Well. Usually I avoid holiday crowds, meaning I don't do the shopping during peak times, etc. However, I didn't realize that going to the cancer clinic the day before they are closed for two days was such a holiday mess too. Add that to the list of things to avoid in the future - along with cancer in general.
So our appointment was a bit of a nightmare this afternoon. Here's a tip for everyone - ALWAYS get the earliest appointment available with any sort of specialist otherwise they get behind. Usually I get the earliest appointment but given the holidays this was the only appointment they had. So after we were sitting in the waiting room for 30 minutes I went to the counter and made sure there wasn't an issue - nope, the doctor is just running approximately 50 minutes behind. Oofta. So we finally saw our doctor an hour and twenty minutes after our appointment time. Now we certainly are patient people, and understand that emergencies happen (in fact Tom has been the emergency before so we are especially forgiving) but today was especially challenging. It's tough to be in the waiting room for that long because it's depressing. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was standing room only at some points. The place is usually pretty busy but it was just jam packed today and it's heart breaking to see some of these folks come in - and for us, especially hard to be the youngest and feel like everyone is staring at us.
Anyway, once we saw our doctor (who acknowledged the wait and apologized unlike many other doctors) we did blood work and unfortunately will be having another blood transfusion on Friday. Tom's levels are pretty low and they are trying to bring his levels back up before we start our next round of treatment. So at this point we were circling the wagons at about 2ish hours and then we find out we need the blood transfusion - which we assumed would be the same as last time. Nope - we then had to go to a different part of the hospital to once again to a blood draw (third of the day) so they can match the blood appropriately. This made zero sense to me since we know his blood type but they needed to do it again for a bunch of medical reasons that certainly sounded legit - but was still irritating. So by the time everything was all said and done I was singing my Gilligan's Island version of our Three Hour (Doctor) Tour on the way out the door. Long day - especially for Tom who had to suffer through my made up lyrics.
The transfusion is less scary this time since we know what to expect, but certainly not what we were hoping to deal with on Friday. However, anything that can help him go into chemo strong will be for the best. The good news is we got all the orders we needed for all his post-chemo testing that is needed before surgery. So while we were doing all this hustle and bustle of waiting for the additional blood work I was multi-tasking and making a bunch of the appointments. It was a bit of a puzzle to coordinate when the different doctors were available based on our time crunch - in fact I called one office a few times to shift things around to accommodate other schedules - but I think we've got most of it figured out for his post-chemo appointments. Phew!
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I've been attempting to write a Thanksgiving post. We will see if I can pull together the emotions to get up a post tomorrow - to say we are thankful this year is an understatement. More to come…
So our appointment was a bit of a nightmare this afternoon. Here's a tip for everyone - ALWAYS get the earliest appointment available with any sort of specialist otherwise they get behind. Usually I get the earliest appointment but given the holidays this was the only appointment they had. So after we were sitting in the waiting room for 30 minutes I went to the counter and made sure there wasn't an issue - nope, the doctor is just running approximately 50 minutes behind. Oofta. So we finally saw our doctor an hour and twenty minutes after our appointment time. Now we certainly are patient people, and understand that emergencies happen (in fact Tom has been the emergency before so we are especially forgiving) but today was especially challenging. It's tough to be in the waiting room for that long because it's depressing. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was standing room only at some points. The place is usually pretty busy but it was just jam packed today and it's heart breaking to see some of these folks come in - and for us, especially hard to be the youngest and feel like everyone is staring at us.
Anyway, once we saw our doctor (who acknowledged the wait and apologized unlike many other doctors) we did blood work and unfortunately will be having another blood transfusion on Friday. Tom's levels are pretty low and they are trying to bring his levels back up before we start our next round of treatment. So at this point we were circling the wagons at about 2ish hours and then we find out we need the blood transfusion - which we assumed would be the same as last time. Nope - we then had to go to a different part of the hospital to once again to a blood draw (third of the day) so they can match the blood appropriately. This made zero sense to me since we know his blood type but they needed to do it again for a bunch of medical reasons that certainly sounded legit - but was still irritating. So by the time everything was all said and done I was singing my Gilligan's Island version of our Three Hour (Doctor) Tour on the way out the door. Long day - especially for Tom who had to suffer through my made up lyrics.
The transfusion is less scary this time since we know what to expect, but certainly not what we were hoping to deal with on Friday. However, anything that can help him go into chemo strong will be for the best. The good news is we got all the orders we needed for all his post-chemo testing that is needed before surgery. So while we were doing all this hustle and bustle of waiting for the additional blood work I was multi-tasking and making a bunch of the appointments. It was a bit of a puzzle to coordinate when the different doctors were available based on our time crunch - in fact I called one office a few times to shift things around to accommodate other schedules - but I think we've got most of it figured out for his post-chemo appointments. Phew!
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I've been attempting to write a Thanksgiving post. We will see if I can pull together the emotions to get up a post tomorrow - to say we are thankful this year is an understatement. More to come…