For Neurology, press #3

For new readers or those unfamiliar with what has been going on off the running front check out this post.

There is a high level of annoyance and stress going on in this household. I think it is mostly from me. I don’t know. D does better with the cool and calm when it comes to the bureaucracy of health care. I lie more in the realm of irate and irrational. If you would, please picture the most annoyed you have ever felt or would feel. For men (from what I have been told) I imagine this would be like a tiny hammer knocking non-stop into your balls without end. For women maybe more of that feeling when there is a full on toddler melt down going on at the grocery store, your own child, or someone else’s. No make it at Target. When you are just there to enjoy the day and spend your money on frivolous items and boom toddler, full on full body meltdown in your favorite isle. And then again ahead of you at check-out.  That level of annoyance is what has been going on with me when I am not running for the last 15 days (well longer really but it has been up a notch as of late. The whole healthcare system here at Fort Bliss is pretty much just the absolute worst).

It has been 15 days and counting since we spent a few hours enjoying the wondrous smells and sounds of the emergency room after D had pins and needles from his head to his toes on the left side of his body. 54 days since the doctor mentioned Multiple Sclerosis and referred him for an MRI and a neurology appointment. It has been 12 days since the MRI appointment was made for three weeks out because nothing happens within any sort of rational time frame in this place. Just two weeks of sitting around waiting to see if your body is doing some sort of irreparable harm to itself. Just two weeks of sitting around googling shit you shouldn’t be googling. Just three weeks of wondering if five plus doctors have misdiagnosed him for the last almost two years.

 And 15 days since the neurology referral. A department that should have contacted us after 4 or 5 days to make an appointment but hasn’t. So it is the department we have been trying to get in touch with non-stop.  It is the department that apparently has 3 phone numbers but answers none. One of which you can leave a message but the prompt simply says you have reached this number, leave a message. We could have reached the cafeteria for all we know. And apparently they are not big on returning calls,they being on whoever is on the other end of that line wherever the hell that message went. One number you call, insert 6 prompts and then get hung up on. Every single time. 

In my head there is a phone, and it is rotary dial for some reason, perhaps a symbol of non-use and never going to be used, and this phone that is connected to the phone number listed as neurology is located in a tiny dark closet located somewhere in the back halls of the hospital and no one EVER or ever will pick up. That is the neurology department in my mind, a dark closet with an endlessly ringing rotary phone.

Because it has been 15 days and counting…