Have you ever seen the movie "Beetlejuice"? Imagine the waiting room scene from that movie: Miserable people sitting in chairs lining the dingy walls, flickering amber fluorescent lighting, low ceilings, dirty laminate floors, dirty carpets, narrow hallways, broken fixtures, and quarter inch-deep dust on the windowsills and chair rails.... Got it?
Now picture the love child of Rosanne Barr and R. Lee Ermey as a prison guard. Now picture each patient as a visitor to a prison in Southeast Asia with that love child as the gatekeeper. This describes a typical experience with the receptionists. They hate their jobs, they enforce miserable policies that make no sense, and literally EVERY time I've been in there (four times in the last six weeks), the story remains the same. The unhappy receptionist fights her way through a half dozen beleaguered patients at her window while I watch....and wait.
Speaking of waiting.... It's always a joy when you make an appointment for a specific time, and then you get "reminders" for your appointment that give you a time twenty minutes before your actual set appointment time. Let's be real, people. The chances of you being seen on time at this facility are about on par with the likelihood that you are going to win a gold medal in the Olympics. (Which, if you're visiting an ortho surgeon, are probably even less than the average American.) WHY would you do them the favor of arriving that early? Do yourself a favor and show up only early enough to check in, and hope and pray the receptionist doesn't take five minutes to figure out she's made yet another mistake whilst checking you in. Cuz you're still gonna wait. Well beyond your appointment time.
Once you DO get called back through the hallways of Dante's seventh level of Hell, you will PROBABLY be guided by a lovely nurse into your third class cabin on the cruise ship 'Despair'. Seriously, the nurse is a joy, and you'll feel so sorry for her working conditions that you'll want to slip her the name and phone number of a better ortho office and beg her to apply.
In your deteriorating cabin, you'll continue to curse what you have been cursing since you sat down in the first waiting room. The lack of cell phone signal (T-Mobile and ATT both attempted), coupled with the desperate need to distract yourself from your surroundings, will drive you straight in search of Wifi... But you will be left cold and dejected because THERE IS NONE. You can get free Wi-Fi at McDonald's, but not at this office. You won't even be able to read the reviews for Lake Barrington IBJI, which I FINALLY realized today is PROBABLY the reason they have no connectivity in the first place.
Eventually, after you scoot away from the hair and dust riddled window ledge, you might find yourself worried about your fresh and nearly open wounds that were just exposed by the sweet nurse who left you to wait for the doctor. Don't worry, though, at least the nurse put down a fresh chux pad before she cut open your surgical cast on a dirty upholstered chair.
If your surgeon is as lovely as mine is, you might also be willing to tolerate being seen at the Bates Motel as I have. Still, let this be a cautionary tale from which the good folks at Illinois Bone and Joint Institute might glean some valuable feedback. If you're a prospective customer, and the idea of visiting your doctor at an office that resembles the back room of a Walmart warehouse in Kentucky doesn't phase you, then you'll be fine here. If the idea is inclined to feel at all jarring to you, then consider yourself warned. And let this one star stand as representative of the FACILITY, and not the doctors or nurses imprisoned there. See your surgeon at a different...
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