A visit to any VA Hospital is not a picnic. But it seemed my trip to the Dallas VA Hospital this morning was particularly fraught with equine feces. My visit was to obtain a new primary care doctor, as well as get the gears in motion for appointments with a neurologist and that hospital’s pain clinic.
It seemed as if all the non-medical personnel (and some of the medical ones) found it to be a great imposition to answer my questions or help me. “Oh me oh my! I do not wish to impose on whatever it is that you do just to help an old, shaking veteran such as me who is in severe pain!”
Sometimes it is hard not to believe that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs practices what I call medicine by attrition. I refer to the practice of waiting out patients until they die so the VA will not have to expend any energy or precious resources that might interfere with more important matters — such as their pay raises. The VA might as well shoot me.
Fortunately, not all VA employees are like that. But those who aren’t should bitch slap those who are and remind them why in the hell they work at a VA Hospital.
Ahhhh! Bitching makes life a little easier to tolerate.