My appointment with my cardiologist was in the Farm Journal Building, as usual. There’s probably a history to that building and a reason for that name, and one of these days I’ll look it up.
I remembered why I made the appointment for 8:00 AM, which is 7:00 AM my time as I’m still on Standard time. My cardiologist always runs late and I hate to wait. So, my theory went, if I made an early appointment, especially the first one of the day, he shouldn’t be delayed by spending time with previous patients, right?
I arrived 20 minutes early and within a few minutes was ushered into the examining room where a nurse took my vital signs and asked the usual preliminary questions. By the time she was finished, it was a couple minutes before the hour, and she said the doctor would be there shortly.
I always allow at least ten minutes for any kind of delay, even the first appointment of the day, so I didn’t get antsy until ten minutes after the hour.
That’s when I began to pace back and forth.
At twenty minutes past the hour I began to curse. What was the frigging point of making the first darn appointment of the day if he’s still gonna be late? Great Caesar’s ghost! He can’t use the excuse that he’s spending more time with the previous patient. What in tarnation is he doing? Playing tiddlywinks? (For the record, that’s not exactly how I was cursing.)
At thirty minutes past the hour I stuck my head out the door to try to flag down someone. Eventually, an employee walked by and I asked her where Dr. Miles was, as I had been waiting over half an hour. She said she would try to find out.
I went back inside and paced and cursed some more. At 39 minutes past the hour I finally had had it, and I said to myself:
“I’m waiting one more minute and if he doesn’t show up, I’m outta here.”
One minute later, at precisely 40 minutes past the hour, Dr. Miles tapped on the door and entered.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Well, I’m annoyed that I’ve had to wait so long,” I began in my grouchiest voice.
“I’m so sorry. I was called to the hospital. Those things happen and I can’t foresee them.”
“Oh.” All the air had been knocked out of my high dudgeon.
“So did you have the echo yesterday?”
“No, it was cancelled at the last minute. I got emails yesterday morning that all the echos were cancelled due to staffing problems.”
He looked surprised. “Hmm. Probably someone called in sick. And we did just lose a couple technicians.”
I had been thinking. “You know, your explanation of why you were late is perfectly understandable, but why couldn’t someone have just popped into this room to let me know? I was sitting here, well, pacing here, fuming, not knowing what was keeping you. All someone had to do, a nurse, anyone, was take 30 seconds and let me know you had been called to the hospital. It would have made a big difference.”
“You’re right. I guess we don’t communicate very well around here. I’ll talk to someone and see if we can’t work something out.”
And from there the visit went quite well. He was happy with the results of my blood test. And I talked him into not re-scheduling the echo until next year. Also he gave me the paperwork for blood tests that I can use the next time I go.
As I was leaving the Farm Journal Building, I had the paperwork in one hand and somehow I managed to jiggle my eyeglasses with the other hand and the frame rail on the right side broke clean off.
To be continued