours, and show up to find out that my blood cannot be taken that day.

Those gals are so snotty, I might just take them a box of Puffs With Lotion.

Next time I will rent a safe deposit box and deposit my appointment information and lab order inside. Apparently I'm the only woman on earth who does not remember dates and times for six months, and has no knowledge of how to program that crap into an electronic gewgaw, and has instead depended on her mother to write it down on her calendar, except that now my mother is in the hospital, not completely unrelated to that major misstep made by Doc in attempting to take off her skin lesion in his office, thus leaving at least one cell behind.

Val is what one might now call a hostile patient. With more magnetic weirdo force, it seems.