Years ago, one of my kids had an eye emergency and I was told they had no openings for six weeks.
The appalled pediatrician told me, You go to that department you put your baby on their counter and you tell them you’re not leaving till they fit your kid in. Now.
I did and they did.
So.
The good and bad news is the receptionist earlier this year moved my appointment forward by a day, which meant the insurance company bounced it; it had to be rescheduled, and three months out was the best they could do. I was able to get a simple vision test last month and the new glasses I badly needed but the actual eye checkup had to wait. To today.
The good news is that had that goof not happened, what they saw today might not have so apparent in September and adding nine more months to that could have been catastrophic.
The bad news is that the retina specialist can’t see me till the end of January.
The good news is that I now have that appointment. And a second one, because,
the bad news is that two weeks ago I found a lump above the other eye socket, the one that had a squamous-celled growth removed.
The good news is that I’ve lived 37 perfectly good years since then with no cancer from it, and this is probably nothing.
My dad was told that if he’d seen a retina specialist right away (and not flown across the Atlantic Ocean first!) they could have saved his eye. He went straight from the airport to the doctor and was sent straight to the hospital.
But he lost it. I refuse to. Mine’s not an emergency yet–but I won’t wait for an appointment if it becomes one.
I know how to sit on a counter.
Typing this out is my equivalent of having a good cry, because yelling, NO!!! in the car on the way home to try to tell it all who was the boss of it just didn’t quite do it. (Having now tested the theory I’d heard of whether such shenanigans are helpful, I’d have to say that for me, no, not really.)
I will forever be grateful for the empathy of our Dr. S of thirty years, who was closer to tears than he might have thought was professional as I left, but I saw it. It helped more than he could have known. We were in this together, even if he won’t be the one managing this.
And life goes on.