Hell Now Comes in Many Colors, 
and the Marketing Mercenaries of Capitalism Want You to Know It!

The project of taking my mother and father to visit a doctor is unpleasant.

Both mother and father need walkers.  A walker does not go easily into my parents’ car.  It must be first dis-assembled---which is itself a slightly awkward task.  The buttons on either side of the walker’s small grab bar do not move smoothly, and one has got to simultaneously depress both. Then, once I have placed one walker with its two removable parts in the trunk, I have to squeeze the other into the back seat of my parents/ car.  The car is parked within a structure which my parents refer to as their “car port”.  (Not a garage, but still a help in protecting the car from local weather.) ((Note about local weather.  The brutality of the local weather is easily proved.  The sun and wind are not friendly.  A sign I placed outside the fence to guide the mail carriers to the mail box (not visible from the street) quickly became battered and torn from wind and sun.  The stiff blue index card no longer had its stiffness undamaged and its color had faded to a much less lively shade.  So, too, after three years the stiff plastic sign warning away solicitors now appears to have been chewed by a predator.))

At any rate, I must maneuver between the car and the protective fence in an area of perhaps one and a half feet in width, while holding the collapsed walker.  The wires for the brakes can now get trapped on anything that protrudes, necessitating further maneuvers upwards.  On a bad day, I drop the damn thing and bad words issue from my mouth.
Once fitted inside the car, the walker must again be persuaded to fit neatly, or if not neatly, so as to allow me to close the door.

Once we arrive at the parking lot for the “medical building”, there may or may not be parking in the handicapped region.    The building may or may not have a door friendly to handicapped.  Curiously, I seem to remember that in Slovakia, handicapped doors were common.  That might have been a flawed memory.  I didn’t travel the land with two aged relatives.  However, handicapped doors in that country featured a very large button, which, if pressed, opened the door.   I have seen only one similarly friendly button in El Paso, Texas----and between the two of them my parents visit eight or nine doctors on a regular basis.
Inside the buildings, the elevators pose a special danger.  The doors are operated by a powerful mechanism and the threat of being trapped between them is a real enough danger for the frail elderly.  Having summoned an elevator, I’ve got to rush inside and find the “doors open” button, depress it, and encourage my parents to enter the elevator.

The entire process is complicated by a bizarre hurriedness that seems to infect my father’s brain.  I’ve got to coach him, and persuade him not to race against my mother.  It is as if having a walker were a sort of license to ignore the rules of the road and to depress the accelerator.

Once inside the doctors’ office, further pleasures await us.

Of course, once we arrive at the doctor’s office, there is the obligatory obnoxious television.  CNN and Fox News are bad enough, but I am horrified to notice that channels purporting to provide history or science information are cluttered with garbage.  I pray that I should never again read or meet or hear one of those science populizers whose every other word is “fascinating”, “surprising”, or any other of that dozen words which tell us that the speaker deserves our attention, even when the subject matter is not really explained or illustrated, but only trumpeted.

It is not unusual to wait for two hours.  It can happen that we wait longer.  It can also happen that our wait is brief, but that is relatively uncommon.  Doctors don’t apologize for making us wait; that is, of course, one sign of the entrenched nature of hierarchy and submission in this land of the unfree.

As it happens, last Friday the doctor was relatively pleasant and cheerful----very different from another man recently described.  Yet, the framing of our brief meeting with him was a variety of unpleasant incidents.

Worst of all, once we arrived home, we were met by a Nurse requiring a signature.  Negotiations followed.  The company which is paid by Medicare to supply help for my father is greedy.  Of course, the nurse blames Medicare.  Sorry, I don't believe her.  I know all about these companies.  I experienced their ruthless mercenary nature when I was a language teacher.  Those who do the actual work get a small share of the plunder.  That's the way it is with Language Schools (or, as they say in Austria, "Institutes"....(sorry while I turn aside to barf....)).  Those who do the actual work get a pittance.

What's that I hear?  You say it's the same with the CEO of any company in the English-speaking world?  Let's not get in to that now.  Let's just say that the devil never sleeps.