Doctors, Doctors, Doctors! Oh…and a New President (11/4/08)

On this Election Day, I was pretty busy bringing dad to his doctors. He had had blood work done on Friday and was then surprised when his doctor requested from him on Monday morning to make an appointment to come in and discuss. I – of course – am thinking the big “C” but didn’t share my paranoia with him. (End result – no cancer!) So I was able to make an appointment for Election Day. Why not – we already had an appointment for his semi-annual chest cat scan for that morning and his monthly allergy shots. What’s another appointment? {{{Dad felt horrible eating up Logan’s day off.}}}

So we began with 9:30 a.m. cat scans, on to voting which was in and out, on to 11:00 a.m. allergy appointment, and rounded out his day with a 2:00 p.m. appointment to find out his blood is not too bad. No big issues. So why did his doctor ask him to come in? I’ll tell you. The HIP center he belongs to now requires the specialist doctor to send a referral to the primary to tell him why he needs to come back. Sooooo this means that when his primary sends him to the pulmonogist, the pulmonogist has to write back to primary to ask him to allow him to come back. Too much red-tape. Dad finally blew a fuse and called the head of the PBA which agrees that chronic patients (asthma and chronic bronchitis) should not have to ping-pong back and forth. We have a lot of respect for Dad’s primary care physician so we will do what needs to be done. Ugh!

I also spent time setting up a blood drive donor sign-up table at Logan’s middle school which was being wo-manned (“manned”) by my small committee of four and then later in the evening, I sat on duty at another table that I set up at his elementary school. I did get about 20 people to sign up in the 2 ½ hour time I was there. Hopefully they will follow through when we remind them in January.

The night ended with a new day dawning. President-Elect Barrack Obama is that new day. Some of you know my political views and this is not my place for them. We’ll see how he does and hopefully keep with the thought that it can’t get any worse. Or can it?!?