A tale of two doctors
Yesterday we took Samantha in for back-to-back appointments with her orthopedist and her neurologist.
The orthopedist appointment never happened. We sat in the waiting area at the hospital for an hour past our scheduled appointment time before they took us into an exam room., and then we sat there for another 45 minutes during which no one showed up. No doctor, no member of the staff to tell us the doctor was tied up somewhere and would be late, no nothing. After an hour and 45 minutes we just left, since we had to get Samantha something for lunch before her next appointment. I was livid.
We actually saw her doctor walking down the hall on the way out, in scrubs. So maybe he got delayed by an emergency, or a surgical procedure that ran long. Fine, these things happen. But you still don't leave a 5 year old patient sitting around for almost two hours with no indication that there's going to be a delay, no clue when the doctor is going to arrive, etc. If they'd just sent someone in to tell us we could have rescheduled, or gone to lunch and come back, or any number of things. Instead we just wasted an entire morning and never did get to see the orthopedist. This is the kind of thing that gives a practice a bad name, and makes it really hard to consider going back.
The second appointment, with the neurologist, went much better. In her opinion Samantha is doing fine on the naproxen, and as long as there are no evident side effects or breakthrough events where she's in pain in spite of the medication, the doctor's advice is "Keep doing what you're doing, don't put her through any more testing right now unless one of the serological tests for autoimmune issues comes back positive, and check back in after 6 months to a year."
Samantha might outgrow the dose of naproxen she's on before then, so if there's a change in pain level or other symptoms we'll need to deal with it, but otherwise it looks like she's done with doctors for a while. In another 6 to 12 months we'll repeat all of the imaging studies and maybe add some new ones to see if anything has changed, but in the meantime naproxen is allowing her to lead a normal active life again.
I think Samantha will miss going to Dr. LeBel's office just because of all of the office toys she has there for kids to rummage through. Whatever will we do without the fake can of taffy that has a spring loaded shark inside? You'd think the old "shark in a can" routine would get old, even for a 5 year old, but somehow it never does.
Eeeeeeeek! Shark in a can!
The orthopedist appointment never happened. We sat in the waiting area at the hospital for an hour past our scheduled appointment time before they took us into an exam room., and then we sat there for another 45 minutes during which no one showed up. No doctor, no member of the staff to tell us the doctor was tied up somewhere and would be late, no nothing. After an hour and 45 minutes we just left, since we had to get Samantha something for lunch before her next appointment. I was livid.
We actually saw her doctor walking down the hall on the way out, in scrubs. So maybe he got delayed by an emergency, or a surgical procedure that ran long. Fine, these things happen. But you still don't leave a 5 year old patient sitting around for almost two hours with no indication that there's going to be a delay, no clue when the doctor is going to arrive, etc. If they'd just sent someone in to tell us we could have rescheduled, or gone to lunch and come back, or any number of things. Instead we just wasted an entire morning and never did get to see the orthopedist. This is the kind of thing that gives a practice a bad name, and makes it really hard to consider going back.
The second appointment, with the neurologist, went much better. In her opinion Samantha is doing fine on the naproxen, and as long as there are no evident side effects or breakthrough events where she's in pain in spite of the medication, the doctor's advice is "Keep doing what you're doing, don't put her through any more testing right now unless one of the serological tests for autoimmune issues comes back positive, and check back in after 6 months to a year."
Samantha might outgrow the dose of naproxen she's on before then, so if there's a change in pain level or other symptoms we'll need to deal with it, but otherwise it looks like she's done with doctors for a while. In another 6 to 12 months we'll repeat all of the imaging studies and maybe add some new ones to see if anything has changed, but in the meantime naproxen is allowing her to lead a normal active life again.
I think Samantha will miss going to Dr. LeBel's office just because of all of the office toys she has there for kids to rummage through. Whatever will we do without the fake can of taffy that has a spring loaded shark inside? You'd think the old "shark in a can" routine would get old, even for a 5 year old, but somehow it never does.
Eeeeeeeek! Shark in a can!
posted by Matt | 11:25 AM
2 Comments:
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I had the same experience once sitting around waiting for someone to come in the little exam room. I sat there for an hour before I ventured out and happened to see my doctor walk by. She said she forgot about me! Can you imagine? I guess there was some emergency, but, yes, couldn't someone have let me know??
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