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    Яαgιи Яαvєи
    Cairo, Egypt
    Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you'll notice you've got their strict attention.
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Tapping at my chamber door



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In Doc we trust

Again I find myself crawling towards them.

I went to get a sinus x-ray at Alpha Scan about two hours ago. I had to. I had to know what's going on up there where it makes no sense.

Don't you find it funny that they usually don't have any clocks hanging anywhere at the doctor's office?

I went up to the reception counter where some dude asked me about the type of x-ray I wanted to have taken, wrote my name down on some form, then asked me to wait; and so I did. Fifteen minutes later, some other dude called my name out and asked me to follow him through a door with a sign that said Restricted Area, the hoax of restriction and confidentiality. In there, I met a woman that looked like she was the one. She asked me whether I wanted a normal scan or a cross-sectioned one, to which I replied 'normal please'. She then wrote some meaningless abbreviations on that same form that held my name and gave it to the dude who escorted me back outside to the waiting area and asked me to wait again. At that point, of course, my seat had been taken.

What the hell just happened? Why did they ask me to go in there and ask for the same goddamn x-ray that I asked for at the counter? Why do they even have reception? Disguised unemployment! How insignificant would I feel if I held that reception dude's position? They just fool us into believing that they're all about professional help, don't they?

I waited some more, ten more minutes probably. No clocks to tell time and I felt like I've been waiting forever and a day. They might as well put us all in freezers until it's our turn to be scanned; at least that way we won't feel like we've aged a zillion years.

My name got called up again and I followed the same dude into an elevator. They've had that dude's job replaced by machines designed to call out your number and give you directions like two decades ago. I elevated to the second floor on which they asked me to wait again.

I waited for twenty fucking minutes. They had a film about a Napoleon wannabe playing on mbc2. The scene playing was when he got escorted to a mental asylum. It felt like a big fat sign to everybody there waiting for their forsaken turns.

And then it happened. They called my name.

I walked into a room where I met some dude who wasn't a doctor. He was a "technician". What the hell does a technician do anyway? They said that the detailed report signed by the official doctor would be ready by tomorrow, which probably meant that the technician didn't know how to do it himself. Did they even have doctors working there? Would that "official doctor" signature even be real? If I owned that place I'd probably fire half the staff and hire doctors who study for over seven fucking years and get to make 2400 LE a year. How is it that the two most important professions in Egypt get the lowest pay? Doctors and engineers should get what they deserve. They should also be executed if they ever made a mistake.

Technician my ass.

The dude asked me to stand in front of a board and took the long awaited picture or whatever. The board was attached to a big machine that looked like an electric converter with the word TOSHIBA written across. If only that machine could read my mind it would probably read the words Fuck You.

I was done in ten minutes, after which the technician said 'حمدلله عالسلامه'. I walked out of there thinking what if that whole thing was a big hoax? What if that Toshiba machine was actually an electric converter? What if they had one x-ray sample copied a zillion times and all they had to do is change the width and height of the skull to match the patient's skull size? Even a seven year old can do it nowadays; the miracle of Photoshop.

I felt scammed… again. I needed assurance and satisfaction.

I should have more trust in medicine.

I'll be getting the results tomorrow.

Please do, have more trust in medicine!
Medicine is in fact one of, if not absolutely, the lowest paid profession in Egypt, but if we are talking specialities, radiologists -"Xray doctors" to some- are better paid than most. Those people you spent over an hour in a radiology centre without meeting! Ironic, innit?! But allow me to demonstrate what the technician's job is, he positions the patient in a perfect angle for the scan, a job a qualified doctor didn't learn to do.
And yes, waiting rooms can be a torment, but thank God you have the luxury of private medicine..can you even begin to imagine how long you'd wait if you were a poor Kasr el3einy patient!Not to mention the treatment you'll get from the "staff" -don't feel too sorry for the patients, junior doctors are treated even worse!!

Sorry how pissed off your visit got you, wish you more patience the next time :)

ut totally right about how doctors and engineers are regarded in this country.. i only know a very few good doctors.. but my general experience in labs and scan centers sucks big time.. i once spent 3 hours waiting for my turn in a private doctor's clinic to have an ultra sound only to find that he was already five hours late.. my son (who was 5 months back then) kept crying the whole time making me wanna shoot the doc in the head when he finally arrived..

and millions of other stories.. i blame egypt

Well, that is simply Egypt and thank God you are fine man...
Alf Salama 3aleek...

when i read this post i thought you weren't ok it got me worried. tnx kalashnikov for commenting here or else i would think the worst.

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