Tag Archives: EMR

I THINK YOU’RE SORELY MISTAKEN, BIATCH

I walked into my ENT doctor to check on the status of my upcoming lobotomy.  Well, that’s what it seemed like.

Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor, people.  ENT, keep up with me. I walked in and said:

ME:  Hi, I’m Sarah Berardi here for my 1:30.

GIRL:  Hmmmm, your name again?

ME:  Sarah Berardi

GIRL:  Your date of birth?

ME:  ##/##/##

GIRL:  You’re not on the schedule for today, but you have an appointment for August 7.

ME:  Oh no!  That’s weird.  I got a confirmation call last Friday.  Could you check again?  And as I’m looking at my calendar, I have a hair appointment on August 7, so I can’t even be here August 7, hair comes first, you know.

GIRL:  (looking at computer).  Oh, I see.  YOU called us this morning and cancelled and rescheduled for August 7.

ME: With all due respect, why would I be standing here now if I cancelled this morning?

GIRL:  Well, it says here I took your call, and YOU called this morning and cancelled your appointment.

ME:  Again, with all due respect, I don’t care for your accusatory tone which has implications carried with it.  The implications being that I may have been drunk, high, or even simpler, I’m really kookadoodledoo and picked up my phone, called you, rescheduled my appointment, then forgot about the whole damned thing.

I plopped down my co-pay and said, “I’ll need a receipt for that, and I’ll just have my seat in the waiting area.”

As I turned around to go have my seat, everyone in the waiting area quickly averted their eyes from the check-in desk fiasco the check-in girl was creating (I wasn’t)  back to their reading material.

What in the world?  Could she not just have admitted she made a clerical error?  We all know I’m a ding-batted knucklehead sometimes, but it WAS NOT this time.  I can usually ‘fess up to it when I’m a d-b-k.

P.S. When I asked the ENT doctor how soon my nasal polyps (he removed four) in my sinuses could grow back (I had them out in December), he said, “Twelve hours”.  You know mine started in eight.

RUT ROH

My internist put me on EMR (Electronic Medical Records) email.  Rut roh….I’m feelin’ a little sorry for him.  For someone who’s so anxiety ridden, like me, he’ll have his hands full.  But he’s so sweet (he’s acknowledged my anxiety from the get-go), he actually works with it.  Yes, he works WITH it.  He reads it in me without me having to voice it (like my girlfriends read it), after 16 years of knowing me.  He knows if I come in or call, I’m a little frantic.  Is that an oxymoron – “little – frantic”?

Which in itself is a lesson for some doctors, right?  If you dismiss an anxious, somewhat goofball, woman, you will pay for it in the long-run.  Just bite the bullet, have some cojones, and deal with the girl.

What would the poor soul do if I started emailing him every morning like I do to my girlfriends and Scienegirl to tell him how I feel when I woke up?  Do you think I’d be cut off? Hmpf.

On the flip side, you can now feel safe driving around Western New York, got a new script in my glasses.  I can ably see.