16 March 2011

I'M NOT A DOCTOR BUT I PLAY ONE IN REAL LIFE

I feel like I am completing medical school through correspondence course. And by "correspondence" I mean endless piles of paperwork, faxing, refaxing, phone calls, transfers, missed calls, and unreturned calls.

Lula has 7 doctors at 4 different hospitals, 3 therapists, a service coordinator, a social worker, and numerous night nurses.  She has therapy 5 days a week and usually 1 or 2 doctors appointments per week.

Her schedule rivals Obamas, but I can handle that.   It's the medical black hole that I regularly seem to fall into that feels like an abyss. I don't even know what I don't know.

Just when I think I have a grasp on things somebody says something like "we needed that paperwork last week - you had to fax the consent to the health management department etc etc. Now we may have to reschedule your appointment for June. Don't you have a case manager?"

Moments like that truly are devastating because I can't even protect my child from incompetent bureaucratic pencil pushers, let alone disease and illness. Exhausting.

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