To the manager please.
Except.
I didn’t say that.
I did say, nicely, politely, with lots of pauses and deep, slow breathing, that I had been calling every day for the last four days, four, and that I really wanted to make an appointment with the doctor.
REALLY.
I expressed how much pain I have been in and how it’s been really hard to not be able to get through to the part of the story where I make an appointment and I’m seen.
REALLY fucking hard.
The woman on the line gave me another number to call.
How many fucking numbers am I going to have to call to get to be seen?
I am not good at this, and I wonder, is anyone? But I played along and called the next number and sure as shit, I got a voicemail saying please leave a message and someone will get back to you within the next 24 hours.
Fuck you.
I mean.
REALLY.
I hung up.
I called my person, I left a teary message.
I sank down on the floor and cried a little.
The baby was playing by the train set and the oldest boy was in his room with a new Lego set grandma had gotten him.
I had a minute to cry and then I got up, blew my nose, and started a kettle for a cup of tea.
You know who called me back?
My person.
Fucking love him.
And he told me to get up early and go to the doctor’s office in person and make the appointment there and demand to be seen.
Ugh.
Just the thought of trying to do that felt horrendous and huge and awful and I had this inkling that the mom was going to ask me to come in early, which she did, but more on that later, and I couldn’t imagine getting up early, driving down town and marching into CPMC Sutter and pounding on the desk to get an appointment with the GI specialist that my doctor referred me to.
But.
I was willing to take it as a suggestion.
Honestly though, I wasn’t sure I could do it.
Fortunately.
A few hours later when I was wrapping up dinner dishes and the family was happily eating dinner, I got a call back!
I was shocked.
It was 5:30 p.m. and I wasn’t expecting any kind of response after 5p.m. had rolled on by.
It was the manager of the office!
She was super kind and very apologetic.
She’d listened to my message and combed over the records from the answering service and apparently there was no record of any of the phone calls I had made.
Not a single one!
I have called the office every day since I got the referral on Monday.
Monday, two hours after the initial appointment at One Medical.
On Monday I was told that the office hadn’t had a chance to look at the referrals yet and the doctor would look them over and call on Tuesday.
By three p.m. Tuesday I hadn’t heard a thing.
So I called and spoke to a woman who took all my information and assured me that someone from the office would get back to me in the next 24 hours.
24 hours later, Wednesday around 3 p.m., nada, not a single fucking call.
So.
I called back.
This time I got through to the doctor’s office and was told that they had never received a fax from the referring doctor.
Fuck my mother.
So.
I called One Medical, and they denied that, insisted they’d faxed it, but said, hey, we’ll do it again.
Then the guy at One Medical did me one better, I have to say I am impressed so far with them, great customer service, he called the office himself.
He then called me back and said he’d re-faxed the paper work, apparently the fax machine at the GI’s office had gone down on Monday and they were inundated with a back log of faxes.
Sure.
Sounded an awful lot like the dog at my homework, but whatever.
So I called back to the office and spoke to a woman there who said they’d received a partial fax, but not the entire thing and the doctor would call me tomorrow.
Which brings me to today.
And no phone call by 3 p.m.
Which led me to call the office again and this time I got the answering service again and I got upset and I was not in tears, but I was pissed, and I held it together, but I made it super clear to the woman I was talking to that I wasn’t going to leave a message so that I could be called back in the next 24 hours, I was in pain and I had been trying since Monday and I needed help.
That’s when she gave me the manager’s number, although at the time I thought she was giving me a direct number to the GI’s office.
No such luck.
Grateful though, that I pushed and got through to someone and really grateful that the woman took the time to call me back, after business hours, get me into the system fully and assured me that she would personally make it her business to have the doctor’s office book my appointment tomorrow.
I admit, I had a fantasy that I would get the referral and already be done with it by this point and have some sort of resolution.
And although that’s not what happened, at least I do know that I have taken the next step towards something.
I hope to hell I can get this taken care of.
I am so tired of it.
Really.
Really.
REALLY.
Tired.
Auntiebubba 