More Demonic Mothers

Aug. 22nd, 2008 at 12:23 PM

So apparently the Demon of Andover has a horned sister in Lawrence. Is there something in the Massachusetts water supply that makes women evil?

The lowbrow from Lawrence was supported in her quest for Unholy Head Cheerleader of Hell State by the City of Cambridge, the politicians of which must have pocketed all of the taxes they collected for infrastructure - if they in fact DID collect taxes for infrastructure. Most of Cambridge looks like it's full of big corporations who convinced their State Legislature that making them pay taxes was bad for the economy. Answer: no it isn't bad for the economy, but corporations not paying taxes IS bad in general if you need money to fill potholes.

I was trapped one morning a few weeks ago on the Kendall Square BioPharma's idea of a "perk": a bus service that transports employees from North Station to Cambridge. Called the "EZ Ride", this service consists of a fleet of leaking, rickety school buses bought from third world countries for a couple of bucks each and painted blue. No shocks, no air conditioning, no routine schedule and drivers that don't bother to show up in bad weather, driving through the pockmarked and cratered wasteland known as the City of Cambridge. We hit one particularly bad pothole on First Street and all of us who weren't fortunate enough to have seats were tossed up towards the ceiling of this decrepit bus with spinal-compression-fracture force. Why we hit that pothole I have no idea - it isn't like the driver was unfamiliar with the street and didn't know it was there, or that he had no room to drive around this pothole - we were the only ones on the block at that hour of the morning. He just felt like driving into a pothole for the fun of it.

I felt a very brief, very sharp pain behind my right eye that was enough to make me gasp, "Ouch!" and clap my free hand over it, but the pain was gone almost immediately, and I didn't notice anything unusual that made me think, "Oh no, I've been seriously injured." So by the time I stumbled back off the awful bus, I'd almost forgotten about the incident.

But the good news was: before that incident even happened, I finally got in to see my new PCP after a three-month wait. "PCP": the 21st century's new word used to replace the old fashioned word "doctor", a profession which no longer exists in the United States. A PCP is a "Primary Care Physician", one of the medical profession's biggest money-wasters: they're paid big bucks to not listen to a single word that you the patient says and then send you elsewhere and collect a big paycheck for it. Nice lady - or, more accurately, much nicer than the previous PCP, who was so rude and violent she probably needed to be locked up - but seriously overworked. First time she ever met me, I believe she'd scheduled the first examination to last 5 minutes. The physical examination went long - 6 minutes - so she was now flustered, and frantic to get out of the room. I had told her two things, neither of which she managed to retain within the span of six minutes:

1. I need to have someone fix my right eye, and
2. I can't take time off of work to see doctors every week, so don't schedule me for a lot of tests all at once.

By "fixing my right eye" I was talking about my Strabismus exotropia - a ridiculous Latin phrase that only means "eyes are unaligned; turning out". Or, more accurately, the right eye was turning outwards. It's genetic and had been getting worse for years. But when you lose a job due to the economy tanking after September 11th, and you had been working as a contractor until very recently, you had no medical insurance. The condition messes with your peripheral vision, so just driving was getting more and more problematic; I needed to have the eye fixed.

The condition also manages to poke even more evil Massachusetts women out from under their underworld rocks - one Human Resources cow in Framingham took one look at me and snapped, "Do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye when I speak to you!"

Gee, lady. Maybe you could do ME the courtesy of not being a seriously moronic jackass. Apparently, the dumb bitch was so focused on people not respecting HER (or so she thought), that she forgot entirely about respecting anyone else, who might not be able to focus as sharply as she could. By the time I got done with her, she was anticipating an ironic billion dollar anti-discrimination lawsuit for having discriminated against the disabled. I wasn't, you know - disabled - but this is Massachusetts - so ridiculously liberal that you can't even SAY the word "disabled" without being sued, so I might have even won the case if I'd had the time and energy to initiate it. Ah, the fun! Seated on the witness stand, sobbing pitifully about the humiliation of the moment and sniffling that I'd suffered deep emotional damage. I'd be a millionaire now! Bottom line: I doubt she'll be pulling THAT stunt again any time soon. And what is it about Human Resources that it attracts so many women who can't even pass for human?

But I digress. The PCP had a cavernous void between her ears and missed everything I'd just said. For some reason known only to herself and the Sky Sadist she instead referred me to an eye doctor to check my eye for diabetic damage, and scheduled me for three solid pages of blood tests, mammograms, bone density tests, and god knows how many other medical tests - I can't even tell you because I promptly tossed the rest of the pages in the trash can, sunk once again under the knowledge that I needed to set aside more time I didn't have to find yet another PCP who wasn't clinically deaf. Ooooh. Now I'll be getting sued for saying "deaf" instead of "aurally challenged". I'll betcha. Welcome to the United States.)

