You thought the "Doc in a box" was bad....

That was probably pre-antisepsis, before hygiene practice for doctors, surgeons and nurses became a commonplace At that time it was safer for a woman to be cared for by a midwife than by a doctor/surgeon....particularly doctors who performed autopsies or anatomy demonstrations prior to live surgery. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, doctoring was pretty primitive, by today's standards. As the TV series "The Knick" demonstrates.... Medical soap opera aside, it gives a fairly authentic idea of what patients had to survive...

 

I have not found a general practice Doctor that was worth anything, that doesn't take 3-4 weeks to get an appointment. I have top shelf insurance so paying is not a issue. All that Sepsis crap I went through in 2016 and the slow recovery from the organ damage over 2017 all total billed up to a hair over $800,000 my out of pocket was around $2200. The big loss was in income the last two years. Thought I just had the flu or something but when the fever hit 105 it was time to seek medical help. Dokters office told me it would be 2 weeks before I could get in, ER had a 4 hour wait time. And the URgent care clinic had a 5 minute wait time. Clinic is a block away from the hospital ER. Nurse Pract. sent me straight to the ER bypassing the 4 hour wait as soon as he took my temp that came in at 111. LOL you have not really had fun until you are dying from Septic Shock from a resistant bacteria and the Doctors agree that your odds of survival are in the 10%-20% range.

Now I am not going to knock Urgent Care clinics since I am probably still here today because NP recognized the problem and bypassed me around the 4 hour wait at the ER. What went from 101 temp to raging fever that left the medical staff wondering how I was still on my feet and conscious, let alone semi functional with 110+ took less than 2 hours to go from 105 to 110. Yes I suffered brain damage nothing in the motor skills or cognitive areas but it did fry a portion of my hypothalamus in the temperature regulation. And my wife says I am even more of a asshole than I was before getting sick......... I have to agree, I have a much shorter fuse with annoying people than I used to. In the end it was the VERY unpleasant lowering of my body temp that allowed me to survive that first day, heck possibly those first hours. It was ultimately alternative traditional medicine that killed the antibiotic resistant bacteria and modern medicine that kept it in check and gave the time for the traditional medicine to work. Been free of the bacteria since October 2016 now, and been a hell of a road this last year dealing with the temperature thing, when a 80 degree day feels like 120 and a 50 degree day feels like -30 and your brain is telling your body to act accordingly.... Yeah frustrating. Kidneys, Liver, Lungs, heart and pancreas all took a hit from the infection and fever. Lungs are never going to be what they were before, kidneys are slowly healing and regenerating, liver was healed up after only a few months..... Doc says the pancreas is back to functioning normally, and the heart is still beating but suffers a from the reduced lung function. The brain damage is there forever, LOL Dokter explained it as my body running 400 amps through a 20 amp breaker and frying the breaker.

Using the Urgent Care Clinic as a run around from standard ER procedure and then coupling modern medicine with traditional medicine worked for me. Went to the ER first and the receptionist type person said the wait would be about 4-5 hours........ And I say that is not good enough I am dying here! and she says sir everyone in the waiting room thinks they are dying. Yeah that does not bode well for survival. I noticed people coming in via the meat wagons were given much higher priority and being treated fast. The Urgent Care did send me the 1 block via ambulance as they didn't think it was a very good idea for me to drive anymore that day

The sad thing is 3/4ths of the people in the ER should have been in the Urgent Care or not wasting medical pros time with colds, minor scrapes and bumps and hysteria over nothing. ERs should be for emergencies NOT as a place to treat kids with the common cold and constipate the whole system. I have often wondered how many folks have gone past the point of no return while some idiot is demanding her kids with runny noses be treated immediately.

 

Im ok with urgent care for stitches, emergency meds on weeknd... faster than doc or ER and less expensive. Medical is like anything else, its one more thing to manage. I was doing some research on travel shots i was missing for other parts of the world.. what a racket. My doc wont do prescriptions for the ones i need, refered me to county medical who refurred me to a private 'travel agency' that does international shots. WTF... the info is readily available on CDC but my doc would not have anything to do with it. Finally went to walgreens clinic and got everything i needed and my insurance paid for it all. I spent about 8 hours researching and getting this done... What a pain... but like everything these days.. one more thing to manage.