As you may know, my own father is none other than SDMB’s esteemed prison doc/Tolkien scholar/Vegemite enthusiast, Qadgop the Mercotan. Until now, he has been an enigmatic and solitary figure, sort of like Batman except without the cape or carefully molded abs. But no more! I have come to shed light upon the mysteries of Qadgop. Every question you’ve ever had about life with him will be answered! (Well, not ALL of them. He’s still paying my tuition, after all.)
Anyway, I’ll get things started with an anectdote.
I was standing in the kitchen a couple of years ago, talking with Qadgop as he dug around in the open refrigerator for something. Probably a small evening snack. As I talked, he removed a small bottle of lime juice from one of the shelves. He inspected it for a moment, then carefully placed it on top of his head. He turned, looked at me, and solemnly declared, “I’m sublime!”
Not that I can remember. He was always pretty honest with us about medical issues, as we were Impressionable Youths and all. And that included not telling us convenient parental medical lies like “If you pick your nose, your finger will get stuck and have to be cut off!”
Oh yes. I know what kind of questions he wouldn’t want answered. I just want to give others the chance to… I don’t know, properly bask in his glory?
(I’m not about to ask for money, but someday I might! Can’t hurt to start. )
He did family practice, so he treated a whole bunch of different stuff. Much more useful in a prison setting than, say, pediatrics. Did a lot of urgent care and stress tests for a while before the HMO of Doom took over and stuck him back in primary care.
Rockin’ That is so neat your dad is a Doper. A very cool one at that. My parents aren’t very skilled with computers. I had to show my mom how to use the mouse, and my dad how to check the weather.
So what happens when you get sick? If it was something minor like an ear infection, would he treat it? I assume the time you cut your finger while slicing an orange he did not stitch it up himself.*
*Not to hijack, but Ivygirl did that. Now, this is a girl who screams bloody murder when I comb her hair too hard. But when she sliced open her finger with a knife, all she said was, “Oh,” and then called (not yelled) for her brother.
Did he turn you on to SDMB, or was it the other way around?
How did he go from primary care to working in a prison? (If that’s not too nosy.)
No. He does, however, enjoy making up outlandish stories and trying to get people to believe them. I’m still bitter about the imaginary numbers incident.
It depends on what we’re sick WITH. If it’s something minor for which a trip to our normal primary care physician would not actually be necessary, we have a bathroom pharmacy filled with nice things like decongestants which he may choose to dispense to ease our suffering. I remember being checked out with the stethoscope and the… ear-nose-throat-looky-thingy… when I was sick as a kid just to make sure everything was ok, and that probably resulted in fewer visits to a doctor’s office. And he did write my prescription for iron supplements. But he isn’t our primary care physician and he never has been.
As for the stitches issue… I don’t even know if we have the required supplies on hand, and proper sterilization might take more time than a quick jaunt to the hospital. There is a neat little electrocautery thing kept next to the nail clippers, though.
Dad, you can probably say more about this than I can.
I’m generally the one more involved in internet-related pursuits, but he found this one first. Though I do remember reading Straight Dope books as a child, another part of my accidental sex education.
He’s talked about this before, but to be brief, his Not Very Evil HMO was bought by a Significantly More Evil HMO and his job began to suck in many ways AND became much less secure. He explored other opportunities and the prison job was one of them. It was surprisingly good, they wanted him, he took it.
Well, I answered the first one already. As for the second one, I’m sure he’s been exposed to all sorts of them, but he prefers his terrible jokes to be ones of his own making. They’re usually funnier anyway.
)