Just Visiting Part 2

Interventional Radiology called me up the next day at 9AM, which was three hours before I was supposed to be there, trying to tell me that they had an emergency and couldn’t do my procedure. I knew instantly they were lying. I was literally an emergency. I was sent there from the emergency room. My doctor sent me down from my appointment, and I heard him on the phone as Master Pravus wheeled me out of the office and down into the hall. I know he called down.

I then sat in that ER and got taped before I was kicked out. My doctor hadn’t wanted me sent home before they fixed my tube, but I didn’t argue with the ER, mainly because it was one day- and getting anesthesia on board can sometimes be a problem that requires an overnight to solve. Shrug. If I had to wait a day, then I understood that and I went home with that understanding.

The phone call was obnoxious though. IR obviously didn’t want to help me. “Go back to your old IR team,” they tried. We were both shocked. We told them we weren’t going to do that, and that the old IR team was literally over an hour’s drive and we shouldn’t have to. The ER set this up for us today with anesthesia and we should be able to have our emergency appointment. Then the person on the phone started going on about how we haven’t worked with them before, and they’ll be able to do the procedure I need without any sedation. They’re “that” good.

At that point we were just angry and I said something along the lines of “Look, if you can see in my chart, then you can also see that I need sedation for feeding tube changes. And this feeding tube change isn’t even a normal change. My tube is infected, so it’s going to be way worse. There’s no way I’ll be able to sit still for it. After that, the person on the phone literally said “Well, call your doctor because we’re cancelling this.”

It was ludicrous. We wouldn’t hang up without an appointment though, so we made him tell us when the next appointment with sedation was, and he said Monday at 8AM. Annoying, but fine.

We hung up only to get a call back saying that suddenly there was an emergency and they wouldn’t be able to do Monday at 8AM either.

Oh REALLY? You already know that there’s an emergency for Monday at 8AM? It turned out that no, there really wasn’t. They just wouldn’t make an appointment for any patient with anesthesia until they tried and failed to perform a tube exchange without anesthesia, regardless of documentation. That seemed really ridiculous to us.

At that point, they said that I should call my doctor, and see if my doctor had another plan for me and then call them right back. I was so angry at this point I was ready to spit bullets. Literally my doctor’s plan was for me to get this taken care of in the ER, the ER sent me to IR, and IR was dicking around because they didn’t want to use sedation despite it being in my chart.

We called my doctor and guess what? He was in back to back surgeries all damned day!

When we called them to let them know that they felt beaten and said “Look. Fine. Come in today at noon. For your usual appointment, we will discuss whether or not you need sedation.”

Master Pravus picked up the phone that time and he was ripshit. He answered back but he said:

“As long as you understand that this appointment is just to talk, and that you won’t be doing any procedures on my wife if you can’t sedate her first.”

The person on the other end sounded angry as fuck, but said “Fine.”

We piled into the car, and neither one of us said much the entire way down. We were both pissed. This has happened to us before (but only with Interventional Radiology, because as we all know IR is a terrible place that honestly nobody should have to go to ever. AHEM), and we’re not fans of the high pressure sales. >.<

We get to the hospital, and we get to check in, and guess what?

There’s no slot for us at all.

Suddenly there’s no appointment for us in the system. Feeling pretty punked, we waited patiently while the desk secretary called down to the Interventional Radiology department only to find out that actually there was no appointment for us that day. “Sorry,” she said.

Master Pravus and me looked at each other pretty frustrated and I literally said: “Now what?”

Then, Master Pravus decided to call the contact we’d been talking to at IR all morning.

“They switched you guys over to Pre-op. Sorry about the confusion.”

OK. You probably could have told that to the secretary, but alright. >.<

We asked the secretary how to get to Pre-op and she sent us upstairs. Once we got upstairs they had no clue what to do with us since we hadn’t actually been checked in, so they made some calls and then sent us back downstairs to wait. No big deal really.

Around then we got a call from the doctor’s office saying that my surgeon had received our message during one of his breaks, and he had switched me from Interventional Radiology to Pre-Op, and he’d fix my tube himself. But, that there was no anesthesiologist.

After that things went reasonably smoothly, except before they changed my tube they tried to use something from my allergy list to sedate me with!

I pointed out that that doesn’t work for me, and they said:

“Oh gosh wait! It doesn’t? Something like that should be on your allergy list, that’s serious.”

“IT IS!”

And my nurse, who was actually very nice and on top of his game beep-boop-beeped a couple of buttons and showed him that it was in fact written in on my allergy list.

“Oh! Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out. There’s no reason you should have to be miserable for this.”

THANK FUCK.

And literally after that I am pretty pleased to say that they did fix my feeding tube. And now I can get back to working on the house and getting things in order. But I spent the entire day feeling really exhausted and sleeping on and off. This was literally about ten days that were just gone from being productive at all on my part, while Master Pravus did his best to take care of things, and it will probably be 1-2 more before I’m completely back to my usual self again and ready to get back to my regular activities.

Having a feeding tube is literally life saving, but at the same time, things can happen that literally make it impossible to do anything at all for a while. I’m grateful for it but also frustrated by it at times, too. Daily even, to be honest.

And now I’m so ready to get back to everything! <3