I'm not sure we've made the best first impression with each other.
Let me explain.
I turned up at 2 o'clock, 30 minutes before my scheduled appointment time, as requested in the letter I received. I checked in and all was breezy.
I sat and read my book for an hour, and then my name was called.
The nurses weighed me, took copies of my latest blood tests, and then sent me off with a sample pot to wee in. I'd drunk so much coffee by this time that this request was easy.
I then sat back in the waiting area for another 40 mins or so, and was called again. This time they wanted to send me for an ECG...routine for new patients apparently. And so I headed off to hunt for the elusive ECG room...I hunted high and low, I followed various sets of directions from all manner of hospital staff that I came across in my travels around the maze of corridors, and after getting increasingly frustrated and irrationally angry about the whole process, I finally found it...hidden near what appeared to be some laundry rooms...of course!
ECG results back in hand, I headed back to the outpatients department, and gave them into the nurse's station.
And than I sat back down and waited....and waited....and waited.
Around 5.30pm I realised that I was the only person left in the waiting room, and that the cleaning staff were starting to converge...emptying bins and sweeping the floor. The nurses were in their room, sitting around with coffee, presumably winding down after their shift. The receptionist looked as if she was doing her final tidy-up before heading home, and she looked at me puzzled, as if she'd only just noticed I was still sitting there.
I was tired, I was grumpy, I was snappy and I was starting to get upset. Then the consultant endocrinologist himself walked into the waiting area, with his brief case, looking for all the world as if he was clocked-out and heading home. He asked me why I was still sitting there...I looked him in the eye and replied that I was waiting for my 2.30pm appointment. He looked confused, asked me my name, conferred with the receptionist, called up one of the nurses, and then, with a sigh, he turned and invited me back into his consultation room.
I must confess, I was incredibly pissed off at this point, and I went to war on him....I told him I had better things to do than sit in his waiting room for 3+ hours, and told him inconsiderate it was to keep his patients waiting so long, how we do have lives, and why bother giving out specific appointment times if they weren't going to even bother trying to stick to them.
He then started back at me, saying that occasionally appointments take longer than expected, and would I want to have a strict, timed appointment, or would I prefer to have as much time with the doctor as my particular case required, and hence why appointments can start to run late.
I explained that I understood all that, and that yes, I would be very angry if my consultant was clock-watching throughout my appointment...but seriously, going in to his consultation room at 5.45pm, when my allotted appointment time was 2.30pm was more than a little excessive!
I suggested, that instead of giving out set times, why not just work on a first come-first served basis...we spent a good 5 minutes or so shouting at each other - we were going around in circles, and he stormed out a side door, where I overheard him giving the nurses a very hard time over it all....like it was their fault, apparently...
He came back in, looking more than a little sheepish - I guess one of the nurses threw some of that flack right back at him - and suggested we start again, and try to get back on the right foot with each other.
He spent a good while going over all my recent blood tests, mumbling into his Dictaphone, and then finally addressing me with the news that I was had a classic case of
Grave's Disease....a momentous occasion for us all I might add!
We talked over what that meant, what my medication should do to help, he briefly mentioned Radio-Active Iodine treatment (RAI) and also thyroid surgery, but also added in quickly that it was very possible it wouldn't come down to that, and that hopefully the medication would be sufficient to cause my thyroid to comply and go into a state of remission.
He also expressed concern over my high blood pressure, and suggested I have a 24hr blood pressure monitor done. He said he would write to my GP about this. He also wrote me a prescription for Centyl-K to help with my blood pressure - but I don't think I'll be filling it - I'm too young to be on medication for hypertension FFS!
He made an appointment for me to return in February '09. My appointment time was given as 2.15pm this time, so I joked that I should probably turn up around 5.30pm then...he had the good grace to laugh, and said "No, we won't make that mistake with you again".
