Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!!
I hate filling out paperwork!!! There
are two reasons I hate filling out paperwork, number one I have no patience at
all and I mean none, and number two I have the worst handwriting, I bet that
has to do with my lack of patience. It’s
so bad that it’s kind of embarrassing, I often wonder what the receptionist
thinks when she has to transpose the mess I just handed her. There are times I make notes for a work
project and when I go back to review them I can’t figure out what I wrote. Ugh!
Well anyway, due to the move and finding new doctors I have been filling
out a lot of paperwork lately. There was
no real reason for the paperwork rant I just felt like getting that out…let’s
move on shall we.
The decision to move to another
state was a bit scary yet exhilarating at the same time. However, the prospect of leaving behind my
established medical care team was downright terrifying. I think the reason it was terrifying for me
is that I don’t like change; even a small change to my plans or schedule makes
me crazy. I guess one of the great things about the move was that it forced me
to deal with my aversion to change. So I
put on my big-boy pants pulled the belt tight and charged ahead. The other big change was insurance, just
thinking about health insurance gives me a headache, maybe my opening rant
should have been about dealing with a new insurance company. Anyway in order to
make the insurance company happy I had to find an in network General
Practitioner (GP) and get an appointment and a referral before I could go see
the neurologist. I know getting a GP and
a referral doesn’t sound like much of a big deal but every delay meant it was
one more day with increasing pain.
Thankfully my wife was able to
get me some recommendations for the best neurologists in our area from her
South Carolina coworkers prior to the move, so that helped ease that change for
me. As far as a GP went I was on my own,
but that wasn’t really a concern for me since the GP had to deal with
everything except my brain. However, I
did have some criteria for picking a new doctor and the most important one was
that he had to be close to my age. I
figured that as long as he wasn’t too much older than me then I wouldn’t have
to worry about him retiring on me in a few years and then I’d have to go
through the whole ‘find another doctor’ thing again. I began my search by checking out the
practice closest to my house, they had some young doctors which was good but weren’t
accepting new patients which was bad. So
after a bit more research I found a practice somewhat close to my house that
was accepting new patients, checked out their website and picked the youngest
doctor on staff. This highly scientific
approach to finding a GP yielded a great doctor and…drum roll please…he is
familiar with Chiari Malformation, holy crap I never thought I’d get to say
that about a doctor. When I got to my
first appointment with him I was in full warrior mode and all set to have to
explain Chiari to him, have him look at me like I just told him about a
disorder that I made up, and have him continually mispronounce it which for
some reason annoys me. But no!!! He
enters the exam room goes through the usual pleasantries, runs over my vitals
and past medical history. Then he says
“So you have Chiari Malformation” – he pronounced it correctly, let me just say
that again, he pronounced it correctly – he then starts asking me about actual
Chiari symptoms I had leading up to the surgery, who did my surgery, did they
have to remove any part of the cerebellar tonsils, what my post-surgical symptoms
have been and what symptoms I got relief from.
He must have noticed the confused “what the hell is going on here” look
on my face because he stopped mid-sentence and told me he has another patient
with Chiari. I was so happy that I found
a doctor that knew about Chiari that I didn’t get angry or give him a nasty
look when he reminded me that due to my age I will have to have a colonoscopy
next year.
I’ll leave you with that
thought. The next installment will be
all about my neurologist.
