I'm scheduled for a minor heart procedure — something to do with evolving atrial fibrillation and other mystic matters of cardiac bugaboos — August 13th. But that's the least of it; nothing to fret about as far as I'm concerned. However, perhaps you've experienced the nerve-wracking, heart-thumping nightmare of merely scheduling a goddamn heart procedure.
Today, in so doing, and in battling the medical community's bureaucracy, I have been absolutely dumbfounded by its abject senselessness — usually synonymous with "bureaucracy." Is the hospital chiefly concerned that I survive the procedure on its cold metal slab? Ha! What it's worried about, almost exclusively, is that I have someone with me at 6:30 a.m. to check in, and then to have either that driver or a hearse scheduled to pick me up after the procedure. Otherwise they won't proceed with what it is they need to do, which they maintain is essential for my deteriorating health.
Shakespeare, in one of his rare moments of non-lucidity (in Henry VI, as I recall), advocated through a character, "First, let's kill all the lawyers." Not a bad beginning at all. But I say, just as a warm-up, first let's kill all the imbeciles who write senseless bureaucratic rules.