Dr. No (Part II)

My last posting discussed a friend who practiced civil disobedience and got only a small part of what she wanted and needed from a flawed medical system.

She called me early yesterday saying she had just run out of Vicodin and was waiting to see how much pain she was in before she took action. If the pain was too much, she had a gameplan: to go to the emergency room again. And I thought, "good for her! She needs to pester them to all ends of the Earth until they give her what she needs." I encouraged her and applauded her strategic planning that would make Napoleon retreat.

So, she followed through. In the early evening, she went to the emergency room and made them admit her for pain management. She called me and told me that a nurse said the surgery would be an emergency one that evening.

Wow. Dr. No actually does something other than deliver babies!

As I write this, I hope the surgery is over and my dear friend is on the way to healing. Then when she recovers, I hope she fires the doctor.

Beth L. Gainer is a professional writer and has published numerous academic and magazine articles, as well as an essay on her breast cancer experience in the anthology Voices of Breast Cancer by LaChance Publishing. She writes about a potpourri of topics, including motherhood and her Chinese adoption experience at http://currents-living-discovery.blogspot.com/, and her cat Hemi blogs at http://www.catterchatter.blogspot.com/. Beth teaches writing and literature at Robert Morris University in the Chicago area. She can be contacted at bethlgainer@gmail.com and gainercallingtheshots@gmail.com.