Be kind to your medical professional

Wow. Running a medical office is hard. Especially when your background is in theatre and marketing. Hmmm. Who knew. Here's my request to you. Be kind to the receptionist next time you go to the doctor. They have a hard job, it might be why they're cranky.

Well, after a year of planning, we've gone and done it. We have finally opened the clinic. Chronic Fatigue & Immune Disorders Research and Treatment Center is open for business. I know, I know, the patients will be tired by the time they say our name. We call ourselves Chronic Fatigue Center for short. Catchy, huh.

Day one was interesting. I was smart enough to only schedule two patients. Thank god. That was enough to show me where all the gaping holes were located in our well laid plans. Sort of funny now that I think about it... but scary at the time. Day two went better. We were behind schedule in no time but we've since readjusted some thinking and scheduling. Now if I could only tame the paper. We're planning to move to an EMR (than an electronic medical record for you all outside the biz) but it will be a while before that's truly up and running. Until then, its me vs. paper and paper is definitely winning right now. Wow there's a lot of it. Just think of how large your chart must be if you've been seeing the same doctor for a while. These folks are really sick and have seen tons of doctors trying to get help. When I ask them to bring labs they really bring it! We ask them to fill out 25 pages of forms BEFORE their appointment. We send it out to them so they can do it at their convenience because 25 pages greeting you in the office at your first appointment would send anyone running in the opposite direction!

Looking over these forms I send to the patients has been so enlightening for me personally. Do I really know my family history? Who can remember when you started menstruating, for god's sake. Why do they always ask that? I can barely remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. Did I eat breakfast yesterday? It was Tuesday... Ooops. Distracted again.

Anyway, it turns out that this stuff is actually important to your health. So think about it. Ask your family while they're around to ask. Take those questions that doctors and nurses ask you seriously, because they really use your answers.

Now I do have one complaint about my office. Its not that I"m playing receptionist for a while. Or that I'm running my own personal tree killing with all this printing and copying... its that my office is absolutely FREEZING. As we speak my toes as so cold I could just break them off and toss them to the birds. And this is better. We had the maintenance person come and shut all the vents to 2/3rds closed. I can't close them all the way or it will be as stuffy as grandma's house in here. No one wants that in a doctor's office. Obviously we don't control our own temperature or I would do something about it. But I just don't understand. Yes, its Florida. yes its hot outside (although why its still this hot and humid in December is a whole different question and story). But does it have to be like a freezer inside? I'm going to call Al Gore and tell him that we could make a huge dent towards slowing global warming if he could just get south Florida in line. In every office in this building, the staff are wearing sweaters and sweatshirts. There's an ob/gyn across the hall from our office. Can you even imagine how cold it is for those women who actually have to get UNdressed? Sheesh.

But back to us. All in all, we're chugging along. Business has been slow but steady for December and I understand December is a horrible month for doctors offices. We've already started making appointments for January. This is good. We're still figuring out how to use our equipment so slow isn't bad for now. The tilt table is my favorite. I want Nancy to give me the test so I can know what its like. You start laying down flat, perfectly horizontal. Then they start to bring your toward a vertical position (hence, the tilt) and in very lay terms, they find out if there's a place where your blood pressure goes wacky. I assure you there are very real and scientific words to describe this test, I just don't know them. Here's I'll wow you with this... it measures your orthostatic response. Same thing... seeing if your blood pressure goes wacky. Anyway, in CFS patients, there's a point on the way to vertical where they could actually pass out. I wanna try! I wanna try! So when we're ready to learn, I am volunteering.

Well that's enough for now. I can't give away all our secrets in one post. Let us suffice it to say this: Week one of my new clinic is coming to a close... and what a week it was. A year and a half ago when I made this life changing decision I could never in a million years have imagined this journey. In many ways, I guess that's a good thing. Here's to week two!

Art Abounds

Last year when Art Basel came around, I was new to town and very skittish about finding my way to this huge art show. I did go find some free art down on the beach. It was a display of shipping containers that had been turned into art displays. The artists could do anything they wanted within the four walls of that container. Some were traditional, hanging art on the walls like a mini gallery. Others were far from it. Artists turned their containers into different and unique – I want to say bizarre but am trying not to be judgmental – presentations of their art. That’s what I thought Art Basel was all about.

