Florence had so many doctors could remember them not so by their character, their location in Livermore, nor the offices themselves. They addressed parts of the body, though that often overlapped. Some of them prescribed the same drugs, at differing times, depending on what part of the body was having problems on which day.
Florence and I went to the doctor nearly every day I saw her, and often we went twice in one day. Occasionally three times.
I myself hadn't spent much time in the doctor's office since I was young. I stopped going to the doctor when I had gained more power in deciding whether to go to school or not. And after graduated college I infrequently had health insurance. My new job, taking care of Florence, was through the state, so I would eventually get good benefits, through not for several months.
There was one doctor, who we saw most often, a cute little Indian guy who wore shoe lifts and still stood about 5 ft. 3. He was primarily concerned with Florence's back, though he seemed to have some kind of neurological bent to his work. He always listened carefully to Florence's complaints. He'd just stand there, with me sitting there too, saying: "Yes, yes, I know, I know."
I was always a bit skeptical of doctors, and especially Florence's. Her health care was courtesy her husband, who had fought in World War II. The buildings the doctors worked in were like old 1970 cop show sets. Drab, that is; brown paint with another shade of brown trim, trimmed bushes that looked like perfect green squares, outdated shingles. That might have just been Livermore, which seemed to have had an explosion of building during the early 1900s, the 1970s, and a smattering of post-millennium projects.
"I know Florence, you are...getting older."
She liked his frankness, and never hesitated to engage in his playful understatedness. "Yeah, I guess I am. Never though it'd happen to me."
There was no doubt in my mind that, though she was joking, Florence did feel that way. It was early on in these doctor's office visits where I started to understand that age isn't something that happens in blocks or stages...it simply happens, and when it does the only way to truly recognize it is by the toll it takes on the body. Like a garden that slowly erodes, one can accelerate or hasten it by taking various measures, but really, it slowly unfolds and overwhelms unbeknownst to the brain and vaguely recognizable to the mirror in the bathroom.
The first time we visited Florence's "pain specialist" we waited for over one hour before going into the office. Once inside the patient room we waited another 30 minutes before the doctor came in. This routine was repeated every time we came to see the pain specialist. This fact, combined with Florence's eagerness to get out of the apartment and go to appointments 10 or 15 minutes early, led to entire afternoons being spent at the pain specialist's office.
The pain specialist was a bitch. She, as opposed to the Indian doctor, had very little time for Florence, despite having only 3 rooms in her office and being constantly late at that.
The walls of her office were filled with the latest anatomy cards, calendars, clocks, post its and any other noun that could be rationalized into being put into a doctor's office with a pharmaceutical logo slapped across the surface.
A pain specialist’s job, as far as I could see, was to listen to Florence talk about her pain, and then prescribe pain pills accordingly. Initially it was the introduction to Oxycontinin, which at the time was relatively new. It was time released and so one pill could last about 8 hours.
The pain specialist had a haggard look to her. She was about 40, and looked like she was either a mother or an alcoholic. That's to say she was haggard. Not happy, her hair looked over-treated, but abandoned nonetheless.
She was also a bitch. She had very little information for Florence outside of prescribing her more and more oxycontinin. At one point she prescribed her to take 8 every day. Of course, this was how I made my foray into the drug too.
"Don't you have anything besides oxycontin?" I finally blurted out during one appointment.
Now, by the time I said this game had considerably changed. I won't go into detail at the moment. It will reveal itself. I had my own reasons for wanting Florence to switch pain medications. I had dual reasons.
Since we'd seen the pain specialist, the previous month had come to be kind of a mess.