Sunday May 20, 2007 10:49 AM

On Friday Jim had the appointment with Dr. Decidua the maxo-facial surgeon. That's the phonetic spelling of his name because I don't have his business card handy. I decided to go with Jim because 1) taking the train into Philadelphia was invloved and Jim doesn't have much of a sense of direction when going to a new place and 2) Jim's not good with giving me the details of what's going on and I want to hear it first-hand and 3) a fight might be involved and I'm much better at that than him. Jim gives up too easily and I'll hold on a like a pit bull on someone's pants leg until we get what we came for. It's a damn good thing that I went because that's just what I had to do.

At first they sent in Dr. Dew to see us, not Dr. Decidua. And boy, Dr. Dew must have graduated dental school magna cum asshole. I explained that Dr. Kaulback had referred us, I explained Jim's prior history, and I brought copies of his operating notes from Lahey Clinic....all 49 pages of them. Right away Dr. Dew is trying to push us away. Why didn't they pull Jim's teeth at Lahey Clinic, he asks. Well, isn't THAT the million-dollar question of the day we said. They didn't. They should have. Here we are. End of story. Then Dr. Dew is trying to push us into getting the teeth pulled back in Massachusetts. I told him NO- WE LIVE HERE. WE'RE GETTING THEM DONE HERE. PERIOD. When we still wouldn't go away Dr. Dew tells us that we would have to have a vascular surgeon here and we don't have one. I told him, "I'm way ahead of you. We have an appointment with Dr. Lombardi next week." He had Jim show him where his jaw hurt. Jim tells him it's numb in spots and painful in others. Dr. Dew gets indignant and says something to the effect of how can it be numb and hurt at the same time? Well, how should WE know? I wanted to make a fist and say, "Here...I'll SHOW you," but I managed to control myself. Then Dr. Dew is going through Jim's op notes. "I only see one carotid tied off here," and he dismissively hands the papers back to me. I told him, "Trust me...I was there," and I split the papers up into groups and handed them back..."Here's the tumor removal on February 14th, here's the blowout of the carotid on February 23...here's the second carotid ligation on March 9th...." as I stuck them back in his face. Then Dr. Dew gets this puzzled look on his face and says, "What do you want...ALL of his teeth pulled?" No, just keep the rotten ones. What do you think? You can't tell by ONE look in his mouth that he needs them all out? They're all brown for cryin' out loud. And he doesn't even have that many LEFT. I didn't need to go to dental school to figure that one out. So after an hour of this jerking us around he goes to get Dr. Decidua. Well, that's what we came there for in the first place.

Why Dr. Decidua even SENT that Bozo in to see us is beyond me. Dr. Decidua was the nicest guy. He had spoken to Dr. Kaulback prior to our visit. He recommended we hook up with an internist at their hospital also, and his nurse scheduled a visit to coincide with the vascular surgery appointment. He had Jim sign all the consent forms, and he's going to coordinate with Dr. Kaulback so he can come take Jim's PEG tube out during the procedue as well. We spoke about the type of implants Jim was planning on getting, made recomendations on a different type that would last longer, and he also made a call to Jim's dentist in town, Dr. Drain, who will make the dentures. What Jim is getting are called "overdentures." They're dentures, but they snap in with clips, or implants. We also explained how Jim was forced to put his therapy on hold because of his jaw pain. Dr. Decidua was concerned with that, but he said that once Jim's bite is corrected that may correct the problem with the pain. What's not helping is the fact that one of the "rings" from his jaw plate is sitting on a nerve. How he could tell that from the X-ray we brought is beyond me. In the meantime I asked them to write Jim a script for more Darvocet to get him by, which they did. I also asked him about getting this through insurance, because who has their teeth taken out as an inpatient? Insurance is sure to reject this. He told me he's had a lot of success getting patients with high blood pressure and what not admitted for tooth removal, so it should be o.k.

Now, THAT was more like it. In the end, we wound up being there three hours. We're moving along. Now the old, pre-medicated me would have gotten angry and then agonized over it. I would have asked Jim 20 times, "Did I do the right thing?" and after the first ten times he would have started barking at me...."Yes...Jezus Christ! YES!" Now I get angry and KNOW I did the right thing.

And kudos to the crew at CVS in Williamstown. I've given up getting precriptions filled at CVS in Sicklerville. That crew is just too obnoxious and I'm tired of the treatment I get every time I go there. I tried getting some prescriptions filled at Acme in Sicklerville. At first I didn't fare much better...I hadn't been there in awhile and we've got new prescription cards now. The pharmacist shouts down the length of the counter, "YOU'RE INSURANCE IS EXPIRED!!!" and I yelled back, "NO IT'S NOT. I HAVE A NEW CARD! MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED ME THAT FIRST!" So I'm not too thrilled with those guys either. Friday night around 10 pm I headed out to the 24-hour CVS in Williamstown on the Black Horse Pike. I needed to get Jim's Darvocet script filled and that was the only place open at that hour. While I'm waiting for them to fill the script the clerk calls over another lady. She says that the card the lady was using expired on 12/1/06. Did she have a new card? If not, the meds would cost $41 cash and whenever the lady found the new card she could come in and get a refund. Now THAT was how it should be handled. So I told the manager so. I said that the crew from CVS in Sicklerville should spend a day in that store and maybe they'd learn a thing or two about how to treat customers. See...I'm not such a bitch after all.