Collaboration Consternation

On January 25, 2017, after my last visit with Dr. Ellis at WFBH, I made my next follow up appointment for July 26 - it was a collaborative thing where I got to check my calendar but had to choose an open date for Dr. Ellis. I like collaboration because it’s a polysyllabic word and, in the context of the medical care system, it gives you the illusion that you are in on the decision. Within a matter of months, I was quickly and unceremoniously disabused of any illusion that my next appointment time was a collaborative effort.

On May 30, I got a notification through the WFBH patient portal that my July 26 appointment was cancelled and rescheduled for July 28. I thought, “meh, only two days later, nothing to be concerned or annoyed about”. The following day, May 31, I got another notification through the patient portal that my July 28 appointment was cancelled and moved to August 7. This was mildly annoying because I had already sent my wife an appointment request for the July 28 date through my Google calendar to which she had already responded and accepted. Even so, I changed my appointment time on my calendar and sent her an update. This appointment was still only 12 days after my original and I had no reason to complain about the timing in that regard even though I was not consulted about the time beforehand. I was (double entendre warning!) patient. On July 20 I received yet another notification through the patient portal that my appointment had been rescheduled again for October 2. This time I thought, “what the fuck is going on?” It was time for me to reassert my illusory independence and send a message back to the yahoos at WFBH Scheduling. Through the portal appointment service I cancelled the October 2 appointment. Within an hour I got a message through the portal message service from Shelley L. asking me if I wanted to reschedule my appointment with Dr. Ellis, to which I replied it had already been rescheduled three times and could I please get an explanation. Shelley L. responded by apologizing for the repeated reschedulings and explained that Dr. Ellis was no longer seeing patients on Wednesdays and that a PA was not available on August 7 so I was given the next available appointment. That is precisely the time I became very annoyed for two reasons. 1) I was not consulted about the appointment times beforehand and 2) my appointment was pushed back more than two months from its original date to the doc’s next available date as if I had never made an appointment in the first place. I never responded back to the last message from Shelley L. To my credit, I was pissed off but did not reflexively take out my frustrations on her. Don’t kill the messenger, right? The first rule of diplomacy.

Out of a need to further reassert my control of the situation I emailed Dr. Loughran’s office to see when I could get an appointment to see him again. The nice lady at the Emily Couric Cancer Center, named Jeanette, told me that he had an open date on August 8 at 8:00 a.m. That’s 8-8-8 for those of you who aren’t paying attention. Surely there must be some metaphysical significance to the 8-8-8 thing and it will reveal itself during my consult with the Wizard of Oz. Maybe some mystical portal will open and I will be transported to LGLL land where a cure has been found and everyone lives a long, healthy and productive life. Or, maybe I will be sent to LGLL purgatory where everyone is having their appointments constantly rescheduled.

Regardless of how this turns out, I feel better about the ultimate outcome and isn’t feeling better what it’s all about? If it’s not a panacea maybe it’s a placebo and I’m in the control group. Sugar pills all around!