Scott's bad back - North Willow Grove Family Medicine - Dairy Queen

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I have Verizon which offers the feature "Reminders." I set the reminder to wake me up at 8:10 am so I could pick up Scott at the Willow Grove Train Station.

My phone is in the kitchen. For the first time in the dozen years I've been setting reminders, I said to myself, Bring the phone into your bedroom so you'll hear it.

Isn't it amazing how we don't think of the simplest things?

Yesterday, Scott was in agony walking home from the train.

We made an appt to see Dr Salinas at North Willow Grove Family Medicine.

While Scott was on the examining table, she was doing all sortsa tests to see what was wrong.

You're like an orthopedic doctor, I said. How come you know so much.

She said that's the job of a family doctor.

She suggested he see a chiro named Will Neff.


Horrible memories of when I saw chiros who couldn't help my sciatica, until I had my back operation in 2011.

Scott was in terrible pain when I left for New Directions. He was gonna call out sick from SEPTA.

When I got home from the meeting I was shocked to find his note on my laptop reading, "I went to work."

Whaaattt?

When I picked him up this morning at 8:22 from the train station, he said his back was a lot better.

He watered our garden and his back snapped back into place.

Not all the way, but partly.

Thank goodness! We have a vacation coming up later this month.

Cape May, NJ, where we'll rent bikes and travel around.We stay at the West Cape Motel, recommended by our birder friend Jack "Hawkeye" Fanelli.

When we saw Dr Salinas, she asked Scott a most unusual question.

"Have you felt depressed lately?"

"Aha!" I said. "That's b/c you partnered with Sharon Katz, a friend of mine."

Sharon, prescribing nurse and owner of Collaborative Care wellness center in Abington, works with North Willow Grove to have family practioners ask patients if they suffer from depression.

Then they will be referred to a mental health expert.

Most people with depression do not seek help until things get out of hand.

This is a great intervention.

My family doctor, Jim Foxhall, works at North Willow Grove. I really like him but I discontinued seeing him for a good reason.

I could never reach the practice by phone. It would take an entire day until someone answered the phone.

I wrote Foxhall a goodbye letter, saying he was the best doctor I ever had and explained why I was leaving. Tell your boss, I said, to get the phones fixed.



Jim Foxhall, MD

I will now write a letter to my current fam doctor, Rich Eisenhardt, who is wonderful.

Eisenhardt won't let me leave New Directions brochures in his office or Compass magazines, even tho ND is a support group of Abington Memorial Hospital.

Policy, he said.

Screw policy, I say. If it helps people, just do it.

I'll see Foxhall on Friday just to tell him I'm back.

Hope he hasn't forgotten me.

One of the great things he told me was: It's okay to have black n blue marks on your belly or elsewhere when you inject your insulin.

Hide your eyes if it makes you sick.

 Yesterday around lunchtime, my blood sugar was a bit low: 79. Normal is between 80 and 120.

GREAT! I thought.
It was dee-licious. I asked the girl behind the DQ counter for the carb count.

36 carbs, she said.

That's extremely low, thinks I.

Still, when I got home I went on the bike for 20 minutes.

Three hours passed until I took my blood sugar.