By Arthur Vidro
By Arthur Vidro
Right after Election Day my right side started hurting badly. I eventually phoned for an appointment with a surgeon at Valley Regional Hospital who had operated on my other side in 2016 and warned me at the time that this might happen.
I took the earliest available appointment, Dec. 3. That day, the doctor saw me, confirmed my fear, and we agreed on surgery as the smartest course.
Usually this sort of surgery is scheduled a month or more in advance. But I was lucky. There was an opening just four days away.
“Sign me up,” I said.
Any wait would have been lengthy. The schedules of the hospital and of the surgeon precluded any other date in December.
As for waiting until January, my health insurance starts new each year. That’s a pitfall of the Affordable Care Act, on which I rely. I didn’t know then which doctors would be covered under my 2021 policy. Going with a doctor I knew was approved for 2020 made more sense.
Plus, the surgeon was nice enough to advise me of his personal plans. He might leave the area in late January or February. Which meant I might have to wait until the hospital chose a replacement, then do my due diligence to verify the replacement’s status in my health policy that doesn’t begin until Jan. 1.
While I was there, the surgeon’s staff phoned the operating room department to snag that opening. They told me I was scheduled for surgery at 7:30 on the morning of Dec. 7, and to arrive an hour earlier.
They also cautioned me that, with the pandemic and all, I first would have to pass a COVID-19 test, available at the hospital’s Urgent Care center by appointment only. The staff typed into their computer system and said the first available COVID test was Dec. 5 at 3:50 p.m. I agreed to the appointment.
If I didn’t pass the test, I was told, the hospital would not operate.
I’m not sure if that is a government rule or the hospital’s own rule, but it clearly was a rule they intended to follow.
“What happens,” I asked the surgeon’s staff, “if the results aren’t in before the operation is supposed to begin?”
My concern was dismissed with a confident proclamation that the test results should be ready by then.
Further questions led to their telling me that although the day after the COVID test was a Sunday (a day the hospital’s surgery is closed), they would access on Monday morning the results of Saturday’s test. Plus, I was told, I should receive a phone call from the testing lab on Sunday with the results. (That phone call never came.)
They wrote the day and time of the COVID appointment on a sheet of paper containing my pre-operation instructions, and I went home.
Two days later, I went for the COVID test at a side entrance to the Urgent Care center. A woman in a small room with its own door to the parking lot waved me over.
Announcing my name, I said I was there for my COVID test.
She looked at her computer. And looked some more.
“Can you spell your name?” she asked.
I knew where this was leading, but I politely complied.
“I’m sorry, sir, but my computer doesn’t show your appointment.”
“Maybe I misread the handwriting and the appointment is for another time?”
“Sorry, sir. No appointment for you at any time today.”
“Does anyone else have an appointment for now?”
“No.”
“That’s because this slot was given to me.”
“Not according to my computer. Your doctor will have to make another appointment for you.”
She expected me to leave, and some folks might have done so, but I stayed.
“There isn’t time to reschedule the COVID test,” I said. “It’s needed now for my scheduled surgery. Maybe the surgery is on your computer?”
“We don’t get that information. And we’re not allowed to give COVID tests to anyone who just walks up without a doctor’s…”
By then I wasn’t listening. I saw the carefully laid plans unraveling. No test, no surgery. No surgery, no quick fix to the problem. No fix to the problem, more pain until who knows when?
It’s all a bit blurry now, but I decided to speak up for myself. I usually dislike calling attention to myself. But when pushed into a corner – especially when pushed by a computer – I have the ability to speak up.
I did my best to explain that in about 40 hours – and before the doctor’s office would reopen – I would be receiving surgery, but only if I passed the COVID test, which I couldn’t pass unless it was administered. And without that surgical time slot, it wouldn’t happen at all until, most likely, February or later.
I felt like a prisoner pleading his case to a judge. I even offered to show her the handwritten note – which I had left in the car – for my COVID appointment.
She dismissed the importance of the note; it wasn’t evidence of an appointment. But she asked, “What’s the operation for?”
I told her.
She either showed great wisdom in trusting me or took pity on this pathetic old guy pleading with her for a COVID test right away, not because he had any symptoms, but because he desired a pain-relieving surgical operation.
Her Urgent Care computer didn’t always receive up-to-date information from other hospital departments, she admitted. Then, saying she wasn’t supposed to do this, she relented.
She stuck something up my left nostril and said the results would take 24 to 72 hours.
“But in less than 48 hours I’m scheduled for –”
“The results will take 24 to 72 hours. Nothing I can do about that.”
I thanked her for having administered the test and went home.
I’d like to give her a medal. But I’m afraid to name her. In this crazy world of ours, anyone who uses personal judgment rather than protocol to make a decision, and who doesn’t blindly follow a computer’s instructions, well, that person is likely to lose their job.
Two mornings later, in the pre-op room at the hospital, with an IV already in me, the results came in. I had passed the COVID test. The surgery proceeded.
So, my thanks to the talented surgeon, his capable staff, the entire operating team, Valley Regional, and especially she who administered the COVID test.
But if I’d known then what I know now, I would have insisted on the surgeon’s office giving me a written form to hand-deliver to Urgent Care to set up the COVID test, and upon delivering the form myself I would have insisted on receiving in writing something from Urgent Care to confirm the appointment.
Relying on a computer is too dangerous.
It’s nice that some bewildered consumers – whether a patient at a hospital or a shopper in a store – can speak up for themselves and plead their case.
How much nicer it would be if they didn’t have to.
Arthur Vidro’s latest short story, “Which Casino?” appears in the November 2020 issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.
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