Saturday, August 8, 2009

a week of phone calls

After a full week of phone calls, Shawn finally has an appointment with a neurologist in Bloomington.

His neurologist in Chicago thought having someone in Bloomington would be a good idea, so he found a few names of people for Shawn to call. Also found someone in Indianapolis at IU Medical Center. The doc in Indy can't see him until October, so in the meantime Shawn called for an appointment with one of the doctors in Bloomington. When he called a week ago Friday, the office said he could get an appointment the following week but they needed the pulmonary function test from his pulmonologist before they could schedule the appointment. By this time it was late on Friday afternoon, so first thing Monday he called the pulmonologist's office.

Monday is the first day of a week of phone calls. On Monday, Shawn talked to a nurse at the pulmonologist's office who didn't seem to understand what he was asking and kept having him repeat phone numbers. The next morning when he called the neurologist's office they hadn't received anything. So he called pulmonologist's office again, talked to same nurse, still didn't seem to be connecting. She claimed the number he gave her didn't work, although he's now called it two or three times himself. She takes down the numbers again. Wednesday after finding out still nothing at the neurologist's office he calls again, gets a different nurse who said he'd been dealing with a temp nurse the last two days. This new nurse is much more on the ball and gets all the info and faxes it to the correct office. Another call to neurologist and sure enough, they now have the test results, but they still need a referral form filled out and faxed back. Call to pulmonologist to find out they don't have a copy of the form. Call back neurologist to ask them to fax the form so that pulmonologist can fill it in an fax it back...

FINALLY - on Friday, all the right paperwork is in the right place and they schedule an appointment for Monday, August 17. Dave and I will drive down next weekend and stay for the appointment.

2 comments:

Chicago Mom (Heather) said...

That is so annoying!! I'm glad you finally got your appointment. I'll be thinking about you...

Tricia said...

You gotta wonder about the adverse health effects of all this hassle...Hope things go well on Monday.