Respite Day 50: A Day of Fodder for the Blog!

Oh, my...where to begin! I guess at the beginning! Woody got up early, headed to work, worked, walked at lunch, worked some more, and then came home to mow and do some other yard work. I got up a bit earlier than Woody as I didn't sleep all that well, still due to my eyes. But I will report that they feel close to normal this evening.

A little after 8am, I made my first call to the medical records office at Harton Hospital to see why Vandy hadn't received Woody's stress test report. The person that I talked to today told me that someone from Vanderbilt needed to call her to get the test results. I told her I didn't understand, when I had been told Friday that they were being faxed as I talked to them in medical records. But I didn't want to rock the boat...so emailed our research nurse at Vandy and gave her the phone number to medical records. She shortly emailed me back that she got no answer at that number and wondered if either Woody or I didn't need to go pick them up and get them to her at Vandy. She also mentioned in her email that the orders Vandy sent stated that the report was to be faxed to Vandy. I wasn't ready to give up...so I called back to the medical records office (took 4 or 6 calls to get through to her...strange message about when their hours were...not that the line was busy and please hold...or to please call back later, etc.) and finally I got through to her again. I reminded her that the original orders were from Vandy and that the orders said to fax results to Vandy. With that reminder, she seemed more receptive to sending the records to Vandy. So I gave her the Vandy research nurse's fax number AGAIN. But she wanted more than the fax number, she also wanted a phone number so she could call Vandy. It took me a bit to find the number and I had to call her back with the phone number. She put me on hold till she got back to wherever she needed to be to write the number down! When we finished that conversation, I hung up under the impression that she was going to take care of sending and/or calling the information in to Vandy. So I emailed our research nurse telling her that she should be get a call and/or get a fax shortly. An hour later, our nurse emailed back that she still had nothing. I called Woody to try to figure out who to call next at Harton. He decided to call the number for the administrator. He talked to someone in the administration office who immediately put in a call to the person who did Woody's cardiac stress test. The person in cardiac testing explained that she had a little earlier discovered that the test had never been read by the cardiologist (it was still in the doctor's inbox) and she had gotten in touch with the doctor. And, that the results had just gotten to them and that the test results would be faxed to Vanderbilt within the hour and if they weren't for us to call them back. Woody relayed this information to me and I emailed the research nurse again and told her to expect them and that if they weren't to her by noon, we were to get in touch with Harton again. At 11:43, the research nurse emailed me to say that she had received them and that she had faxed them on to NIH. BUT, when they finally got faxed to her, a page was missing and she had to call to get Harton to send a complete report!!!!!

I will say that a little after noon, I got the nicest call from the person who ran Woody's stress test. She was very apologetic and said that if there were any other problems about the report to call her. She was quite upset with the doctor...the report had been in his inbox since Wednesday. Oh, well, the task got done...just not easily and none too promptly! Before it got done I had received nine emails from our Vandy research nurse and I had replied to her emails about the same number of times. I had made two phone calls (plus the 4 or 5 unanswered calls). The Vandy nurse had made one unanswered call and then the one to get the full report. And, Woody had made one call. And, I am still wondering why the medical records person told me on Friday that she was faxing the results as we talked...since there was no report to fax! But it is all behind us now!

I have since had a couple of emails from the Vandy research nurse. One of which said that she had talked to the research nurse at NIH. The NIH nurse is supposed to call us and arrange for us to be there NEXT week! So far we haven't heard from NIH. I did ask our Vandy nurse if she could tell us if he had passed the stress test. She said that it looked fine to her. And, I figure that he must have passed, if they are making plans at NIH for Woody to be there next week! Oh, my...what a day! I just "need" to know how long a stay at NIH to plan for...maybe we'll know that tomorrow???

To be continued!!!!!!!!!!