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Get off my LAWN! "Grumpy Old Farts"
- Thread starter B-string
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Doctors are definitely your employee. I have fired two to their faces.
- Oct 22, 2015
- 21,166
- 256,887
- Disclosures
- I am an affiliate for Ari Cap.
Pretty good relationships with doctors here. Particularly glad for one right now. And also seen some amazing doctoring work out of doctors I don't see now only because I'm somewhere else.
I fired an internist in 1993 for incompetence and poor judgement and told her so, and an electrophysiologist in 2000 for grossly unprofessional behavior and told him so as well. All docs are humans just like I am, and I hire them to do specific jobs. I am the sole arbiter of their suitability and fitness for purpose.
I have good and productive relationships with my doctors, of which I have many these days. My first cardiologist and I would talk about golf and sometimes opera during appointments for so long that his nurse would have to come yank him out for his next patient. Lovely man, retired from private practice to do device research for the FDA. After the travails of this spring, the current heart doc knows I would have his children if he but asked. He performed a semi-miraculous catheter procedure that saved me from undergoing a fifth major heart surgery. My former pulmonologist always scheduled me as his last patient of the day so we could talk religion and sundry subjects until it was dark and we were both late for dinner. After he passed away I ran into a couple of his techs at my current lung doc's office, and it was old home week the first couple of times we saw each other. When my former internist retired and I had my first appointment with her replacement, she looked at my list of other docs and said, "Wow, you've got all the good ones." She's a crackerjack diagnostician, a former infectious diseases specialist who got tired of the B.S. at the hospital and went into private practice. She's the one I talk politics with.
My point, exactly.
I fired an internist in 1993 for incompetence and poor judgement and told her so, and an electrophysiologist in 2000 for grossly unprofessional behavior and told him so as well. All docs are humans just like I am, and I hire them to do specific jobs. I am the sole arbiter of their suitability and fitness for purpose.
I have good and productive relationships with my doctors, of which I have many these days. My first cardiologist and I would talk about golf and sometimes opera during appointments for so long that his nurse would have to come yank him out for his next patient. Lovely man, retired from private practice to do device research for the FDA. After the travails of this spring, the current heart doc knows I would have his children if he but asked. He performed a semi-miraculous catheter procedure that saved me from undergoing a fifth major heart surgery. My former pulmonologist always scheduled me as his last patient of the day so we could talk religion and sundry subjects until it was dark and we were both late for dinner. After he passed away I ran into a couple of his techs at my current lung doc's office, and it was old home week the first couple of times we saw each other. When my former internist retired and I had my first appointment with her replacement, she looked at my list of other docs and said, "Wow, you've got all the good ones." She's a crackerjack diagnostician, a former infectious diseases specialist who got tired of the B.S. at the hospital and went into private practice. She's the one I talk politics with.
Amen, brother. There should be an actual relationship between patient and doctor.
Difficult when they have to process you like an oven ready chicken these days.......Amen, brother. There should be an actual relationship between patient and doctor.
Difficult when they have to process you like an oven ready chicken these days.......
Take it from a guy who owns a motorcycle with six carburetors. Seafoam is good stuff. The new formula stabil is better than the old, but I prefer this stuff called Star Tron. Every year before I put the m/c away for the winter it gets an oil change and gas treated with Seafoam (which is more of a cleaner) and Star Tron (which also neutralizes the ethanol). Starts up no problem every spring.
I bought a new chevy car and decided to use synthetic oil and marvel mystery oil in the gas every time that I filled up from day one. It was a basic straight six cylinder engine. I drove the car for 25 years, in the end very high mileage about 20K miles per year. In all that time, I never had to crack open the engine or adjust the valves, all the gaskets remained original. Like Seafoam, Marvel Mystery Oil is a cleaner. I think that it made a difference.
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My relationship to my stepmother was like that. No wonder she kicked me out
Step relationships can be very difficult for many reasons.
Cars made after the '80s have far tighter tolerances, so the oil stays much cleaner and that's a huge reason engines last longer. If someone had said their car from any year had the original engine with this many miles during the '60s through the '80s, they would have been called a liar, even though some people had cars with a documented million miles.
If you used full synthetic, you may not have needed the Marvel Mystery oil- I bought a '90 Chevy Silverado in 2001 that had been driven for a couple of years in Michigan and the rest of the time in Arizona by someone who worked for GM, last at the Desert Proving Ground. He used Mobil 1 and when it started to puff a bit of blue on startup, my friend & I replaced the oil seals- the valve covers and heads were pristine. The odometer had stopped working, so there's no way to know how many miles were on it, but if they averaged 15K/year, which is very easy in Phoenix, it had over 150K. I drove it full time in MKE until 2011, then part time after I bought my cargo van, also in PHX. I sold the pickup in 2013. With all of the driving I did, including the return trip when I bought it and the second round trip to/from PHX, I think I averaged over 15K/year. That puts it near the 300K mark and when I would look into the hole for the oil fill, it was still spotless.
At the end of March, 2011, I bought a 2005 Astro cargo van that was used commercially in and around PHX- it had 78K on it and the guy knocked off $800 because his guy couldn't get the AC to stop blowing the fuse. After servicing it for the trip, my friend from GM & I found that the high pressure switch was shorted, so I bypassed it and came home. It now has just under 235K and I have had two issues that weren't 'maintenance'- the catalytic caused a code two weeks after I came home (covered by a dealer since it was so close to the 80K mile mandatory warranty) and in Jan of last year, the flex plate took a hike.
I averaged the cost for repairs and purchase prices for the truck and van without gas and maintenance- I think it came to about $750/year since I do most maintenance and only had transmission and axle seals/brakes/pinion seal done by someone else on the truck and the flex plate replaced on the van.
There was sketch years ago with Dick Van Dyke and I think Carol Burnett where they played this dumb family. He made a coffee table out of a door and a door out of the coffee table but they still looked like a door and coffee table. I use stuff like that for my ideas.
- Oct 22, 2015
- 21,166
- 256,887
- Disclosures
- I am an affiliate for Ari Cap.
A quarter century ago my Z3 was synthoil only. Good car. I really enjoyed that car most.
Some people live their entire lives like this
... entire economies depend on it ...
We do not need to discuss my decision making process.
Honda CBX or Goldwing? I was close to buying a CBX before I bought the Harley. Would still like to have one. They sound like a Ferrari.
With the exception of the heart guy the other year, I've liked all of the docs and the PAs. On a phy exam last year the PA was asking the usual questions. He asked if I had any falls. I said "not that I remember".
Hm, my 96 Saturn has been running on just whatever 5W-20 oil has been a good deal (usually Castrol), no fuel additives, and regular maintenance. No fancy stuff, just follow the owner's manual. It turns 25 in 2021, so I am going to look into registering it as a classic!
"Modern" cars IME far surpass the life expectancy of older cars.
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