The Day I Went to the Doctor

The morning of 25 Nov 2009 was like any other day, up at 4:30 am, take a shower, brush teeth, clear throat, spit blood . . . oops, wait a minute spit blood? That ain’t right. This had happened a couple of times before over the last 8 – 10 months, but normally while I was traveling and by the time I got back to San Antonio I’d forget about it. But I was in town, so I decided to call for a doctor’s appointment once I got to work.

I’m retired Air Force and I work on an Air Force base as a government employee. As a retiree I still can utilize the Air Force medical system. I called for an appointment and they told me they had no openings for 3 weeks. I told them what my problem was and when I mentioned bleeding they recommended that if I wanted to see a doctor today to go to the emergency room. I didn’t like that idea, I’ve been to that emergency room and it always ended up being a long wait to see a doctor. It’s one of only 2 trauma centers in town, so unless you’re spurting blood or have an exposed broken bone you wait, and wait, and wait.

So I went to the emergency room, told them my symptoms and waited. I was there 4 hours and saw 3 doctors. They seemed more concerned that my blood pressure was elevated and they checked that every 30 minutes. They did the usual throat exam and took an x-ray of my chest, but found nothing unusual. One of the doctors said he’d give me a referral to ENT. I thanked them all and went on my merry way expecting to get a call for the referral in a day or so. That didn’t happen.

I waited a few days and didn’t hear anything. The wife didn’t like that so she began to call around and see if she could get them to get me an appointment. I got an appointment with ENT on 18 Dec 09.