Ring-ring in the New Year with a toast to your health
Column by Anthonette Klinkerman
At the start of the New Year, I find myself thinking if there is anything faster than the speed of light, some American will figure out how to achieve that. We are a drive-through society. Drive-through coffee places (thank Heaven), drive-through cleaners, drive-through banks, mobile fitness studios, and heck, even a mobile etiquette school (Ahem!).
So it makes sense that a drive-through healthcare system is next. You laugh? It happened to me. Thanks to our choices in the realm of healthcare, my husband opted to make us members of a system with initials that are usually synonymous with an unwanted army duty. The German-Spanish name translates to “chewy roll you’re stuck with.”
I had been feeling unbelievably tired, and with a family history of thyroid problems it was suggested I have a thyroid screening. My lawyer sister, ever the logical one, pointed out I have three jobs, a seven-year-old, a husband, a house, and now a live-in relative, so she was not quite sure wherein lay the mystery of my exhaustion.
Well, happily enough for me, I did not even need to leave my house. Technology has become so advanced the “medical” facility was able to do my thyroid screening over the phone. Here I thought I would have to make the trek down into Highlands Ranch to have these “professionals” see me and maybe draw some blood or something, but they called to set up a phone appointment. Isn’t technology wonderful?
A friend suggested that perhaps in the near future we could phone in unpleasant female tests. How about phone-in colonoscopies? Phone-in root canals? Maybe even phone-in bunion removal?
Wow. I love how efficient our society has become. To think that you don’t even need to be seen by a healthcare professional anymore. I am thinking that I can phone in my next night of teaching, my next seminar, even phone in getting my daughter back to sleep after a bad dream.
Wait. Maybe this healthcare thing is the bad dream. That seems like the most logical conclusion. By the open enrollment period, I am predicting the turnout to be similar to that of a U2 concert, and that I will be making lots of new friends with drive-through diagnoses as we camp out overnight.
Have a happy and, if you know what’s good for you and your phone minutes, healthy New Year!