But I did go to the eye specialist: I needed to have the eye fixed.

Aside from the PCP's medical associates office forgetting to fax over a referral as promised - I was next the victim of the Eye Specialist yahoos, who insisted on doing an annual eye exam first. I hadn't asked for one and didn't even need one, and so, more time and money wasted went into the books. In this case, I ended up being looked at by the top banana of this firm - an old geezer whose name precedes the "& Associates" on the firm's letterhead. His first words: "I don't do surgery anymore".

Nice. I was supposed to be seeing an eye surgeon; I get the Retiree who is too old and shaky to hold a scalpel. He peers into my right eye and says, "Hmmm. Interesting." Then he calls in Associate #1. They both look at my right eye and murmur, "Hmmmm. Interesting anomaly." They call in Associate #2 who says, "What IS that?" I'm staring at the three of them in shock out of my left eye. What? A tumor? A third eye? The little guy from Men in Black (the tiny little alien sitting inside the old guy's head) gasping something about "Orion's Belt"? Do they tell me what this interesting "anomaly" is?? Of course they don't! They refuse to speculate - which really pisses me off. If you're all going to stand there peering into one of my eyes like the three amigos and saying, "Hmmm", you'd better be prepared to tell me WHY you're all saying "hmmm", or I’m going to assume I’m about to die a gruesome death I wasn’t anticipating. Which is in fact what I did assume for twenty-four hours. But they don't tell me anything.

Instead they schedule me for the very specialist who I was SUPPOSED to see in the first place, and set the appointment for the next day. New theory: no one in the entire medical profession is aware that their patients might be employed, are they?

Well, the "anomaly" turned out to be the frayed fibers of a muscle behind my eye torn when we hit that pothole and the shadow of a small amount of bleeding that resulted. "Fixing the eye" has now escalated to "fixing the eye AND repairing a torn muscle" and has escalated from Minor surgery to Major surgery. I leave the office after the second appointment in a state of weary depression. I have to wear an eye patch for four to six weeks to make sure the right eye doesn't move anymore before this surgery, and anyone who has actually worn an eye patch knows how hot and insufferable those things are. I wander miserably back out through the waiting room where, before I even make it out the door, I almost trip over a boy sitting on the floor of the waiting room with yards of green snot running out his nose who then sprays me from head to toe with (you guessed it!) a loud uncontrolled sneeze.

No. Not possible. Not AGAIN.

Sitting a few feet away from him is the Lawrence Massachusetts Lowbrow - obviously the kid's evil, narcissistic and unconcerned mother - flipping lazily through a Cosmo and paying absolutely no attention to the damage her precious little son is doing to everyone in the room. She has apparently decided that dragging her virulent spawn into an eye doctor's waiting room - not even a pediatrician who might have treated the kid, but an EYE DOCTOR - using him like a loaded gun, nodding benignly while he sneezes open-mouthed all over all the people in a small enclosed space is the perfect way to spend her morning. Perfect crime. Who would suspect a saintly mother? And yet, she infected me, she will infect the doctor and all the associates, she will probably outright KILL the old geezer who doesn't do surgery anymore, along with the elderly people backed up into their waiting room chairs and frantically trying to cover their own mouths and noses with Kleenex to avoid being infected by this pre-school monster and his underworld keeper. Really. She might as well have loaded a gun and just shot everyone. Perfect imitation of the Demon from Andover in the S&S supermarket last December. Déjà vu. Might as well have been the same woman. And within 48 hours - which is to say, now - I woke up with a scratchy throat and a sinking heart. Again. Here it comes.

There is something seriously wrong with mothers these days, especially the mothers living in northern Massachusetts. I am beginning to suspect that none of them are human beings; they're little more than sadistic - and profoundly stupid - serial killers. Why worry about terrorists when the mothers of the United States are happily killing off Americans for them? And yet so many women these days whine, "Why does everyone blame mothers?" Answer: because nine times out ten you deserve it - case in point.

Idiots. Of course if the Medical Associates had done what they were supposed to do in the first place, I would have only had one appointment instead of two and missed the kid altogether. Back to the witness chair, sobbing: “It was horrible, I’m emotionally scarred for life!!!”

Really. One of these days I’m going to pull together enough energy to do just that.