Most people will read the following and say to themselves... "Craig's pretty funny. Saying all that shit for dramatic effect." Well, from my skewed perspective, it's not drama. It's reality.

As stated previously, I got in to see a 103 year old doctor. I get to the place and the lady at the desk asks me to fill out some information. I say ok and then ask her how much it cost. Evidently that's not an easy question to answer. She looked at me like I'd lost my mind. She said that all depended on what your insurance co-pay is. Let me just start out by saying, being a rookie at this whole medical industry thing, I have no fucking clue what any of these terms mean: co-pay, deductible, premium, ppo, opo, opp, whatever. She asked to see my insurance card, which I have lost. But I do have a phone number to call some prick at Barnes and Noble in New York, who tells me all my numbers to give the bitch. So I give her the numbers and she says "Well, you don't have a co-pay, but you have a $400 deductible at which point your insurance will go in 90%-10%." At which point I say, "Huh?" Basically, I figured out, I pay the doctor money until I get to $400, then the insurance takes over from there. What kind of shit is that? I average a doctor visit about .0000000243 each year. So with that, it's not even worth the money being taken out of my paycheck to even have insurance. So I suck it up and say "Alright, well then how much does a visit cost?" She says that it basically depends on what the doctor does, but a general visit costs $60. Ok, that sets me back a bit, but not anything I can't handle.

So I get called into the office. Some fairly attractive nurse takes my height and weight, and sets me down to take my blook pressure and pulse. I was actually beginning to think that this chick was my doctor, because she seemed very doctorly. But she left and said the doctor will be right in to see you. I'm sitting there waiting. Luckily I had thought to bring my own reading material, so I began to read this absolutely hilarious story by David Sedaris in his "Holidays on Ice" book that I bought yesterday. There was something that clicked in the hallway every not and then that sounded like a door about to be opened, so I was startled several times, thinking the doctor was coming in. But it took about 30 minutes before that happened.

Finally a lady in her early forties came in and introduced herself as Dr. Something (I forgot her name.) I introduced myself and almost asked where her grandfather was.

I forgot to mention one thing. There was this poster that had a diagram of the male reproductive system. I was looking at it during my wait, and I couldn't help but think how well endowed I am compared with whoever they used as the model. Did they use a model, or just draw based on collective memory? Who knows. But all that to say, I'm no John Holmes (a dead, well endowed, porn star I've heard people talk about (wink, wink)), but compared with the reproductive system guy, I'm pretty big.

Anyway, back to the lady doctor. She checks my ears and nose and mouth and chest and back, and had me breath really deep, and told me that there was a little discoloration in my left ear, but that was probably due to the scarring of tissue during my childhood problems, and that she was going to have some other chick come in and do a nasal swab to check for flu.

I begin another wait. I get tired of sitting on the patients table so I get down to sit on a chair with a back on it. I start thinking about a million different things. After another 20 minute wait, another girl comes in with a big long Q-Tip to shove up my nose. She starts to do it, then says "Oh, wait, I wanted to show (insert some other girl's name) how to do this. So she goes and gets the original girl who took my weight and shows her how to put a q-tip up my nose. It's actually pretty easy, she could have told her over the phone how to do it and everything would have been ok. But who knows, maybe she was doing all kinds of subtle shit that my untrained eye was too ignorant to see. Anyway, I get the q-tip up my nose then am told it'll be about 15 more minutes and that the doctor has gone to the hospital. What kind of shit is that? I'm in the middle of being seen by the doctor and she goes to the hospital.

Anyway, another 30 minutes pass and the doctor comes in and says I don't have the flu, but I do have an upper respiratory infection and that she's going to give me an injection of something and prescribe something and something else. She leaves and about 10 minutes later this pentecostal lady comes in and says she's going to give me an injection in my bottom (ass). I'm glad it was her, because I didn't want the semi-good lookin girl seeing my bottom. I wanted to ask the pentecostal lady if she spoke in tongues, but I didn't.

Man did the shot hurt. I literally made vocal noises expressing my pain, and the word "Shit" came out at least twice. I wanted to apologize to the pentecostal lady, but I figured she'd heard it before. I get the feeling that pentecostals are pretty wild under the surface. When the needle came out I felt something leaking out my butt cheek. It was either blood, at which poing I think the lady got a little too overzealous, or it was medicine, at which point I was probably going to need another shot because all of it leaked out. I guss it didn't bother her, because she just put the band aid on and said "Here's your prescription."

I leave the office and go to the paying window. The bitch on the other side said "Alright Mr. Nash, what we'll need you to do now is undo your belt, drop your pants, boxers included, turn around and bend down. We are going to rape you now."

That's not exactly what she said, but that's what it sounded like. What she really said was "Alright Mr. Nash, that'll be 260 dollars." And I became the asshole customer that I hate. "What! 260 dollars!?" She gives me a list of all that the doctor did. The visit was like 80 dollars. The q-tip was 90, and the pentecostal lady was around a hundred. So I paid a hundred and they said they'd bill me the rest. Maybe I'll get it paid off by the time I retire.

I go to Wal Mart to get my prescription filled. I ask the lady how much it'll cost and she says it depends on my insurance. I give her the info and ask her how much it'll cost if the insurance doesn't pay any. She says $90. And I say "What?!" Oh well, I've got to get better. I go and eat at McDonalds. On my way back to the pharmacy I'm arleady unbuckling my belt and pulling my pants down, getting ready to be raped again financially. I walk up to the counter, ass first, and say "Please be gentle with me this time." The lady says the insurance pays most of the prescription, I just have to pay $25.

That's a lot of writing just to say I've had a shitty day, and I still have to go to work.