Big Brother Bureaucracy Can Disrupt Our Lives

Fight the powers that be!

Edwina Owens Elliott
Crow’s Feet
Published in
4 min readAug 21, 2024

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Well, it finally happened. I arrived for my 10:30 doctor’s appointment this morning only to discover I was a month early. The appointment, my yearly wellness check, is set for September 20. Not August 20.

It was just too funny to get upset. The receptionist, another patient in the waiting area, and I all laughed aloud. This was a new one for me. I have never shown up to an appointment on the wrong day. Ever. But as they say, there’s a first time for everything.

In the car heading home, I marveled at feeling more amused than bummed out by my confusion. Wasn’t this just one more sign that my ass is getting old? What’s funny about that?

But my focus wasn’t on mixing up the date so much as the convenience of Dr. Walker’s office in the Princeton Lakes Medical Park. She’s just two miles away from my home. What if she was fifteen or twenty miles away? Thirty miles? On the other side of town? It wouldn’t be too damn funny then.

And to think. The office moving to the other side of town almost happened two years ago.

Dr. Walker and my husband’s GP, Dr. Lewis, are office-mates. They were part of the Wellstar System, the largest healthcare provider in Georgia. We were referred to Dr. Lewis first in 2015, when…

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Edwina Owens Elliott
Crow’s Feet

Illustrator, graphic designer, indie author. A creature of habit but our evolution continues.