I loathe & detest medical waiting rooms

[kaberett]

Fuckin' radio talk shows. In particular, at the moment we've got dudes saying shit like "doesn't matter if it's offensive as long as it's funny" and "... the experience of being a teenage boy, which I think everyone can identify with -- well, more if you're a boy I guess".

AND I HAVE ANOTHER FIFTEEN MINUTES HERE, and I think the first round of spiro tests --> blood pressure crash, so THAT'S hilarious. As is the bit where, uh, the nurse doing the spiro... is a smoker. Around whom I am having to breathe deeply in close proximity. This isn't causing any problems at all.

eta spirometry still says no response to bronchodilation; got x-ray on Monday, and my lower lungs looked decidedly brighter than upper, but I only glanced at them on my way out the room & am not trained to x-rays etc etc.

Comments

[untonuggan]

WHY DO THEY ALWAYS PLAY THE FUCKING NEWS IN MEDICAL WAITING ROOMS.

because clearly that will help everyone relax before their appointment/test/procedure.

<3

*much sympathy*

[kaberett]

CURRENTLY THEY ARE PLAYING MANIC STREET PREACHERS

(sitting around waiting for the shaking post-inhaled-steroids to stop)

[untonuggan]

IDK what your faith system is, but if intractable dogma annoys you:

if it makes you feel any better at all to have an inner giggle, going to a 10-day Billy Graham tent revival made my dad lose his faith in God. (And he had been raised in an obscure more-Baptist-than-the-Southern-Baptist branch of the Church and my grandmother wanted him to be a preacher, so, you know, that was no small thing.)

Which I guess means I should be eternally grateful to Billy Graham because I would not exist if my dad stayed in the Midwest and became a preacher? Ew. And also my dad would have been a terrible preacher.

[kaberett]

AHA I FEEL THE NEED TO TELL YOU

that the Manics are a glam rock band from Wales, who absolutely get it about mental illness and are aggressively political, so the radio playing them is a definite step up :D

but thank you also for the link, *snort*

[staranise]

What I hate most about radio talk shows is that the more awful they are, the higher ratings they get. Their audience literally rewards them for being as crass and cruel as possible.

[untonuggan]

Yes. Although I also have ingrained dislike even for nice radio programs such as NPR because certain Persons in my household would listen to them at full volume during the evening hours to the point where they were inescapable inside the house. Headphones were refused, and the only time the radio would stop or lower in volume was during dinner or once Person went to bed (which was, fortunately, early).

*shudder*

[kaberett]

Yes, although the Person in my household... didn't go to bed early.

This is why I tense up around BBC Radio 4. I can identify it from vocal cadences audible only as bass from three rooms away. It's marginally (but not massively) better when I'm in the same room. :-/

[littlebutfierce]

Ugh ugh ugh. <33333

(also ps yes ty for museum suggestion, need to reply to yr comment properly, just... spoons, blah -_- )

[kaberett]

(ditto re your e-mail xx)

[beckyc]

Gah at smoking nurse, up there with "don't wear perfume in lung wards" and "don't give people in lung wards stinky flowers" for BAD PLANS.

Boo hiss that bronchodilators don't help you :-(. Hope you find some other class of drug that is effective for you.

Like several small-airway asthmatics of my acquaintance, I find anticholinergic reliever inhalers (e.g. ipratropium, aka atrovent) much more effective than SABA inhalers (e.g. salbutamol). (Yes, I know this is entirely opposite to what studies show, silly non-compliant lungs.)

[kaberett]

Thank you! Is useful.

[catyak]

I always found that salbutamol was of limited use once breathing issues had started, it was much better to use the steroid preventer (in the brown colour scheme) to stop things happening in the first place.

[kaberett]

We've tried me on a wide range of preventers too; none of them have helped (i.e. no difference to my peak flow, no difference to how easy it is to trigger breathing difficulties, etc).

[beckyc]

Booo and hiss and boo again!

BTW Linky linky, so you can get an idea of what you can expect them to tell you if they did not explain the shape of your spirometry readings to you, or give you the numbers.

I had those handy because I had my asthma review yesterday with my latest numbers. I say latest. They got taken in December, but everyone forgot to send me a copy *headdesk*

[forestofglory]

Sympathy. All the medical waiting rooms I've been it lately have had bad TV on. (One had this strange talk show about DNA paternity testing!)

[kaberett]

Hah. Yeah. Thank you. <3

[redbird]

It occurs to me that one of the blessings of my current medical practices is that they don't have TVs in the waiting rooms. Back in New York, it ranged from the slightly amusing of local cable news—meaning I was getting details on political stuff that I had nothing to do with—to the day that I spent two hours in the waiting room with CNN on, covering the fall of Lehman Brothers in real time. (A good doctor in other ways, but he was always overbooking himself.)

[kaberett]

Unfortunately most medical places I end up there's really passive-aggressive notes up about leaving the radio on to protect YOUR privacy... i.e. the consulting rooms are inadequately soundproofed.

[ex_we935]

... it seems those shows seem to attract those sorts of people, doesn't it?

(also the Manics = MUCH better than horribly sexist remarks.)

~K.

[vass]

WHY THE FUCK smoking spirometry nurse, who thinks that would be a good idea?

My GP's waiting room has JOY-FM (LGBT-but-mostly-G radio station) playing all the time. I'm not a huge fan of most of the music they play, but thank you for the reminder of how much worse it could be. Ugh.

My dentist used to play classical music greatest hit compilation CDs. Which I was totally fine with until I got one of the Queen of the Night's arias while I was having a tooth drilled. (And then started imagining how patients would respond if it were Beethoven's 9th.)