Monday arrived and so did the laundry list of Must-Dos and Need-To-Dos. The first thing on the agenda was to call and get follow up appointments with everybody that was needed according to the discharge paperwork the social worker at the hospital gave us.
Tommy, aka The Warden, by this point in the journey was not allowing me to do diddlysquat. Sit at the kitchen table and work on my exercises. My mind really wanted to get back into my work room and start creating some stuff that had come to me while I was resting (laying quietly in the hospital). But NO! No work for me. Not happening. The Warden gave me a new job description. Rest and work on getting better. "That job sucks", I told him. "I am no good at it. Fire me now." Seems as if I was stuck with it. In reality, I couldn't have done the work that I wanted anyway now looking back, but dadgummit, I thought I could.
While I was busy working on my exercises, I can squeeze that Play Doh with the best of them now, Tommy started making the calls to the doctors for the appointments. The discharge paperwork said to see the neurologist within a month. Have you ever tried to make an appointment with a neurologist? It's like trying to find Big Foot in the desert. He called the number on the paper and got the doctor's receptionist and told her that Wheelie had seen us in the hospital last week and wanted to see us for a follow-up within a month. (Keep in mind, this is early part of May.) She tells him that we can come in on June 30th. He was like, "uh, that's longer than a month. Don't you keep a block of appointments open for folks that he's seen in the hospital and ER?" I guess the answer was no, because we are going on June 30th. However, and here's the tip of the day, it seems if you request to be put on the "first available" (must say those words) they will call you when they have a cancellation or something. I found this out by calling back a week and a half later to see if they had anything sooner come open and the lady said, "did you ask to be put on the First Available list?" I told her I was sure that we didn't know that the list existed. She said, "Well if you ask for that list, then we immediately call when there are openings. Wish you would have called a couple days ago, we had one open yesterday." Are you kidding me? So we are holding strong on the June 30th meeting with Wheelie.
The next call was to the cardiologist for the follow up. Again, the notes were within a month. We got in within that time frame. The rest of the calls weren't as easy. The calls to set up physical therapy were like watching the Keystone Cops! Tommy called the Rehab facility and was told that he would need a prescription from the doctor. He called Dr F's office (since she was the one that saw us in the hospital) and was told that we would need to get that paperwork from our family physician. The family physician was under the assumption that they would have given it to us at the hospital. It was a nightmare. Back and forth and back and forth. Nobody seemed to know what the stink was going on and who was doing what. All we knew was that we were supposed to go to physical and speech therapy at the Edmond location and nobody seemed to understand this. It took 2 weeks for everybody to get things straightened out. Yep, I played with Play Doh and stress balls at my house for 2 weeks before we actually got the chance to even set foot into the Rehab facility. By that time, Shadow and I were walking with Charlie (the walker) around the house pretty well.
As frustrating as the waiting was, it seemed that this whole experience was a bunch of waiting, I kept having this verse in my head. I don't know if somebody had said it to me in the hospital or if I heard it on a late night program as I was cruising the channels on the non-HD tv in ICU one night when I couldn't sleep or what, but I'm choosing to believe that the ladybug brought it to me.
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! Psalm 27:14. I just knew that things were going to be ok. Not when I wanted them to be, obviously, but in due time. In God's time, they would be. I just had to wait. Now if only my customers would understand this.
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