HIGH MAINTENANCE PATIENT

 

I have a surgery scheduled for November 29th. They will be removing my left kidney. Its probably going to hurt like hell.
In September, when I had a minor complication from a hernia surgery it was discovered I had a mass on my left kidney. This is not good news, nor was it a surprise. Kidney cancer seems to run in the family. It killed my brother Don and his son Dave, both at an early age.
But it appears I am quite fortunate. Don and Dave both had masses that were smaller than mine. But they were situated and had grown in a way that surgery was not possible. They had to endure rounds of chemo and radiation in order to try to shrink the masses. The treatments were not successful. That doesn’t seem to be the case with mine. The good news was that if the mass was cancerous they could just remove it and the kidney. The bad news was that even if it was not cancerous I was still going to lose the kidney. I feel pretty lucky.

I did change kidney doctors. The first doctor scheduled my MRI and I went in for the consult. That’s when he said they could probably just remove the kidney. He scheduled a biopsy. When I got home I thought of another question I wanted to ask. I’m like Columbo, you know, always one more question. So I called. I got a recording that said:
“Please leave your name and number and we will try to get back to you in the next 48 hours. Please understand that we are a HIGH VOLUME OFFICE, and if you call back a second time it messes up our system”.
Well, how about that? I need for them to know that I am a HIGH MAINTENANCE PATIENT, and if they are so busy they cant get back to me for 48 hours maybe they need to get some more help up in there.
High volume office my ass.

So I went to the biopsy thinking I didn’t much like this doctor so much, especially since it had been a whole week and no callback. The nurse putting in my IV asked me who my kidney doctor was. When I told her she audibly gasped. She stopped with the IV and froze like a stone. Her eyes got big as saucers. She looked horrified!
“What? What? What?” I asked “What is that look?”
She gathered herself. “How did you end up with him?” she asked.
She brought me the name of a doctor she recommended, and I told her I had already determined I’d be changing doctors because of them being a high volume office and all.
So the next day I had my final appointment with the hernia doctor.
I told him about the phone call, and the office too busy to return calls.
“That’s no good “ he says, scrawls a name on a pad and hands it to me. “Give this guy a call. If they cant get you in this week, give me a call and I’ll grease the skids for you.”
It was the same name as the nurse had given me. A good sign. A very good sign. I'm not one to attribute much to being a sign from God, or stuff like that, but you could say this was my burning bush.

All things considered, I’m feeling pretty good about all this so far. Were it not for a minor complication from a hernia surgery I'd be walking around not knowing what was up with my kidneys.
I like my new doctor very much, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.