Wednesday, August 20, 2008

End of the Season

Fall has come early this year to New York, which isn't a bad thing.
August has felt more like September with cool, comfortable nights and
mildly warm days. I've said before and will repeat again: September is
the best time of year to live in or visit New York!

At the same time, many of the summertime activities that I've enjoyed
are also coming to an end. Tonight is the last foreign-film at the
hipster- and artist-filled Sculpture Park near my apartment. Luckily,
my Saturdays will continue to be occupied well into September by my
mid-day capoeira lessons, followed by preparing a protein-heavy lunch
(my responsibility on most weekends) and, as of last weekend, watching
Liverpool games!

A few weeks back, I had my final meeting at the Muscular Dystrophy
Clinic to get my bloodwork results back and find out just how
genetically mutated I am. Naturally, they decided to schedule me at
EXACTLY mid-day 12:30, since the clinic is located about an hour
subway away on the upper-upper-upper West-side in Washington Heights.
This, of course, means that I have to use a sick day for work because
it is almost a guarantee that they will be behind schedule and I'll be
lucky if it takes only three hours for travel and meeting times.

So Erika and I go uptown nice and early and arrive about five minutes
late and are flirting with the thought of eating lunch after the
appointment because the clinic is completely devoid of patients
waiting to be seen. After a 15 minute wait, we get sent to the exam
room. Another 30 minutes goes by before the resident doctors come in
to examine the curious genetic specimen that I am, tapping me with
little hammers to see my muscles cramp up and seeing if my body
functions the same way that it has the past fifty times they have
tested me. And, of course, it did. Same muscle strength, same issue
with my hands, and the new resident doctors sitting behind the more
experienced doctors ooohing and ahhing with every kick of my feet.
Yea, yea, yea, get on with it already, get the real doctor in here,
I'm thinking. I want my damn blood results!

They leave and we wait another 30 minutes for the real doctor and his
resident entourage to come back and perform the same tests AGAIN. And
then, let's talk about your blood results. Or LACK OF. I got blood
taken from me back in early May in my stairwell at my apartment before
going to work, hoping that some neighbor of mine didn't come down the
stairs thinking I was a junkie getting a little morning buzz before
going to the bus station. Despite taking about a gallon of blood,
apparently the testing company performed the WRONG TEST on my blood,
so they had no results.

Ex-squeeze me? Baking Powder? How do you make a small mistake on a
$5000 DNA blood test? Naturally, the doctor pointed the finger at the
company who did the blood test, something about them changing codes
and not telling the clinic, blah blah blah. I didn't care whose fault
it was, the doctor was in front of me and he would feel my fury! I
couldn't believe that they would have me take a whole day off work in
August when the WRONG results came in back in late June and they
didn't notice until now. He apologized (for the blood company, of
course) and said the blood company would do the right test with the
other gallon-minus-one-drop of blood they had left and they could call
me with the results. Gee, that would have been a good option in the
first place!

Five hours later, and we finally got back home. What a waste of day.
The next week, the admin called me and said "yea, the blood company
wants to go ahead and take another blood sample." Of course, I told
them what the doctor said so she was going to call me back after
talking to them. She calls back and says yep, they need more blood! I
was not amused and asked who was going to pay for it this time. "Don't
worry, we'll just bill your insurance". The hell you will, I told her!
Insurance doesn't pay for everything and I am not paying a dime for a
second test or another appointment. They agreed to take care of it (of
course I got it in writing) and now I get to wait for the mosquito to
come back to my apartment and take more blood, followed by another
month of delays and waiting. It'll be great if they come back with the
results and have determined that I was mis-diagnosed the whole time,
like on that show "Mystery Diagnosis". I don't think I'll be so lucky!

J. Riley, time to go prepare for tonight's feature presentation!

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