I have finally escaped from my all-day prison...

otherwise known as the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center.  I had not one, not two, not three but four appointments there today, at 9:00, 9:30, 1:00 and 2:40.  I chose not to wait for new prescriptions to be filled, but to have them mailed.  None of the new drugs is an immediate need or I'd still be there and would have ended up probably going directly to trivia tonight.

I actually had to wait only ten minutes for appointment #1, a short follow-up visit.  Appointment #2 was a follow-up in a different clinic and I waited 77 minutes to be seen.  Then I spent another 18 minutes waiting for the resident to return from checking in with her attending physician.  The care is excellent and she did a great job of informing me of some health issues I wasn't aware of.  But the wait was a pain.  The 2:40 appointment usually would have involved a wait of more than an hour (that's the norm at the cardiology clinic), but they got me in within 15 minutes.  The doctor spent a good deal of time with me going over the issues and the treatment plans he has in mind.  He was also impressed for some reason that I knew how the procedure he wants to order works and what it is used to measure. 

The appointment that was the most frustrating was the one at 1 p.m., which was supposed to be a follow-up with my primary care doctor to look again at my still-swollen hand.  But someone had messed up and entered the appointment into the computer as being with a social worker, not a doctor.  So the social worker showed up in the waiting room and questioned me quite a bit to ensure that I didn't need any social services, and then she delved into other personal areas.  I was polite and did my best to educate her on how things work, since she's clearly new at the VA.  If she'd asked too many more questions though, I'd probably have needed to take a few deep breaths.

On an almost completely unrelated note, I tried to use what I thought was the six some odd dollars remaining on a $25 gift card someone gave me to buy my lunch at the "Patriot Cafe" at the VA.  But the gift card was declined.  I found out why later.  What I thought was about $6 left over was reduced by a $3.95 activation fee charged to the card upon the first use.  So what's marketed as a $25 gift card is really a $21.05 gift card.  How utterly clever and twisted of the issuer.  Pocket a fee of more than 10% of the value of the card to "activate" it, which is nothing more than computer coding.