I need a minute to scream into the void. And since I own this particular black hole of thought, this is where I’m gonna do it.
At what point did routine medical shit get so fucking hard to get done?
It’s a serious question, cause I’m just so over it right now…
Back in April I saw my doctor cause I’d been losing sensation in my left hand for a bit and now my fingertips had given up the ghost. Getting bounced around from PA to Specialist, to Technician for a set of rather painful tests, then back to the PA I finally get an answer: moderate to severe carpal tunnel.
They schedule me for a consult with a surgeon to review options. Surgeon says based on my test we could attempt injections to alleviate the problem, but I would only get short term relief from that. He recommends surgery.
It’s a routine procedure, nothing too invasive. Recovery time would put me out of work for a couple of weeks since the bulk of my job centers around typing fast. But at this point I just want relief. So I agree to the surgery.
Because it would put me out of work for more than 3 consecutive shifts, my office requires FMLA paperwork. Simple enough, I suppose. At least with that filed I’d get agency paid leave for my recovery time, just at my base rate without my usual stuff included so I’d be out $500 or so. But… I’d get to recover and not fuss.
Easy, right?
Nope.
Beginning of May they go to schedule my surgery. They want to book me a week from the day. That doesn’t really work for me though. I know my office will sometimes “slow walk” paperwork, and plus we’ve been short staffed lately. I know we’re due for some new folks on our team towards the end of May so I ask if it’s possible to schedule me around that time.
We settle on June 2nd and I’m told the surgery center will call me with the time. Cool, I can work with that. The doc’s office wants me to get a pre-op clearance since I have pre-hypertensive blood pressure. Had it for years, it’s controlled by low dose meds — nothing to worry about.
They tell me to get it done at least 3 days prior to the procedure. I do them one better, I get it done literally the next morning. I get everything they need done, every exam, every blood draw, everything. It gets submitted to the surgery center and then… nothing.
From May 11th until today it’s been radio silent.
Oh, and I’ve called. And called. And emailed.
“Hey, looking to see what time I’m scheduled for on June 2nd.”
“What type of anesthesia is used? Is it local or am I asleep?”
“Do you guys need any other forms filled out?”
Nothing. Not a single email replied to. I’d been hung up on twice. And the one time they actually talked to me I was rudely told that someone would call me.
I’d emailed the actual doctor’s office directly and the answer to my questions was basically “talk to the center”. Except for the anesthesia one, that one I actually get an answer to: general anesthesia, you’ll be asleep. Cool. Cause I’m not exactly crazy about being awake while someone is digging around in my wrist.
So FINALLY, today at 9AM the pre-op nurse calls. And it’s fucking downhill at an amazing speed from there. We get through all the typical pre-screen bullshit and then she tells me about the procedure.
“So we do a local anesthetic”.
I ask about the possibility of being asleep for the procedure so that I wouldn’t feel nervous. Cause, you know, it’s fucking surgery. Anyone normal is nervous a little.
And suddenly she has to get off the phone and will call me back.
Except she doesn’t. For 6 hours. I tried calling twice and of course no one answers the phone there. Finally, I get a call…… from the office manager from the doctor’s office. Surgery’s off.
“The center raised a concern about anesthesia. They didn’t feel comfortable with putting you under so they’ve declined to let us do the procedure.”
I ask for details — she has none. I ask to talk to my doctor — he’s “with other patients but can call you tomorrow.”
Uh, no. Someone with some actual fucking information needs to call me TODAY. I’ve been waiting for weeks here and with a day to go someone pulled the plug and I want answers. She says she’ll try but he has “five other patients today”.
Well now he has six.
I also ask if there’s anyone at the surgery center who I can talk to. She doesn’t know. I ask her who she talked to. She doesn’t know.
I’m not proud of it, but I was frustrated. “So if you don’t know the answer to any of these questions, who does? Someone has to explain to me why I was good to go for weeks until I asked a question.”
To that, she laughs. I don’t think she was laughing at me. I think she was either feeling super uncomfortable or cracking under how intense I was at that point — but it didn’t help. “These kinds of things happen all the time. We can rebook you though. I think there’s an opening in July.”
No, no, no. I did everything I was supposed to. I got all the paperwork done, I’d been asking all the questions you guys told me to contact y’all and ask. I’d gotten my active cases temporary reassigned, busted ass to get my FMLA approved. On top of that I know y’all are gonna hit my insurance up for fuck-you money for all this. So somebody needs to answer for what’s going on.
By this point, I’m just having a hard time keeping it together. I’d been loud enough to grab the attention of my wife from her home office who came out to see what was happening.
Everything is a little fuzzy at this point because I was just so exhausted and sick of everything that I honestly think I short circuited my short term memory. At some point she ended up with my phone and I ended up face down in the pillows of our bed.
The next thing I know was her coming into the bedroom with my doctor on the phone. I don’t know how she did it, but… damn…
“I think there’s been some kind of miscommunication.”
Long conversation short, the pre-op nurse took me asking about sedation and general nervousness about surgery to be some big alarm that warranted her going to some dude at the top of the anesthesiology department at the center and asking him to review my chart. At some point someone says to him that I had “previously had a bad reaction to local anesthesia”. Don’t know where the fuck that came from but…
Basically that dude, who I had never met, never spoken to, never knew the name of, put the stop to the procedure because they “didn’t feel comfortable”. A mix of my high BMI and sedation didn’t sit will with him. Even though I had pointed out that I was only asking questions and would be fine with the local anesthetic if that was the only option.
But nope, they weren’t interested and told my doc it was off.
Oh, and they refused to speak with me directly.
My doctor can’t figure out what’s going on with them and is just as confused as I am. But if the center declines he can’t do anything about it. Their call to make. I point out all the stuff I’d done to prep for this and how I had followed every requirement, every test, all of it. So after a bit of arm twisting he agrees to book me at a hospital facility on the 6th. It’s a place he “has pull with” so he says there won’t be any problems.
We’ll see…
I’m just so tired y’all. I’ve been building up for this for weeks and for nothing…
Oh yeah, one other thing — the lady from the center said she’d been trying to reach me but the number they had wasn’t working. Interesting, because they had absolutely no problem reaching out to me to tell me how much I would owe the center after insurance. I mean, shit — I had even asked that person for details and they told me someone else would be calling.
It shouldn’t be this fucking hard to get things done. I did everything I was supposed to before the deadlines and with the amount of money about to change hands here, I’m kinda pissed that we had to basically harass folks to get an answer.
The fact that someone thought the office rep calling me and being like “lol cancelled no details byeeeee” was going to be acceptable is just baffling to me.
But yeah… so rescheduled for a few days later. Hopefully nothing fucks this up. I’ll tell you what though, I’m absolutely terrified to ask any more questions about this procedure less it royally fucks something else up.
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