I got up at 7am (which is EARLY for me) and left the house at 8:30am to arrive at the drs. office at 9:10am for a 9:15am appt. I sat in the waiting room until 11:15 before being called into a room. Then I waited another 10 minutes before the dr. came in. We talked and she gave me a gown and asked me to take my stockings off (this was my lymphedema dr. who also deals with my back as she's the director of cancer rehab in the physical rehab dept.). I waited at least 15 or 20 more minutes for her to come back in the room. She took her measurements (this tedious process of using a tape measure and putting pen marks every couple inches up my leg and measuring around at each pen point on both legs) and discussed some stretching exercises for my back. I got dressed and left the office at 12 noon! 12 noon! For a 9:15am appt.! By the time I got my car out of the valet parking it was about 12:20pm when I drove away. What a frigging waste of time! Seems like more and more I am having these marathon dr. appts.. My med onc is usually a minimum of 2 hours, often close to 3 including the actual appt. (and he starts his appts. at 1pm and mine are either at 1:00, 1:15 or 1:30). Except for the day after Xmas when I got in and out in less than a hour. The rad onc last time was almost 3 hours. It was close to 2 hours for the specialist dentist I saw for my salivary gland problem. In fact after seeing the oral surgeon he referred me to (who was the complete opposite, I was in and out of there in 20 minutes) I decided to cancel the follow up appt. with the specialist dentist because I am just not going to waste another 2 to 3 hours of my life just to hear that there is nothing for me to do (which was the oral surgeon's opinion).
Not all my drs. are like this (and certain hospitals are MUCH worse than others in their chronic lateness), but between the ones that are and the interminable amount of time I spend getting scans it just wears me down. For some reason it just really pissed me off today.
Some good news though, I had my blood pressure taken while at the drs., which was the first drs. office reading since I've lost weight (and after 2 hours of anxious waiting) and it was NORMAL, 120/70 (it was 110/70 at home this morning so considering the stress factor I think it equals out)!
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3 comments:
Argh, I hate that kind of stuff. Did you grump about it to the doctor? Did they even let you know she was running late? That seems like a common courtesy that few offices employ (our primary care practice does, but none of the specialists we've ever seen have ).
Yay for the normal blood pressure! That's a good thing. How was the lymphedema doing? Good, bad, the same?
When she came back in the 2nd time she apologized (she also apologized the first time she came in) and made a comment about who was making her schedule. I said, yeah, my appt. was at 9:15 and left it at that. No one did say anything to me but after about an hour or so I did get up and ask. The nurse said I was the next patient, but then it still took another hour.
The lymphedema is doing pretty good, the measurements were less but of course I have lost weight since the last measurements. She didn't have a calculator (or the formula) to figure out for sure if the relative difference was less (between the two legs this time vs. last time) but she looked at the numbers for a bit and thought that it probably was the case. While my left thigh is still bigger than the right, it's not something I notice so much anymore without really looking for it, so I think in that my unscientific opinion that it is doing better :-)
Just catching up on reading, but how awful. I would have been burning up with all that waiting. Ugh! Rant away. Glad your "measurements" were good.
- Pat
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