So, I was scheduled to get an IUD on Wednesday. But Carle called to cancel my appointment yesterday due to my ob/gyn having an emergency surgery. What surgery is emergent if there's a 48-hour advance notice?
Normally, I'm a pretty calm and patient human being. But when I was pregnant with X, I only saw the ob/gyn twice. I saw her at the 9-week appointment to hear the heart beat and to actually officially meet her, and then I saw her at week 15 to go over the genetic testing that we decided to decline. After that, she was always in some kind of surgery and never made it to my appointments. Instead, her nurse practitioner always stepped in. That's 25 weeks of care where I don't remember seeing her at all. Since I got diagnosed with the fibroid last January, and it took 60 days for someone in gyn to see me to confirm the diagnosis and go over my options and then another 30 days to get an appointment to get the IUD in the first place, waiting another month seemed -- obnoxious. And I had no faith or guarantee that the next appointment wouldn't shove me to the side, too. But I guess a doctor makes a lot more money doing surgery than she does inserting an IUD.
So, I told the woman who called to cancel my appointment that it wasn't going to fly. That I'd be happy to see anyone else at that time period that had an opening and could do the IUD. She said she'd have to leave a message for the doctor's nurse. As soon as I hung up with her I called Planned Parenthood. You know, the fetus killers? The ones that the Republican House Members cut funding for because they provide abortion services, never mind the thousands of other non-abortion services they provide at low cost every day. Yeah, them. If you didn't know, becoming a parent made me fly my pro-choice flag bigger, brighter and higher than I flew it before. I love Planned Parenthood. I love them because I know that they are a million things more than just an abortion provider.
They'll talk to you about your options and the risks of your choices, but they never, ever give you the runaround about anything, and they certainly never push you off of getting care for a four-month period. This is why we need more open minded family planning services and not less! So, I made an appointment with them for next week. That's right, a one-week waiting period rather than another 30 days, on top of the 90 days I already had to wait just to get an IUD to help control my internal bleeding so that I can store iron again and stop sapping my bone marrow of things like platelets. My care doesn't even have anything to do with family planning -- and I go to Planned Parenthood.
Meanwhile, a Carle nurse called back this morning while I was at work. I called her when I got home, but she was at lunch. I have yet to hear from her again.
I get such excellent patient care from my GP, from my son's pediatrician and from Weight Management. Why has my experience at Ob/Gyn always been so -- negligent? I mean, I like everyone I've met there on a personal level. They're just -- way, way, way too busy.
6 comments:
I've always found OBs to be pretty negligent. I remember having to see mine once when I had endometriosis and sitting for 2. in the waiting room before I even got back to the exam room. She talked to me for about 2 seconds, then sent me to ultra sound, who did it and sent me back to the waiting room for another 2 hours!!! What should have been a 30-45 minute appointment, took nearly 5 hours AND THEN, I still had to wait to have the freaking surgery!!! As a side note, I was at the hospital, had the surgery, recovered and went home in less time than I spent at her office!
Glad PP could get you in and gets things moving along for you :)
So disappointed for you that your OB/GYN experience at Carle has sucked so badly! Christie Clinic gets an A+ from me--I saw my doctor at the majority of my appointments and he did a really great job with the difficult delivery of James.
Now I'm seeing an OB/GYN in Carbondale who has a teacher's heart, is very thorough in dealing with my special lady issues and is very open to all kinds of birthing situations (when I mentioned I'd like a water birth his face lit up like I'd given him a Christmas present!). His staff got me in super quickly when I had kidney stones a few weeks ago too.
So, basically, you should move down here. :-) Easy enough, right?
When I had the miscarriage, it took about 48 hours to schedule the DNC. I am sure I took up someone's appointment. But when I lost the baby, I knew I wanted the process done as quickly as possible.
Yes, and I still think it's insane that you had to wait 48 hours for the DNC. But I also don't think a system should be set up where one person's health gets compromised for another in a specialty practice. It means there aren't enough qualified people to take care of the number of patients. Particularly when patients wait months to get something done.
Obviosuly there is a limit to what they can do, but another reason I liked the midwives. The one that's on call for deliveries doesn't see patients so there isn't the chance that they'll get called to a birth during an appt. The few times I had to see the dr. for my gestational diabetes (I rotated appts. w/ midwives) we were almost always left waiting because she was at a birth...
Yeah for PP! :) My mom worked at the one in decatur as a counselor when I was a teenager and that is where we all went for our regular female care they had great NP's!
Decatur was the last PP I'd been to. They were particularly good to me. I remember going into the room for my first exam all nervous and this nurse was filling out some kind of bubble sheet. As she was filling things in with my info I said, "It's kind of like taking your SATs, huh?"
She stopped, looked up at me and said, "You have no idea how nice it is to see a patient whose old enough to have taken their SATs."
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