Monday September 27, 2004 A Morning of Queues

Monday September 27, 2004 A Morning of Queues

Today, I made the journey to my doctor's office at 9:30 AM from work. The trip was uneventful, though I was quite surprised to see the level of traffic along Highway 101 and Highway 85 for late in the morning. The former was moving at the limit but still crowded with cars. The latter was slow-and-go in all three lanes from its junction with 101 and its junction with 280. The congestion could most probably be blamed on the construction at the 101-85 interchange.

I arrived at Dr. M...'s office on National Avenue in San Jose right at the border with Los Gatos its higher rent western neighbor. M...' is your typical general practitioner, a steady stream of health insurance patients with the ailments associated with aging-most of the patients he was seeing today were the 50-something baby boomers. Their ailments included high blood pressure, borderline diabetes, thyroid maladies, and the occasional injury such as the pulled muscle I was there to complain about today.

The injury was easy to diagnose. I had pulled a left calf muscle two Sundays ago, had rested the leg for all of three days and had begun to run on Wednesday convinced the muscle was now sufficiently healed to stand the stress of a six-mile run-I was taking it easy, but then on Thursday, at the bottom on an overpass on Branham Lane that passes over the light rail just before Branham's intersection with Pearl, I noticed the calf muscle beginning to complain. I began trying to use other muscles in the leg to compensate and halfway up the hill I turned the left foot outward as I came down and there was a sharp pain lower in the left leg near where the Achilles tendon attaches to the muscle. This pain was sufficiently strong to make me aware that I would be walking for at least a week and the journey home was one agonizing step, every other footfall. It was now five days later and the muscle continued to complain at the least exertion.

M...' ordered x-rays of the leg to see if there was any damage to the bone though he doubted it since the swelling was modest. I left M...' office and headed for the x-ray lab across Samaritan Drive a block south of where National Avenue T's into Samaritan. 8531 was the address, a brand new multi-story medical building with the lab on the ground floor. The lab's lobby was busy with a small line at the blond-wood reception desk, an elderly man in pajamas and a calf-length house coat in for x-rays was holding up the line of three people-with me being the third. He completed his paperwork then was told to wait behind the reception desk for one of the attendants at a circular blond wood counter that faced the main entrance. The counter resembled a line of tellers at a bank; only it was waist high not chest high and was curved with five or six teller stations separated by blond wood partitions. A computer terminal and keyboard occupied each station with clerks dressed in pressed hospital scrubs behind each. After waiting too long-I could tell by the impatience the old man exhibited as he looked from one station to another anticipating one would finish serving the current patient and send them on their way-the old man was finally called to a station to begin the process of entering all the data he and his doctor had completed on the paperwork he carried with him to the counter.

The next person in line was a young man who looked Indian or Pakistani who was there to complete the paperwork for his mother. She sat in the waiting area to the left of the entrance. The area contained six rows of four Danish Modern armchairs. The first row faced the reception desk at the right of the entrance. The second row of dark blue upholstered low-backed, blond-wood arm chairs faced away from the reception desk looking directly at the third row which faced the reception desk. The remaining three rows continued the pattern to the wall furthest left of the entrance. Low-backed two-person couches situated between the second and third and fourth and fifth rows rested against the wall housing the entrance.

After asking his mother to produce an insurance card for the receptionist, the son provided the last of the information needed to move him and his mother to the next step in the work flow process, completing forms. I advanced providing both my insurance card and my driver's license obeying the sign requesting a picture ID and proof of insurance. The receptionist, a modestly attractive woman of my age group, smiled and said her maiden name was the same as my last name. In between keying in data into her computer she asked if I'd been to Scotland. I acknowledged that I had. She asked me to complete the patient information form and acknowledge the legal liabilities that my medical records were subject to and return the forms to her. I retired to a chair in the waiting area noticing as I did that the impatient old man had been taken. The young man and his mother who had gone before me had returned the forms to the receptionist and were now standing in the line vacated by the old man.

I returned the completed signed form to the receptionist. She had no one else in line so she took her time completing her processing of my information. She offered that she too had been to Scotland but only briefly after spending most of their vacation in Germany. I asked if she had visited Isle of Skye during her brief stay. She said no and asked why I had asked. I explained that Skye was the home of the Clan McLeod, specifically Dunvegan Castle at the northern end of the island. She said she would make a point on the next visit, which she and her husband planned for next year. She thanked me and provided the paperwork that would move me to occupy the spot in line vacated by mother and son. I waited about the length of time to get an open teller in a bank during the week. The lady who took my forms asked again for my insurance card and picture ID. She asked what part of my body was being x-rayed. I said the left leg between knee and ankle.

She directed me back to the waiting area as a lab technician called the mother and son for the final stage in the process. The old man had completed his time in the lab and was making his way out of the back as the mother and son were entering. I watched him travel the length of the gray carpeted floor-with its thin white strips spaced about an inch apart and running in parallel from the entrance of the lobby to the doorway leading into the lab itself on the grayish-purple wall directly opposite the entrance. The walls at right angles to this wall housing the lab entrance were painted a lighter gray color.

An elderly woman followed the old man. Both had metal canes. As the elderly woman exited the lab, a younger woman who could pass for the other's twin hurried to take the other's cane and replace it with her right arm. The two slowly made their way to the entrance while around them others moved at nearly twice their speed. A young Asian mother with her six or seven year old daughter had been called to the lab. She had told the daughter to wait in the waiting area and not to leave her seat only to be called to her mother's side moments later as the lab technician told the mother to bring her daughter.

I was called next by a young woman technician. She directed me into a small area with dressing rooms similar to the ones found at the Gap but with full length doors with slide locks on the inside. I was given the extra large blue paper shorts and told to remove my pants and shoes and dress in the shorts and bring my valuable out of the dressing room with me but to leave my pants on the chair to let others know that the room was occupied. As soon as I got changed and emerged from the room, the lab technician appeared again and asked me to follow her to the x-ray room. I was asked to lie on my back beneath a large camera hovering over the area where my legs rested. The technician laid a rectangular plate beneath my left calf and asked that I keep my leg still. She placed a lead blanket over my genitals and stomach then ran behind a shield where she exposed the x-ray film. She returned and positioned me on by left side to get a profile shot of the calf and ankle area. The third shot was identical to the first except the camera was aimed lower on my leg, in the area just above the ankle. It was all over in less than three minutes and I was getting dressed and walking out of the lab back to my car.

The terrible thing about modern life is that everything we do with anyone providing service requires getting in a queue. You want Starbuck Latte, you stand in line to order, and then you stand in another line to get you coffee. I had been in four queues to get my leg X-rayed. I counted the two encounters with the Scottish receptionist as two queues. However, the beauty of queues is they give you the illusion of progress. You finally ordered your latte and you are halfway to drinking it.