This year, I am a year more experienced and more importantly I had a guide. My friend Larry came to town to partake of Art Basel and he was an excellent tour guide. While I still haven’t invested the time or money to go to the official Art Basel show at the Convention Center, I did venture into Art Miami, one of the satellite shows. I understand that Art Miami is about 20 years strong here in Miami while Art Basel came here in 2002. Oh, I’m sure there’s a story there. I need to meet more artsy people to find out the dish. Now here’s something I didn’t fully understand last year. When I call them art shows, what I really mean is art sales. These are galleries from all around the world who have come here to sell their wares. Sell. Now we’re talking some fun. These are folks who wouldn’t give me the time of day if I walked into their NY or Munich gallery and asked the price of a Lichtenstein or a Warhol. But here, well, that’s what they’re here for. Not to mention, in Miami everyone dresses crazily so it’s hard to tell who is filthy rich and who’s not. But I digress.

The fun began on Friday night when we went to a little furniture store/gallery. The stuff was very beautiful if completely over the top. Larry and I were looking at a magnificent, carved wood chest, an armoire of sorts. It had an inlaid front and was quite stunning. I stepped away to look at something and Larry asked the cost. When I came back, he told me it was “35.” I was thinking to myself…. It’s pricey in my world, but for a handmade chest, it’s really quite reasonable for $3500. Larry, watching my face and obvious inner workings said, “No Hannah, not $3500… $35,000.” And that was the perfect start to my weekend.

Saturday we went to Art Miami. It is a huge show that takes place in a tent (a very secure and substantial tent, but a tent nonetheless, in the Design District. Now you have to understand that during Art Basel, the entire city of Miami goes art crazy. It’s kind of cool. Every nook and cranny in every building has art. Stores put up some art, galleries come out of the wood work, people rent unoccupied space and throw up exhibits, hotel ballrooms transform to galleries. It’s a fascinating thing. For a city not usually high on intellectual pursuits, they seem to embrace this thing with fervor and appreciate and exploit the excesses of it all. It was great. So off we go to Art Miami. This was an absolutely amazing collection of galleries from around the world. And the art was cool. Very little, actually, of the white canvas with the red stripe variety. Much less than I expected of the geometric print repeated over and over on the same canvas. There were portraits, landscapes, still lives, pastels, watercolors, everything else you can imagine and even a good sampling of plug in art. And Larry’s right, when you see something that’s awesome; it’s usually a NYC gallery. He was the best tour guide I could have had. I guess if I really thought about it, I would have remembered that he is a collector, with some really beautiful artwork but I hadn’t. He was patient and knowledgeable and didn’t even laugh at me too much when I showed my complete and total ignorance about art. He gently showed me things that were beautiful and well done and steered me clear of one corner of the show which he described as a whirlpool of bad art. The great thing was that everything was for sale. When you went to ask someone a price, just like the night before in the furniture store, they’d say, “Oh, that’s 70. “ That means $70,000. I was in the know, now. There seemed to be a number of Warhols around and available so we started using them as a way to compare and contrast. First we saw two little ones. A Mao, which was going for $95.000. Then a self portrait for $240,000. Later we saw a much larger, though uglier Mao for $70,000. Ah, I was learning. Who owned it before mattered. The quality of the print mattered. The fact that they probably found what should have been a discarded print, mattered. (Editorial from the world according to Larry.) The next day, Larry went back to Art Basel. He saw a truly magnificent very large Mao that he loved. Just to finish our tour he asked how much it was. He was informed that it was sold. Just out of curiosity, he said, what did it sell for? $2.5 million. Ah. Interesting. First of all, I think that’s the different between Art Basel and Art Miami. Second of all, WOW.

We saw Lichtensteins, Diebenkorns, Hockneys. Boteros, and a million others. It was great fun. While museums are fun, the added element of these items being for sale was very exciting. Not that I could afford any of these any more than I could afford a museum piece, still. It made a difference.

People watching in Miami is always a good thing. People watching at art shows is just over the top. We saw so many interesting looks and characters that I can’t even begin to tell you. How about you come see for yourself! Next year I’m going in. I’m doing the real thing. Art Basel 2010 here I come. Wont’ you join me?