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Modern Medicine Discovers: Texting!
Keeping Us Posted, Pre- and Post-Procedure
By Ed Goldman
Having recently accompanied a loved one to a medical procedure I now have a new appreciation for texting.
I was updated throughout by a clinic staff member—about how long the procedure was likely to take, when it began and when it was over.
Auto collect
When you’re a loved one’s designated driver—the procedure wouldn’t have happened without my being there at the beginning and ending—this is valuable intel. It means I could have opted to leave and come back (I didn’t do the former so I didn’t need to do the latter).
But I’m stubborn about caregiving, whether it means spending nearly one-third of a long marriage doing so, as I once did, or just driving and waiting for someone.
It’s less from the goodness of my heart than from a recognition that patients are already stressed enough, whether they demonstrate it or not, and don’t need the added burden of wondering what would happen to them if something went awry. I’m not talking about their dying (which, though tragic, would certainly ease their stress). I’m just talking about the comfort they might feel knowing that someone who cares about them is right down the hall or even on just the other side of the wall.
Besides, when you sit in a waiting room for any duration, you get to catch up on your reading, respond to emails or, one of my favorite pastimes, people-watch. This can be unpleasantly dramatic if the waiting area’s connected to an emergency room at 3 a.m., natch. But if it’s in a well-kept office clinic, it can be fairly entertaining.
On this recent occasion I enjoyed listening to the receptionists at a small phone bank handle patient inquiries with an almost saintly patience. One of them spent a full 15 minutes discussing the relative merits of the caller being anesthetized during a procedure he was scheduling for the following week. I didn’t get the impression the caller was objecting to being sedated on either moral or religious grounds; instead, it sounded as though he had a genuinely scientific curiosity about the process. “No, you won’t be asleep for hours,” the receptionist reassured him, “just for the length of the procedure.” The caller’s natural follow-up question prompted the receptionist to reply, “One to three hours but usually much less.”
I refer to the caller as a “he” because the receptionist called him “Mister (Name)” at least five times during the call. And I’m not being coy when I refer to the patient I was driving and waiting for that day as my “loved one.” This is the term that was used in all of the texts I received keeping me apprised of the procedure as it progressed. Maybe I’m sentimental but I thought it was a lovely touch. After all, who would drive and wait for their “bitter enemy” or “lifelong nemesis” to be treated?
Meanwhile, I also like it when the airlines text me that my 5:40 a.m. flight to, say, Baraboo, Wisconsin, will be delayed by 14 hours. I’d like it better if I didn’t receive the text until 5:25 a.m., when I’m already being pantsed by a zealous TSA employee. (It’s even worse to discover the person doesn’t work for TSA.)
I almost like it when I park in a commercial garage, as I have today, that offers valet service and I’m given a text code to let the valet know when I’m about to head downstairs to retrieve my car. I say “almost” because on at least four occasions, I sent the texts but when I arrived, my car wasn’t waiting for me. In my most recent experience, what I did encounter was a group of valets having coffee and chatting. In cases like this, I’m more inclined to blame the recipient rather than the process. I’d blame the irresistible aroma of the coffee for luring them from their station but vending machine coffee doesn’t quite offer that come-hither scent freshly roasted java does.)
—Oops. I just received a text and even a phone call indicating my loved one’s procedure was completed and that I’d be notified in 20 minutes that I could collect her, as the Brits say. If you didn’t guess it, I’ve written this entire column while in the waiting room. And that the referenced “loved one” of mine really is. Excuse me while I text the valets. I just hope their vending machine is broken.
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).