Ever wondered what the point of working hard in school was? All those years of doing endless class assignments, studying for exams, saying no to a social life while all your friends were out under-age drinking and partying hard at the local pub, doing extra prep over the weekends?
Let me tell you.
It was so you could get top marks to gain acceptance into medical school, spend the next 5 or so years of your life constantly studying and extending your hermit-like lifestyle solely so you could become an orthopaedic knee surgeon – and here’s the kicker (pun intended) – be able to charge an hourly rate of around $2000.00 an hour pro rata. How’s that sound?
I took Son #2 to see one today. I reckon he and I were in his office for all of 5 minutes. Tops. And that’s including the one minute we sat there waiting for him to actually come in and talk to us. In the remaining 4 minutes he looked at the MRI scans of M’s knee, rolled his eyes ever-so-slightly at the St John Ambulance ladies initial thoughts over his injury being a ‘possible fracture’ and pulled, poked and prodded M’s knee to see if anything still hurt.
The saving grace for this particular surgeon was that he was very, very nice and explained everything in layman’s terms so we could easily understand (and so he freaking well SHOULD with the amount of money I was paying him!). The upshot of it all is that his knee seems fine, he can slowly start to build up training on it again and if it’s still feeling okay he can resume playing rugby in about 4 weeks.
I may have recovered from the amount of the bill by then.
Have YOU ever seen a specialist? What would their actual hourly rate work out to? Maybe we should convince more of our kids to be doctors…
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