Saga-riffic

The other night when my mom was still in the hospital, the doctor stopped by kind of late to check on her and his outfit (dark, shiny and athletic looking in a slim-fit kind of way) prompted my mother to ask, "Were you out for a jog, Doctor L_____?" He looked at her as though he was not sure whether she was joking or not (he's a tall, square-ish guy with a bit of a pot belly) and, when he saw that she was serious, he admitted that he had just come from a quick nine holes on the golf course.

Yes, believe it or not, this little podunk desert town has its own semi-private 18-hole golf course. I mean, seriously: What else would you do here besides golf?

Well, I'm glad you asked!

Aside from a full 19-hole course, there's also indoor miniature golf that you play under a black light. FUN!! That costs like $2.50 per person. Cheap, no? And yet, I haven't tried it.

Or you can go to a movie ($8.50) in the newish theater. My mom and I did that the day before we checked her into the hospital. We saw Man of Steel and I actually liked it (like 85-90% liked it anyway, which is good for me), though my mom thought it was a little too dark.

Or you can do what everyone always does and go to Walmart or, if you're really desperate, K-Mart. (Rosa, the woman who cleans the ICU, remarked cynically to my mom in Spanish that that's where you find all the doctor's wives when they first move here, at Walmart or K-mart, dazedly wandering the aisles, because where else are they going to spend all their doctor-husband's money?)

Or you can be like the doctors themselves and just go ahead and play golf. Some of them apparently spend great chunks of their limited free time on the golf course (not the miniature one of course--though I think that would be kind of funny--but the one that is so parched that it resembles one long sand trap punctuated by patches of Bermuda grass). If you decide to go this route, you also have to take into account the fact that golfing here tends to expose you unnecessarily to the risk of rattlesnakes (who almost invariably manage to get an earlier tee time than doctors). And if rattlesnakes don't get you, heatstroke just might, 'cause those fools are always out there with their clubs, even when temperatures climb up into the 100s.

Not the golf course, but a reasonable facsimile thereof, given the drought and the fact that, yes, this is a desert.

What else can you do around here? Hmm. Well, you can do like I've been doing. You can try to navigate the simple task of getting a prescription filled. In case you're interested (and trust me, you're not), this is the saga of that process as it happened to me:

Yesterday I made some comment about small town incompetence in relation to vainly trying to get my mother's medications from the pharmacy after the doctor wrote the wrong date on the prescription. I wasn't commenting on the doctor (who, trust me, may be more doctor than this little burg perhaps deserves), but on the pharmacist who called the doctor for one prescription (there were two with the incorrect date) and filled it, but then told me that since he hadn't talked to the doctor about the second prescription, it couldn't be filled. I asked the pharmacist if he could call the doctor again to confirm the correct date and the pharmacist said that he was too busy and that I would have to do it.

Let me say this: The pharmacist told me all of this over the phone; he had called me--called twice, in fact, since I didn't pick up the first call--to tell me that he couldn't fill one of two prescriptions even though both had the same problem with the date and he had already talked to the doctor but he was now too busy to be making phone calls.

The cause of all the trouble, a little 7 that should have been a 2.

So I called the hospital and spoke to the nurse who had discharged us just hours before and she said she would call the doctor. The nurse called back a bit later and said that the doctor would take care of it. An hour later I went back to the pharmacy and the pharmacist told me that no one had called. I called the nurse who called the doctor who said he had spoken to the pharmacist. Meanwhile, the pharmacy closed for the night. I mean it was six o'clock after all.

Welcome to small town New Mexico.

The nurse called again that evening and said that the doctor would call the pharmacy again and that he had also given her permission to give me his home and cell phone numbers. (I'm sure he was sick of having to deal with her. She's incredibly annoying.)

We all slept on the situation.

The next day I passed the doctor's home and cell phone numbers to my mother. She called the pharmacy and of course they didn't have the prescription filled yet so she called the doctor who called the pharmacist--a different pharmacist this time, thank god.  I went to pick up the prescription. Well, almost. I picked up half of it because they had to order the other half and it would take 24 hours to get it.

And that's our saga so far.

Oh, and let's see, what else?

Twice today people have commented on the expression on my face. Once was this morning when I was checking out at Walmart (yeah, I know, I know), buying yogurt and paper towels and such, and the young cashier said, "You've got that kind of fixed smile on your face." I laughed and said something about being under-caffeinated, but really I did have an annoyed, fixed smile on my face because I was irritated by the two customers ahead of me in line, one of whom didn't have enough money with her so she ran off the ATM machine while the line backed up. After the woman came back from the ATM with no more money than she had before, a shift manager had to be found to void the sale. The woman just ahead of me made a point of mocking the woman who didn't have enough money, which: Just shut up. It's happened to all of us, and if it's never happened to you, you're just overdue, you're not superior. Then the mocking woman left and it was my turn and the cashier, who commiserated with the woman who didn't have enough money, remarked on my expression and then for some reason began to explain the game of Jenga to me.

Turns out that it takes longer to explain how to play Jenga than it does to actually play a game of Jenga against a sloth. (Note: I know how to play Jenga and said so, very emphatically even.)

So that was one person commenting on my face.  The other person was the pharmacist (not the inept one from the saga above, but another one) who, when I picked up the medication for my mother said, "You look nervous about having to give shots." And I, whose face wasn't showing nervousness but the expectation of yet another tussle over the same goddamn prescription, laughed and said, "Yeah."

Because I haven't and probably won't have to give my mother her shots. If it comes to that, I'm using that personal cell phone number and that guy is going to have to forfeit his game and make an unscheduled house call, even if I have to hunt him down on the golf course which, as a matter of fact, I can see from my mother's house, yup.

Yes, sirree, Bob.