Saturday, October 31, 2009

NEW LIFE IN UROLOGY

I had an active practice of Urology for about 35 years, and finally retired to spend the remaining years of my wife's life taking care of and spending time with her. After she died I found that after having gone from a 24 hour a day job to total boredom, I started looking around for something to do. So, after pondering the consequences, I offered my boundless experience to a young Urologist who needed help in his office. Sounds ideal, right?? So on the first day of "work" I got a lecture on how the paper work had to be done in order to satisfy Medicare and Blue Cross/Blue Shield and another lecture on sexual harrassment in the workplace (unfortunately it was not allowed any longer), including any comment to a patient that might be interpreted as sexual( I found it hard to discuss an old man's problem with impotence without some alllusion to the sex act, nor to discuss an elderly ladies vaginal discomfort without asking about her sexual habits), but that was the lecture.
Doing office urology means doing a lot of rectal exams on men of all ages who are truly thrilled about the prospect and I am sure enjoy it about as much as I did in doing it. I soon remembered that one of the reasons I was happy to have retired, was the fact that each time I did a rectal exam, it HURT me more than it did him. When I was a senior in CVHS I played football for the excellent Bronco team (record of 2 and 8, I think), and during that year broke my right wrist trying to stiff-arm an opponent from Sedan that weighed twice as much as I. Well, forty years later the arthritis in that old fractured wrist was so bad, that the pressure of doing a rectal exam was like stiff-arming Don Cox.
The other part of office urology meant writing reams of notes concerning each patient visit, in order that Medicare could pay, or not pay, the appropiate amount for that visit. Now as you might expect, this payment,or non-payment, was very important to my young colleage who was trying to pay for his new house and new Mercedes, etc. So, he would review all the notes that I had written and invariably tell me that they weren't adequate and that I should add this or add that, etc. Now it is important for you all to understand that after forty years of writing notes in my office and hospital charts, that I had developed a painful arthritis in the base of my writing thumb, and now trying to write all the notes specified by young doctor was miserable.
All of these lectures and advice and critiques were coming from a young doctor who was the age of my youngest son, and who in fact was a friend of my son. How would you like your son bossing you around? Maybe not! Anyway, after a few weeks of this stimulating activity, I decided that I could get my kicks by watching "E.R" and "Grey's Anatomy", so told the young man that I appreciated his help and I was going to retire for good. So ended my career.

4 comments:

Pat Pate Molder said...

Great and funny aricle. Maybe I now have a better appreciation when my husband, JT, and my son, Tim, tell me how much they DON'T enjoy "that part" of their annual physical.

don cox said...

That was when it became a downfall to a lot of Good Doctors. When demanded at least three copies of everything. They were covered up with paperwork and no enough time to spend with theiir patients.
I sen a lo of changes during the 26 years I worked at the Ponca City Hospital of Okla.
Betty Call-Klusmeyer

DFCox said...

I don't quite understand why Betty is posting under my name. Has she been given an invite to join?

don cox said...

Sorry about that Don. Wasn't sure what I needed to do to make a comment?
Do enjoy all the memories of CV.

lET ME KNOW. bETTY CALL-KLUSMEYER