My husband is lame

Seriously, he's lame today. Not in the sense that he's been a lame husband for the past several years and I didn't really notice. Not lame in the sense that when I ask him to do something to make me feel better his response is to do the exact opposite. Lame in the sense that he can't walk very well. He's been limping along for about a week.

He complains about his feet hurting and his back hurting, etc.... He does that a lot. What he doesn't do is actually go see a doctor about it.

I know that there's this whole thing about men not going to the doctor. I wouldn't think that this would apply to my husband. He's a big baby. I'd think that he'd want to go to the doctor, if he thought the doctor could actually do anything.

I don't go to the doctor that much either. If I feel bad, I stay home and do common sense stuff. There's no reason to go to the doctor and waste time and money to have him tell me something that I already knew I was supposed to do. Your foot hurts? Wrap it and try not to walk for a while. You don't feel well? You probably have a cold. Go home and have some chicken soup and some orange juice. Get some rest.

So I don't go to the doctor that much unless there is something wrong, and I don't know what it is. Or there is something wrong, and I know exactly what it is and need antibiotics. Or I've fallen or had some sort of accident and need X-rays. Or I feel really bad and need to be told that my appendix isn't about to burst.

But there are times when even though you're pretty sure that you know what is wrong and you know that you're going to be sent home with some common sense instructions, you just can't take it anymore and you go to the doctor anyway.

So I come home from school yesterday, to find as usual my husband is glued to the computer. And usually he says hello and other things of that nature before asking about lunch (or dinner, or breakfast, or midnight snack, or whatever is appropriate for that time of day). But this time he says something like "I think I need to go see the doctor about my foot."

Okay, so when I go to the doctor (except for stuff like my annual exam) I feel so bad that I can't drive. So I would have to wait for him to get home to drive me to the doctor if I decided that I needed one. Or if it was something sudden and I didn't think I could wait for him, maybe I'd call my mom or someone else for help. But he wasn't sick, and he didn't need me to drive him. He's been driving around just fine. And it isn't that he needs me to walk him to the car either. The last time he was complaining about his foot, I bought him a cane just to be on the safe side.

So he's apparently decided that he is in such pain that he can't take it anymore, and he's going to go to a doctor just in case there's something that can be done, or maybe some better pain meds that can be prescribed. But then he decides to sit there and wait three hours for me to get home from school.

And, although he's spent three hours sitting in front of the computer, he doesn't bother to look for the doctor's phone number or office hours or do anything else that one might do if one wanted to see a doctor.

I don't like our doctor. Our insurance company randomly selected one close to our home when we didn't know which one to write down. I should like to change doctors, but I have no better idea what name to write down now than I did before, except that it wouldn't be this one. So I saw her two or three times almost a year ago, decided she didn't have a lot of sense, and didn't go back for the six month follow-up. My husband also skipped his six-month follow-up and his three month follow-up, etc....

About the only good thing I have to say about her is that she has some walk-in hours, which we had a vague idea was after one on Monday-Thursday. So at about 12:30 we went over there and notice that there weren't many cars in the parking lot. Well, most of them are at lunch, but I'd have thought that there still would have been a few more people around. Maybe we were just lucky, but I didn't think so. I decided to go have a look around.

I couldn't remember the doctor's name, but I was pretty sure that I would recognize it on the board, and I pretty much knew where I was going anyway. It was the office just past the lab. The office just past the lab was very dark. I know that they turn out a lot of the lights when they go to lunch, but this seemed too dark for that. I think that office was empty.

My husband then decides that what will make him feel better is a new larger pair of shoes. So we go to Payless and buy him some big shoes with Velcro. He's still in pain, but he says that now he doesn't sweat every time he takes a step.

He's in such pain that he sweats every time he takes a step? And he just yesterday decides that he should see a doctor?

He decided that he needed to see a specialist instead. But, after being home for four hours on the computer, he only manages to look up the names and numbers of three foot specialists in the area. He still didn't actually call any of the numbers. He still doesn't have an appointment.

I had this whole other thing that I was going to get into, about how some people just don't know how to spend money. But this is getting long already, and I have to go to school in an hour, so I think that I'll save that for tomorrow.