The Bionic Thumb

Today was my five day check up at the clinic for my thumb. Let me tell you, it was quite the ordeal! Before I go into details, rest assured that my thumb is doing great and I don't need surgery on it! They removed the ugly white splint and put on this hard plastic brace thing, which is much better because at least I can get this wet, or take it off to clean my hand properly.
But now I look like I have a bionic thumb!

Anyways, the visit to the clinic is something that I totally never want to do again. The doctors are all really nice, but the receptionist nurse people are total bitches.

I had called on Tuesday to make an appointment for 11:30am. Fine. I get to the clinic and get in line with the front desk lady. When it is my turn, I explain why I am there, and she asks me for my "impegnativa" (a form that your family doctor gives you). I had no idea what she was talking about, so I started pulling out all the papers they had given me at emerg. but none of them were what she was looking for. Well, you would have thought I had 11 heads growing out of my body the way she went on about the form: You don't have one??? Why don't you have one??? Well, you need one!!! and on and on. Finally she sent me to tell some other lady that I didn't have this form.

But when I got to the desk, the other lady wasn't there. When she finally came back, about 3 Italians tried to push in front of me, but I held my ground. I told her I didn't have the impegnativa. "What do you mean you don't have one??? Why not???" Oh the scandal!!! I explained for the second time that I was Canadian and I didn't have a doctor here in Italy to give me one. So here we go again with the whole scorning thing for not having a form. She told me to wait while she helped everyone else and then she would go and see if a doctor at the clinic would be nice enough to take pity on my poor broken-thumbed sole and do me the grand favour of writing one for me.

About 15 minutes later, out comes the lady with a form for me and she tells me to go back to the bitchy lady at the front desk. Joy. I line up again, just bursting with excitment at the prospect of dealing with this woman again. When I get to her, I show her the impegnativa, and she starts bitching about the fact that the doctor didn't fill it in properly: Why didn't he write the perscription??? Bitch, bitch, bitch. But what happened next totally blew me away:

She reached down and pulled out a stack of these forms and proceeded to write me a new one!!!

I was like 'You bitch!!! Thanks for wasting an hour of my time and totally treating me like a leaper when you could have BEEN NICE and done this for me in the first place!"' I was so mad!!!

Then I had to go pay the ticket. The women continues her cheery dialogue: Did you pay? No, of course not. You have to go to x place to pay. Do you know where that is? No, of course not. Bitch.

Anyways, I didn't have enough money to pay, so I had to walk home to get more money and then go back to the hospital. Once I paid, I went back to the bitchy lady (who was FINALLY nice to me), and then on to the doctors.

The only other bad part was when they had to make my bionic thumb costume. The first time they did it, he stretched the plastic part too tightly around my thumb so he had to fit it multiple times. Let me tell you, shoving your swollen broken thumb in and out and a hard plastic mold that is too small about 10 times really is not pleasant. I thought for sure that if I didn't need surgery before the mold fitting, I would definitely need it after. He scrapped the first one and made a second one, which fits great, and was far less painful of an ordeal.

Then I got x-rays and went home. I am supposed to go back in another 21 days for another check-up, but I am not relishing the idea too much because once again I do not have an impegnativa. And I really don't think I could go through all that again.