What Has Your Spouse Done That You Cherish The Most?

The medical provider messed up a procedure/test I went through. The messing up was both during the process and the results that came also had some updates and corrections in handwriting. Long wait on calls did not help, the staff gave canned replies and the main doctor/physician was not available to directly answer my questions.

Finally, the stress got to me and I simply broke down. I decided to just go visit in person one morning and ask them to be more forthcoming about my test and results. I half-heartedly asked DH to come along. Didn't think he would as he had important meetings. He came along. At the office when he saw the staff again fobbing me off with standard responses, and I am trying to repeatedly show them the printed results and almost tearfully asking questions, he lost it. Moved me back, stood in front of me and gave it to them loud and clear. : ) All the women sitting and filling out forms or reading their phones instinctively looked at us once and then looked away. I tried to stop him, he pushed my arm away.

Weird clinic. DH told them, here's my credit card. Redo the test at our expense. They refused. Anyway, long story short, on our way out, I told him I want to do the test at another place and I don't want to deal with insurance or anything. I have no idea what he told my primary doctor or whom he called. We went to another more reputed place, found a location with opening in the next hour, got the test done. He did all the following up with billing etc.

To see a mild mannered, conflict avoiding person speak like that in a quiet clinic kind of place, it was almost like we see in movies : ) The gentle disposition wala kindly person who done with being patient finally erupts one day and gives a piece of his mind to the govt. official or other bureaucracy. Anupam Kher excels in such roles. : )

 

The dunyazad in me is glad Laks started this thread and aap aaye.

I am reminded of a somewhat similar preparation of the bathroom quarters before the royalty uses it that I did long ago.

Saab was spending two days in my parents house in India. Just two compared to the two to the power three I was to spend in his town. : )

On Day 1, Saab discovered only too late and in a very hands-on manner that the bathroom overhead shower emits no water. As I was well out of ear shot, issuing an "aji sunti ho" to summon me was of no use. The mission was creatively accomplished with the baalti and mug and Saab duly joined us for breakfast. I was a little puzzled at the dry hair (no headbath). Only when my mother called out to the kaamwali to go switch off the geyser, did I remember that I had forgotten to tell Saab about the shower.

On Day 2, like a wiser by experience puppy that can't be bribed to enter the bathroom, or a child who won't enter the pediatrician's office no matter how many candies offered, Saab said 'no can do. get the shower fixed..' I replied, 'there is nothing to fix.' Saab was like ?? I pointed to the two taps (hot, cold) and the big jumbo khandaani (ancestral) baalti under them. Like a real estate agent showing off a dilapidated apartment to an increasingly discouraged prospective tenant, I hesitatingly informed him that the shower had never worked and was not meant to be used.

My eyes scanned the room, wondering how to change the grumpy I-need-a-shower-now Saab to a happy thande-thande-paani-se-nahana-chahiye singing Sanjeev Kumar. I saw a small foot-high stool, pointed to it and said he could use that to sit on. : ) : ) Saab said something unprintable about the offered stool and strode valiantly into the bathroom like a soldier off to war even knowing his weapons and artillery are meagre. I instead sat guard on that stool outside the bathroom. : )

What was the dhak dhak moment, you ask? : ) Well, it was not dhak dhak, but it touched my heart. We both come from families where the son-in-law is still treated with formality and the clan runs around like headless chickens trying to ensure his every comfort. At least in the initial marriage years. But, throughout that trip, my parents and siblings got no whiff of any inconvenience Saab went through. He used to be all "Papa ji, what is the headlines...what is Vajpayee up to" and "Mummy, what is in naashta today?" Looking back, I can imagine how it must have been for him to pass those two long days.

Years later, the story came full circle when he went to Home Depot and found a big enough bucket for my mother to use in our bathroom in America. : ) : )

Who says a woman needs diamonds and gold ... it is these little things that win her heart.