Dr. Gill

Today I had an appointment with Dr. Gill a pulmonary specialist. Funny thing is he's Indian-Filipino, born and raised in the Philippines and he speaks our language. Apparently he spoke Indian too in additon to Tagalog. I told him I was born in Manila and my Chinese sucks. Since my medical records were signed off by a Navy doc, he mentioned he was in the Army National Guard and resigned his comission as a Major. Another funny thing though is that he enlisted in the Guard after getting his MD from Irvine and doing his residency. That made him a Private First Class with an MD. Well I guess you can't beat having a medic thats completed his residency. No offense, I met some great corpsmen, but nice to know when Doc actually is a Doc. He said when they found out he was doctor they promoted him to Captain and made him a field surgeon, even though his specialty was pulmonary medicine. Apparently they make everyone a trauma surgeon if you so happened to be attached to a front line unit. Anyway I had to take some test where I blew and inhaled into a pipe. I'm suppose to also do the same test on a more extensive machine so I'll be blowing a big old box later. I have to wait for my HMO to approve the test though so I got more waiting and paperwork to suffer through. Its pretty ridiculous that everything has to go up to some office in El Monte to get approval. Whats even worse is everytime they send me to a specialist, I'll get charged another 15 bucks in copay in addition to the 15 bucks I already paid my primary physician since I had to see him first to get a referal. I'm also having to drive halfway across the valley to drop by on some lab. Well at least I can throw away these inhalers they gave me in Quantico, they're not really doing anything.