Forgotten Patients

This morning, some random woman on the other end of the phone heard the intense desperation in my voice. Rooster's gastroenterologist is normally booked weeks, if not months in advance. Her digestive tract had been messed up for almost three weeks now, and I was at my wit's end. I managed to beg sufficiently until whoever answered the phone agreed to give us somebody else's cancelled appointment time today. I did not even need to start sobbing, which was an added bonus. Huzzah!

Anyway, by the time we arrived for our appointment, all three kidlets were already exhausted. Two had full or almost full days of school and the third had been exhausted by completing three days' worth of missed class and homework assignments. All three were hungry, but I assured them I had a snack packed for them to eat when we got back out to the car. I stressed to them the importance of never eating at a doctor's office so that we do not accidentally cause another person to go into anaphylactic shock. Besides, we had a 3:20PM appointment, and it was barely past 3:05PM. They normally do not eat an after school snack until 4:00PM.

Pig went and checked Rooster in for her appointment. This process took longer than normal because somebody had forgotten to print out the necessary forms with all of our information on it. At least it was their mistake and not ours. I like when somebody else is to blame for messing with the established routine.

The next hour passed slowly. It was punctuated by whines about the doctor not appearing, being hungry, and not wanting to do any of the things we brought to work on while we waited. And that was just from me. The kidlets were not much better. Rooster, in particular, had eaten lunch early and had not eaten her fill, mostly due to the very tummy issues that brought us to seek a doctor's advice. It was well after 4:00PM when Pig "volunteered" (read: I made him) to go find a nurse and ask if we could feed Rooster some water and a rice cake, which was the food on hand least likely to cause an allergic reaction in someone else if we were to drop crumbs anywhere.

Pig came back to the room just a moment or two later, with a highly apologetic doctor in tow. It turns out that the staff had informed her that we cancelled our appointment. She presumed it meant Rooster was feeling better and never bothered checking to see if anyone was waiting after we had checked in for our appointment. I am presuming this was the same reason our paperwork had not been printed out correctly upon our arrival.

We were the last people to leave the office. I am very grateful that Pig "volunteered" to go seek answers about Rooster being able to have her snack (the answer was "yes") or we might have been left alone in the building as everyone went home for the evening.

I now have a reason to bug doctors, nurses, receptionists, janitors, and anyone else wearing a name tag if it seems as if a doctor is taking a long time to get to us. It was creepy walking back out through a waiting room that had its lights off.