Dealing With Headaches

When you have any type of headache, migraine or chronic pain, you wind up spending a lot of time waiting to see a doctor of one kind or another. This is just the nature of dealing with sick people — people rarely get sick on schedule, so the doctor is usually (but not always) late in seeing you. Keep that in mind whenever scheduling a doctor’s appointment (NEVER make it at lunch time on a workday!) and you’ll avoid some unnecessary stress.

Most doctor’s offices now have televisions, and a de rigueuer pile of old magazines like Excrutiatingly Boring Monthly, so you have to prepared to make your entertainment when waiting in the office. I often bring a book, but sometimes I can’t concentrate on it if I’m either recovering from a bad time or if I’m nervous about the examination. So, these are some games I’ve developed over the years while waiting in countless doctor’s offices. Hope they help.

Chair Bingo

This works best when you have a partner to play with, but if you are by yourself, compete with your myriad of personalities. The rules are simple — you pick a chair in the doctor’s office that the next person who enters the office will sit in. This is even more challenging (and interesting) if the chair you pick already has someone sitting in it.

Reality Show: Office Workers

It’s not eavesdropping, really — consider it live reality TV. You just keep silent and pay real close attention to all of the conversatitions and phone calls coming from behind the office worker’s desk or sliding glass cabinet they work in. The is can be endlessly amusing, especially if you hear them trying to explain directions on how to get to the office to someone who refuses to put their hearing aids in.

Another variation on this game is to pay real close attention to the whispered conversations of the other patients around you. Considering that most of them are in a bad mood, though, it’s just not as amusing as eavesdropping on the office workers.

As The Fishy Turns

This only works in offices that have fish tanks. You just stare at the fish and notice their interactions and make up a little soap opera about life in a doctor’s fishtank. Who’s cheating on who? Who is out for revenge? Who is going to be the next fish to float?

Patient Lottery

The rules for this are pretty simple, too, but can really only be played if you don’t have access to a patient schedule (Reading off of a computer screen or trying to interpet the upside-down schedules count as having acess). You pick you the next person is to be called. If you are the next person who is called, regardless of who you picked, you win the lottery.