Medical Rant....

It's the 21st century. Truly and indisputably. Don't try to tell the doctors that.

They still give me multiple forms to fill out that require me to enter my name and address. Even better than that, they ask me to tell them who they are.

Then they ask broad questions with only the most tenuous relationship to the case that are particularly burdensome on those of us who feel compelled (I have no idea why) to answer honestly. "Are there steps in your house?" OK, I can see why that might matter when it comes to counseling me about my behavior after a procedure that might leave me woozy. "How many?"

WTF????!!!

Maybe they are trying to catch the person that has just a single step down into the kitchen or something, but how useful can that count really be? (There are 26 steps, by the way, including the stairs to the second floor, the stairs to the basement, and single steps down to the family room from both the breakfast room and the dining room) It must make a pretty big difference whether I live in a tiny 4-story house with ladders or a sprawling mansion that has twelve places with shallow single steps....

Then I am supposed to give my height, in feet/inches and in centimeters, and my weight, in pounds and kilograms. They can't do their own effing conversions?

Don't even get me started on the "recreational" questions. Do I smoke cigarettes? Yes, approximately one puff every decade or so.

I write software forms that allows users to enter information using the fewest steps possible. User friendliness is the first thing we think about. If I decided to make a hobby out of doing tonsillectomies on my friends without bothering to get a medical degree first they would have the law down on my butt so fast my head (or tail) would spin. But they haven't the slightest compunction about having rank amateurs designing their user interfaces.

Get with the program.