The THIRD Weekly McQuack Award Goes Toooooo...

Lordy but it is SOOOOOOO hard choosing among the multitude of worthy candidates, but after carefully considering them and tallying up their scores on the old Incompetence-o-meter, this weeks award HAS to go to Dr. Bones McQuack.

Bones is your conscientious, caring, compassionate, there for you through every terrifying step Orthopaedic Surgeon.

Dr. Bones is the one who schedules your appointment for 10:00 in the morning. You arrive to find the waiting room is SRO (STANDING ROOM ONLY...and YOU with your shattered left ankle, wobbling on the crutches that are causing your hands to blister, your armpits to screech and bleed, and your right foot to swell five times its normal size as it absorbs the full weight of your entire body), must try not to fall flat on your face while waiting for someone to get called back to the Secret Zones of Wisdom beyond the reception area...oh and when that happens, you also have to be agile enough (on those self-same crutches, with those self same blisters, achy armpits, and swelled right foot) to zip across the yawning breadth of the waiting room before some one's snotty five year old beats you to it.

If you are lucky enough to actually GET a seat, be prepared not be called back to that Secret Zone of Wisdom for at least another hour and a half...for such are the many, Many, MAny, MANy, MANY patients that the Medical God of Human Bones schedules to fill his office days.

At last, you stumble behind a rapidly moving nurse towards one of the SECRET Chambers of INNER Wisdom. There you are told to plunk yourself upon a high placed table almost covered by a strip of paper. How to get up there, since the nurse quickly turns tail and runs...the other way...like OUT...of your tiny chamber, is entirely up to you.

Personally, this is where I would give just about every dollar in my Monopoly Game to be like Samantha from Bewitched and have that cute nose twitching ability...but alas, I, like the rest of you, am but a mere nose-running mortal...and no amount of sneezing gets me up on that table. (I am going to spare you the kind of gyrations and contortions that eventually ARE required to get body and painfully mistreated ankle up on that demonically elevated, euphemistically entitled, examination table...I have NEVER had an Orthopod examine anything of mine while I was dangled from that table...have you?)

At last, the Gates from the Halls of Wisdom open and in walks the Bringer of Skeletal Wisdomology. Five minutes. That's all he gives his long suffering patient...(time is money...time is money.) We need to operate. He only operates, by the way, on Thursdays, and he's booked for every Thursday through the next five months...unless. it's an ABSOLUTE emergency. And for that we must first get a CT scan and come back with the film next week.

Next week...you now must navigate the same course as THIS week, but with the extra challenge of also having to carry those humongous x-ray envelopes while traversing the waiting room and the Inner Sanctum of Skeletal Wisdom...Lucky you!!

Again, the Gates from the Halls of Wisdom open (each time you see Dr. Bones, the pains in ankle, armpits, hands, and right foot increase exponentially.)...he flips the switch on the x-ray viewing machine. Yep, surgery. He CAN squeeze you in in three weeks. Come back next week when his surgery scheduler will be in THIS office...(he has four offices around the state, after all...so you cannot expect him to have her there for you TODAY!!!)...to get all the scheduling papers done.

You'd think that because you are NOT coming back to see Dr. Bones that you would be in-and-out quicker...wouldn't you? Oh yeah have too much faith! They are NOT there for you...or for your convenience...they are there for the doctor's bank account...only! Never...never...NEVER forget that.

Surgery...we don't need to do a blow by blow description, you know how disgusting it is right? Well,...except to say WHY DIDN'T DR. BONES MC QUACK DO AN MRI? If he had maybe he would not have made such a mess of the surgery. And unfortunately there are a LOT of Dr. Bones' out there.

The long and short of it is because he rushes through his time with you in office, he usually finds a bigger mess than expected...a mess he would have been prepared for had he done an MRI first. The outcome? Permanent damage. You may lose your ankle completely...or your hip...or cervical spine...or wrist...or elbow...rotator cuff...or lumbar spine...or knee.

Am I choosing Bones solely because of what my own personal experiences with slipshod orthopods? NO. I have talked with others who have had equally compelling horror stories from the surgeries they have received from overzealous, overbooked, money-hungry orthopaedic surgeons. This is an area that once botched by an alleged pro is nearly impossible to correct. I'm still trying to get mine corrected...seven years later...my daughter's is six years and in her case, I don't even know how many other Dr. Bones' later.

So to all the slip-shod Dr. Bones McQuack's I joyously award you this Third Weekly McQuack Award. You've earned it one splintered bone at a time.