Tell me true…
Well, the hits just keep on coming.
First, the good news: I picked up another client, so I’m at the point where I have all the work I want. Things are going well with my online as well as my in-person classes. I still have a lot of time to myself for writing, reading and other pleasures.
As for the never-ending surprises while dealing with the medical system, I am still able to be surprised by the absurdly convoluted way in which things happen. To recap (and feel free to skip to the end):
- I had bloodwork which indicated a 25% risk of prostate cancer (which I now know I don’t have), which caused my doctor to order a biopsy. She gave me a referral to go to Hospital San Juan de Diós in San Jose.
- When I stepped out of her office and went to the reception desk to get the order entered into the system, I was told I’d have to come back in 10 days.
- When I went downtown to the hospital, I was told to go to the Identificación office (even though I had identification). A nice man there wrote on the form “Please process without identification”; so I went back to the window and was approved.
- The young lady there gave me a paper with the date 8/20, three weeks later. That is when I learned that the referral needed three weeks to process before anything could be scheduled.
- I went back on the 22nd and received a date in January 2019.
- Fed up with the nonsense, I went to a private doc; he told me that my January appointment was not for a biopsy—it was for a consultation about the biopsy. He then referred me for an ultrasound, which I had one week later and showed no signs of cancer.
As I approach the end of my second year here, I find that my attempts to adapt keep bringing me to new levels of awareness. I started with a lack of patience for the stunning bureaucracy and people in make-work positions coming up with additional hoops through which one must jump. Now, I have learned to expect to wait and to encounter obstacles at every turn; I bring my ereader and a bottle of water wherever I go.
However, the latest step in my evolution is learning how to cope with people who don’t even think to warn clients about what comes next. When you give me a referral, please tell me that it needs 10 days for signature in the clinic; tell me that I need to make an appointment at the hospital to make a future appointment three weeks later in the same hospital. Tell me that, once I gather my paperwork, I’ll need to schedule an appointment to get permission to not have to give a urine test at 6:00 am at a hospital far away. I can handle it if you just tell me.
Long sigh here.
On a separate note, I must say that I am loving the weather. The mornings are sunny with blue skies; in the afternoons, the clouds appear, to be followed shortly by bone-shaking thunder and wrath-of-god rain. I love watching the rain while reading in my comfortable chair. It’s a far cry from the climate in Palm Springs to which I had become accustomed.
A movie note: I watched the Disaster Artist, with James Franco, a movie about a movie so bad that it attained cult status. It was wonderful to witness the passion and dedication of someone so completely untalented and out of touch with reality as he brought his truly awful vision to the big screen. Anyone who ever dreamed of or tried to achieve stardom in Hollywood will be moved by this tribute to an indefatigable if delusional spirit.
Off to the store. Enjoy the weekend.