A Little Bit of Ranting....

Okay, here's the deal. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow and am due for the annual x-rays. X-rays are very bad if you're pregnant, so I bit the bullet today and called my doctor's office for a blood test. It wasn't a matter of obsession at this point; it was a matter of health. I explained to the girl on the phone why I needed the *blood test* and she seemed to totally understand. She said she would fax over the order for STAT results. I took my lunch hour two hours early to beat the lunchtime rush at the hospital lab. As I was registering, I glanced at the paperwork my doctor's office sent over...they ordered the wrong test. Just like last time when I was pregnant, they ordered the urine test (which will give only a positive/negative and is oftentimes inaccurate) instead of the blood test (which gives an actual amount of the hCG that's in the blood, which is the pregnancy hormone for those who are not familiar with TTC). I spoke up and alerted the attendant to the problem, so she called up the doctor's office. Oops, I guess someone over there doesn't read the forms because the woman in my doctor's office didn't realize there was another test in another column on the form that wasn't listed under urinalysis (which, BTW, if I said I wanted a blood test, why would they think that would be listed under urinalysis???). The office was supposed to fax over a corrected order. In the meantime, they took 3 vials of blood to make sure there was enough and sent me on my merry way so I wouldn't be delayed by waiting for the paperwork. Lord knows what was on that final order when they got it...

Anyway, four hours later when I hadn't heard anything, I called my doctor's office. The woman on the phone put me on hold, checked who knows what, and then said they didn't have anything back on me yet. I explained to her the urgency of the situation and how I really needed results today since their office is closed on Tuesdays (yup, it was a one shot deal today!). She said she would call me as soon as they got the results, took down my cell phone number, and then went to verify my name but what she said wasn't my name at all. I should have said something then; obviously they wouldn't find my labs if they looked under the wrong name. Well, 5:00 came and went without a call. Their office closes at 5:00, but they have called me before as late as 7:00 with lab results, so I hadn't lost hope at that point. I made sure I had my cell phone with me at all times, checked the voicemail from a landline phone periodically, and even checked my machine at home just in case. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Not a word from their office, and it's now 9:00. So...now I'm in a difficult position. I didn't want to delay the x-rays unless absolutely necessary for two reasons. The first being that the hygienist is a family friend and I didn't want her blabbing about something that isn't even confirmed. The second being that if I'm not pregnant now, what if I become pregnant right before my next appointment and we have to go through this all over again. (I should explain that I am being somewhat overly cautious...Supposedly, dental x-rays are safe as long as they put the lead apron on your belly. But since I already lost one child, I'm not taking any chances with the next one. Oh yeah, and I made sure not to tell my doctor's office that they were dental x-rays in case they tried to brush that off.) But I guess I will have to.

I guess it's also time to take some action with my doctor's office, as this is becoming a nasty habit of theirs. They never call back with results even though they always say they will, they're always screwing up lab orders, and some of them are just plain rude. I love my doctor, but most of her staff is fairly incompetent in most of the experiences I've had with them. I'm trying not to obsess, honest, but under the circumstances I really needed to know. The fact that they acknowledged that, yet didn't come through, really irks me. Especially since the cycle I was pregnant, they got back to me with the blood test results within 2 hours (that was, of course, after they accidentally made me go through a urine test the week before that came up as a false negative and left a message on my answering machine at 7PM on Friday so I had to worry about it all weekend....). (sigh)