DayMinder found

Sure enough, I looked up today's date and confirmed that there is no indication of a doctor's appointment for this morning. 9 am came and went and I was still at work because I couldn't very well impose upon my night guard at the last minute and ask him to stay awake three more hours. This was the appointment I got a "courtesy call" about late yesterday afternoon from ditzy Helene.

Sure if I want to take responsibility for myself 100 percent I could say that I could have kept better care of the business card the next appointment was written on or I could have immdiately reached into my bag and coppied the information into the DayMinder and then made a point of opening it and using it more frequently. But whatever I do I know this about myself: any appointment with a doctor or a dentist will sneak up on me and I won't be ready for it unless I get that week's notice.

I wonder how Helene decided on ONE days' notice. I know last time I complained that leaving a voice-mail on the Friday afternoon before a Monday morning wouldn't help me much in guaranteeing that someone can fill the morning part of my shift. I can tell myself that the week's notice is also a better way to lower blood sugar and weight just before getting weighed and having my fluids taken. But realistically I know I don't take much advantage of that aspect. What I need is the time and some kind of system that respects Murphy's Law, especially the municipal me-centered bi-law regarding choice of "courtesy" reminder time.

I don't know who it is who decided that everybody likes to get their one reminder the day before as opposed to a week before an appointment. If a poll was being taken I would choose 1 week;s notice. In fact, upon starting as someone's patient, I think we should get that choice in writing, right around the place where it asks if you have any additional medical considerations. I would say that I am an idiot savant prone to misplacing and not recording doctor's appointments or forgetting about them when they roll around three months later and that I require a week's reminder notice instead of one day.

In fact, as I said on the phone win my final conversation with Helene, the 24 hours notice required of me to cancel an appointment can't logically be met under the circumstances. And the interesting thing is that she works for a specialist in Diabetes wherein many of the patients might have such quirks and memory problems and might be on a lot of the same medications and under the same spaced-out stress that I am.

Considering the ballpark in which she works (I didn't actually say this to her) she is is a very special league of mediocrity - dangerous mediocrity and indifference to serving the interest of patients. I might even want to write that as a letter to the doctor but it might go through the gatekeeper in his outer office and go missing if my name is on it.