Well, Good Afternoon to You, Too

Around 2 pm this afternoon I got a phone call from my new primary care physician, Dr. Earnest.  Or, more accurately, I got a call from someone at her office.  The purpose of this call was to give me my appointment time for a renal scope or ultrasound or something.  I found this news to be especially fascinating because I knew absolutely nothing about it.  I told the nurse that I thought she had the wrong person.  She confirmed my name--correctly spelled--and my birth date.  I was still at a complete loss.  She told me the doctor had ordered it.  I couldn't understand why, because so far I've seen this doctor exactly once, four days after my appendectomy, to become established as a new patient.

The nurse then asked if my surgery was done at at the local Catholic hospital.  I told her yes.  Then she started flipping through my medical records, and said there was a note about a "renal mass."  Um, scuzemewhat?????  To my knowledge, my renal system is working just fine.  I was also trying to figure out how something related to my urinary tract was going to be relevant to the CT scan done to determine whether or not I had an inflamed appendix.  I was completely confused but mostly I was supremely pissed that this was the first I was hearing about any potential problem.  So not cool, Dr. Earnest.  Then there is the small matter of why it's taken the doctor and/or the hospital over 6 weeks to grace me with this information.  Furious, I informed her that no one was shoving a scope up my anything until I had been told what was going on, and that I thought she needed to have the doctor call me directly.  She said she'd give the file back to the doctor and have her call.  I figured I wouldn't hear anything before 5-6 pm, after she'd had a chance to finish the day's appointments.

After I hung up the phone, I started doing Google searches to figure out what exactly the procedure she mentioned would entail.  This was a huge mistake, because I had little luck getting scoping info, but lots of luck learning all about cancerous renal "masses."  Needless to say, I stated freaking out.  I posted on Facebook (nothing is real till you post it on Facebook, right?) and waited for my various friends to talk me down, which of course they did.  Given that I am currently asymptomatic, it's probably nothing--perhaps just a shadow on the CT films, or maybe a cyst.  Still, who wants to first hear the words "renal mass" from some random nurse 6 weeks after the scan in question occurred?  I was given good advice which helped me calm back down.  But I'm still pissed.  I'm pissed that the hospital didn't catch any mass when they reviewed my films for appendicitis.  I'm pissed that it took six weeks for anyone to contact me about a potential problem.  I realize that's probably a good thing, because if it appeared to be serious they would have called sooner, but still.  I'm pissed that the doctor never called me herself to say "Hey, there's an anomaly on your scan and we just need to do a simple test to check it out."  I'm pissed that it's late at night and the doctor still hasn't called me back.  Because I needed to spend my entire day pondering the possibility, however remote, that I have cancer in a major and highly important body system.

First, I'm going to get all this ridiculous resolved, next I'm going to find another primary care physician and last, I'm going to give good old Dr. Earnest the sack.  She kinda bugged me anyway, and if this is how she normally handles business, particularly of a potentially serious nature, then I don't want to work with her.  So not cool.

Meanwhile, my big toe has once again started oozing stuff, and soaking it only helps while it's in the water.  So no doubt I'll have to go back to my F doctor and have my toenail painfully ripped off.  Yay.  I can't wait.  I so wish Dr. F had his own practice outside the minor med.  He wouldn't have screwed with my head like Dr. Earnest.

I thought the new year would go better.  I hoped the new year would go better.  I hope that Georgia will stop hating me soon.  Seriously--I did not have any major medical issues till I moved here, and now I can't seem to stop having them.   I am so over getting medically damaged.  Georgia can suck it.