You either clicked on "deal with" or "voicemail" to get here. Let's talk about my other dealings with Stan. This is another reason that I think Stanley Horowitz is the worst doctor in the world.
Stan's staff is never available, and Stan never wants to see patients. I suppose I could be grateful that I don't have the ten dollar copay, but there are times I really want to see the doctor. And I believe that as Stan's customer, I should be the one that tells him whether I want to be seen or not. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
In mid-December, 2001, I came down with a sore throat and cold, which quickly became a horrible cough. The cough was accompanied by a fever and all that other good stuff. By the day after New Year's, it was horrible. My sinuses were throbbing and congested, I was coughing up buckets of gunk, but worst of all were my ears. They were stopped up to the point of being painful. My eardrums felt like a water balloon, the moment before it's filled too full with the garden hose. I called Stan's office and spoke to the the person who answered the phone, his nurse or physician's assistant or something. I just refer to her as the "voice on the phone." I described my symptoms and asked for an appointment. The Voice took down my symptoms and promised me a call back. Hours dragged by. My hearing was almost gone, my ears were so stuffed up. Finally, the phone rang. I was told that "there was a lot of this going around," and that it should go away in a few days, and that the "doctor" didn't need to see me. A prescription for decongestant was phoned in to Walgreen's. I was told to take some cough syrup for my cough. Leisa picked up the recommended stuff, along with my prescription, and I gobbled the stuff. My ears began to clear up within an hour or so of taking the medicine. The Robitussen did nothing for my cough, though. Every time I'd lay down and start to fall asleep, I would start coughing and wake myself up. I went days with only an hour or two of sleep each night.
A day or two later, I called again. I described by symptoms to the voicemail, told it the over the counter cough syrup wasn't working, and asked for something stronger, such as codeine. I waited for a return call. The return call eventually came, along with another prescription phoned in to Walgreen's. I asked to see the Stan, but was again told by the voice on the phone that my illness "would run its course." I've taken codeine many times when I've had a bad cough and have been very happy with the results. This time, though, the codeine gave me a case of hives. I quit taking it. Since this was my first experience with hives, I called the "doctor's" office. Again, voicemail. Call back hours later. The voice advised that I stop taking the codeine, and told me they'd phone a prescription for something else into Walgreen's.
Let's talk about phoning in prescriptions. Here's a doctor that I've seen identically once. He spent most of his time talking about his issues: his computer; the unfair shake Israel is getting in the world; the benefits of a home gym. He doesn't know anything about me, or my medical history, other than the fact that he thinks I have "acid reflux," and that he thinks my cholesterol is too high. Yet he's now writing prescriptions for me like they're going out of style, based solely on my telephone description. If I called and said I strained my back playing racquetball, could I get muscle relaxants, I wonder? I wonder about the ethics of a doctor writing this many prescriptions without ever seeing a patient. Reminds me of Elvis Presley's doctor.
They phoned in some cough medicine that paralyzes the muscle that causes you to cough. It worked, but I still had to sleep sitting up in a chair because I'd eventually wake myself up coughing if I was in a horizontal position. Leisa was very frustrated by all of this. I was pretty worthless and didn't want to do anything but stay home and sit in the chair. I went back to the internet, much as I had done in researching the problem with my gall bladder. I surmised that I had acute positional bronchitis, or words to that effect. All I knew was that I coughed a lot and couldn't lay down. (Dad, send me e-mail here by clicking on the underlined word and tell me if I've correctly distinguished the difference between "lay" and "lie.")
I spent the first two months of 2002 sleeping in a chair. Every week, I'd call Stan's office and complain, yet I was never permitted to speak to the doctor, or allowed to come in for an appointment. The mantra was, "give it another week and it should get better." Leisa badgered me again and again to go see the doctor. I told her he didn't want to see me. People at work would listen to me cough, and were also stunned by the fact that the doctor wouldn't see me. They thought I had pneumonia. People complained to my boss, worried that my coughing would infect them, too.
Eventually, the coughing subsided. It was about April when I began to notice that I didn't wake up in the morning and spend ten minutes in the shower, coughing. Not once in that four month period was I permitted to come in to the office of Stanley Horowitz, MD., the worst doctor in the world.
And in the midst of my bronchitis, I was still having the occasional abdominal pain and taking my Zantac. Is it any wonder why I didn't even attempt to go see him to say the Zantac doesn't work?
If you have a web page, and if Google has picked up on it, let's have some fun. Google uses a super-secret algorithm to rank sites. It's based, in part, on the way other people link to pages. If a lot of people link to a particular page, Google will rank that page higher in its search than if no one links to it. Google also picks up on the terms people use in their links. If a bunch of people link to Stan's page with the term "great doctor," his page will start to appear any time someone searches on the phrase "great doctor." The more people who use that phrase to link, the higher his Google ranking. If a bunch of people, (like the ones reading this page), link to his site using the phrase "worst doctor in the world," any time anyone searches on that phrase, Google will direct them to Stan's site. This is called "Google Bombing."
Would you like to help me recognize Stanley Horowitz as the worst doctor in the world? Put this phrase on your site and hyperlink it to this address: http://www.affcard.com/ac/ac01008.html. That's all there is to it.
Libel? Slander? Bite me! Truth is an absolute defense.