Wednesday, June 1, 2011

A tad bit annoyed ...

Yesterday I was a tad bit annoyed with the people who schedule my appointments with my liver doctor.

When I see my liver doctor, he always wants to see me 4 weeks after for a follow-up, which is fine.  The nurse always tells me to speak with the receptionist to make the appointment.  The receptionist always tells me they don't have an appointment available, so they'll have to fit me in, and that her supervisor will call me.  All well and good.

Over the past couple of months, the supervisor will call me, and give me one option for an appointment for three weeks from my last appointment.

It annoys me that after the doctor specically tells me four weeks, the supervisor schedules me for 3 weeks.  For all intents and purposes, I'm seeing the doctor a week earlier than he wanted to see me one month, which translates to two weeks earlier the next month, and then three weeks earlier the month after that, etc.

It sort of got to me yesterday, because this next appointment and it's attendant blood test results are going to be the deciding factor about whether I have to do this for 6 months or 18 months.  I'm afraid that they're taking the blood tests too early, and that the medication won't have had enough time to work, and then I'll be on this medication, possibly needlessly, for 18 months.

As this treatment goes on, I'll be dealing with more and more side effects, not to mention that if it stretches out to next year, I'm looking at another $4,000 in treatment costs.

Fear and I are not something that go together well, and although I do my best not to lash out (especially after a couple of years of therapy), I realized yesterday that I'm really dreading the next appointment and blood test results.

The good news is that I think I didn't come across as insane, just a little petulant and pedantic, but that's okay.  Once I got a chance to breathe, take a look at the situation, and give control of this stuff over to the universe where it belongs, I just shrugged my shoulders, calendared the date and went on about my day.

This whole process is a huge lesson in taking things one day at a time and trusting in something other than myself.

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