Go To the Dollar Store

I followed a link from WhiteCoat's latest post (gross picture warning) to another gem from last year about a dollar store pregnancy test.  Far down in the bowels of the comment section is this intelligent comment:

"Maybe she didn’t like the condescending suggestion of the “dollar”
store, which was meant to be cutting and was. I have seen my share of
snippy ER people. And I have insurance, as do most people who go to the
ER."

I hope that this mindset is not too widespread, because if it is, I am going to be in big trouble.  I tell nearly every patient that comes through the ER (or ED if you are pfizer) that they should go to the dollar store to get the ibuprofen that the doctor recommended for them, because it is the same thing as Motrin or Advil for 1/5 the cost.

I never intend for it to be cutting, but then again, I never intend any of the advice I give my patients to be cutting, even when I am supremely frustrated (I may let some of the cuttingness out on my blog, but never in person).

And as an aside, a couple years ago when we were trying to get pregnant the first time (okay, as an aside to my aside, I have to admit that I was not, in fact, trying to get pregnant, although with the success that Mr/Mrs Thomas Beattie has found with the issue, perhaps I should have been trying to get pregnant as well - it would have helped with the sympathy), we bought a dollar-store test and it came back positive, and we pretty much said, "not gonna believe it," so we went out and bought the fancy dancy sachs fifth avenue brand, which - suprise surprise - came back positive as well.  A week later we went to a local "free" pregnancy clinic (this happened to be a pretty hard financial time for us and we were in between jobs) to get an official pregnancy test done and read by a Registered Nurse.  So we go in and they pull open a drawer full fo pregancy tests... from the same dollar store as our original test.

Luckily, though, this RN had received extensive training to know the difference between a single line and a plus sign, and was able to confirm that we (she) were (was) indeed pregnant.