No Longer Patient

I’m going to vent a bit. Because I can; it’s my blog, and because I want to; I’m good at complaining remember?! The venting of the day is focused on doctors. My apologies to any of you good doctors or doctor’s wives out there. We have had our share of good doctor moments, don’t get me wrong, but at the moment I feel like I am being completely discriminated against by the medical community, and so I’m shifting my anger towards doctors.

To make a long vent short, Mr. T has had his monthly fever again, however we had run out of his magic happy pills that take it away. So after several attempts at getting his specialist to refill his prescription, it all came down to the fact that we would have to drive (aka spend lots of money on gas) to her far-away office so that she could verify that he does, still indeed have all the exact same symptoms he’s had his entire life and THEN prescribe the medication. (If Mr. Man were writing this, he would now inform you of how this doctor has just recently graduated at the age of 22 or so and is completely incompetent and has no clue how to help our son whatsoever, but I’m going to leave all of that out for now.) I finally convinced her nurse to call in a refill and then scheduled an appointment for next week. A day later I called back to cancel said appointment, however somehow they had me marked and I was back talking to the nurse whom I swore I would make an appointment with. So then I told her that it would be much easier for us to come to the far-away children’s hospital on the date that we have to see another specialist there, in about 6 months. Somehow she agreed to that (probably because she knows I’m going to run out of his medicine again before that time). However this specialist doesn’t work on Mondays and so I made it for the day after, hoping I could change our appointment with our surgeon to the following day as well. When I called to change that appointment I was told that our surgeon only has appointments on Mondays. Hello? What is a patient to do when she runs out of patience?

I long for the day when I can call up with my calendar in front of me and inform a doctor when I will be coming in, so he or she can try to schedule it into their calendar. Then, I will inevitably have to keep them waiting in a large waiting room as I show up 20-40 minutes late. At which time they will be directed to a smaller waiting room (the room of death) where they will wait with my four children and zero forms of entertainment or nourishment of any kind for another unspecified amount of time. When I finally enter, I will give the doctor exactly 15 seconds worth of information with which to make a diagnosis (since it sometimes seems that’s how much time they take to make it with hours of my compiled research and observations). After the diagnosis has been made I will leave the room again for numerous minutes of my own leisure before returning for a prescription and then gathering my children and leaving, telling the doctor the exact date and time I will return (full-well knowing that I already have another doctor scheduled for that exact same time – they call it “double-booked”.) But no, I’m no doctor, but I am losing my patience!