Ass u me nothing

So I don't blog about my hatred of doctors just to grumble.  Really, I find it comical.  How can so much bad really happen to one person.

So at my last visit, endo wants me to decrease my dose from 6 grains to 4.  That's a pretty big jump.  Trying to be compliant, I go down to 4.  5 months later, I feel like crap again.  Exhausted, no energy, forgetful....basically everything I feel when I'm undermedicated.

So I call the office...I'm due for some bloodwork and lady says, Come on in!  You don't even need an appointment for that.

OK, great!  I am assuming that she has my chart and/or screen pulled up telling her that I'm due and there are orders waiting to be filled for labwork.

So, Sean takes a long lunch today as we are having some work done on a car, so I have him drive me over for the blood draw.  In and out...5-10 minutes, we'll go have lunch.

They call me back and she looks over my chart and says there are no orders.  I haven't been seen since February, so I should have had an appointment in June because he wants to see me every 3 months.

Every 3 months?  What the heck for?  The extent of the visits so far have been waiting forever because he's always behind, he comes in and feels my neck and either says he feels something, or he does an ultrasound and verifies that my thyroid is indeed gone.  He says my pulse is fast and to quit the caffeine, or he throws some heart-slowing (!!!!) drugs at me.  Bye, see you next time.

So I'm getting upset because I already hate doctors, I don't feel like this one even reads my chart or knows me from Adam, and I sure don't want to waste my time every three months so he can get paid for nothing.

They take the blood, but, he wants to see me to know why I want an increase in meds--which I understand, but obviously having lab RESULTS in hand makes that conversation more productive.  So I guess I have to wait.

Meanwhile, as I have time to sit and stare at the wall, I'm having a lovely pity-party about thyroids and wanting my old life back where I wasn't dependent on a doctor for a life-sustaining drug, where I wasn't begging for anything to help me feel better, where I wasn't completely wiped out and exhausted all the time.  Add to this that I haven't slept well for several months and it was a grand party.

If you know me well, you know that I don't get emotional often, but when I do, it is almost always a big, blubbery, full-on-tears-and-snot cry.  So the nurse comes in and asks the rhetorical "how are you today" which sets off the cascade.  She was not expecting that!

So after some calming down, the doc comes in and they are checking off all the labs that need run.  He is listening to my lungs/heart and says my heart is racing...again...and nurse tells him I was just crying.  At some point, I mention that my referral is probably expired...and low and behold, it is expired.  Everything comes to a screeching halt.

They give me a phone to call the referral people.  I get an after-hours line, which transfers me to the nurse-on-call, who asks who my doctor is (which I don't know because I haven't seen him in a year and he may have PCSed by now), who trasnfers me to some message machine that says the office is closed (it is 1pm), and if this is an emergency, please dial 911.

So I give the phone back, tell them nobody's answering, it is all closed today.  They look at me pitifully, and say sorry, they can't do anything.  And that blood they took will be thrown away, I'll have to get redrawn when I get my new referral.  Sorry.  Hope I feel better...

Yeah.  Me too.

So an hour later, I go out to the car full of Sean and the kids who were waiting that whole time for nothing.  Sorry guys.  And now I have a post-cry headache.

Oh and I forgot to mention that the nurse-on-call tried to look up the name of my physician, so I gave her my name and birthday.  She said I was not in the system.  I have been "in the system" since I married Sean, so something is completely wrong there.  If ever a medical issue went smoothly without any sort of problem, I would probably die of shock.