During last year’s visit to my cardiologist we scheduled an echocardiogram for a couple weeks before my next followup appointment this May. That way he’d have the results of the echo (health workers almost always shorten it to “echo”) to discuss with me. We’ve been on this every other year an echo for several years now.

A few months later I received a call from someone in his office that they would have to reschedule my appointment because he’d be at a conference or something on the originally scheduled date. Would May 7th be OK?

That would be fine, I said, but the was the day after the scheduled echo. Would he have received the results of the procedure within 24 hours? After checking, the person got back to me and said yes, that should be ok, so we scheduled the appointment for the day after the echo.

As the day of the visit approached, so did my appointment with my primary provider, who I knew would send me for blood work. About a month before the anticipated blood test, I sent my cardiologist an email and told him about my my upcoming blood test and suggested that if he sent me the paperwork, the results of the blood tests could be sent to him as well. We’ve done this in the past and it saves him the trouble of having to look at the blood test results on my iPhone and make a copy of them. I simply hand both sets of paperwork to the lab technician when I go for the test and she routes the results of the tests to both my primary doctor and my cardiologist.

However, a week before the visit to my primary, I had not heard back from my cardiologist, so I called his office and explained what I wanted. Eventually I made my intentions clear, and the day before the the visit I received the paperwork.

I reported the excellent results of those tests last week.

Anyway, the echo was scheduled for 8:00 AM Tuesday morning. I’m not sure why I scheduled it so early, as I remain on Standard time so for me that’s really 7:00 AM. Of course, I get up well before then, but it meant I had to rearrange my morning routine.

But when I got up on Tuesday morning there were four, count ’em, four messages waiting for me. Two email messages, an email telling me I had an email on the Penn web site, and a text message. They all said the same thing:

This is Penn Medicine about your Echo Appointment scheduled at Penn Medicine Washington Square on 05/06/2025.

We are writing to inform you that due to unexpected staffing issues, we must cancel all echocardiogram appointments scheduled for Monday, May 6, 2025, at Penn Medicine Washington Square. We understand how important your care is, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

So when I go to see Dr. Miles, my cardiologist, this morning, he’ll have the results of my blood tests but not the echo. Oh well, the blood test results should be good enough to keep him happy.

(Not that Kent Wayne’s Echo has anything to do with my echocardiogram, but it is called Echo and it’s a good science fiction series.)

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