How Cancer Patients Spend (Waste) Their Time: 2

After yesterday morning's little adventure (See, The (High) Cost of Cancer Treatment: 2) during which I wasted two hours on the phone, much of it on hold, making a total of 15 phone calls to get an answer to a simple question about one of my cancer center bills, I probably should have spent the morning in bed.

But I'm scheduled for a PET scan at Swedish (my new cancer center) on Thursday, and I needed to pick up copies of my two most recent PETs from my "old" cancer center to take with me.

The three people I talked to on the phone, to establish what I needed and where to get it, all suggested hand-carrying the CD from Cancer Center A (the University of Washington Medical Center, DBA SCCA) to Cancer Center B (Swedish Cancer Institute). If I asked to have the records sent, they said, there was a better than even chance they would go astray.

After my experiences on the phone, this made sense. And I try not to ignore good advice. So I called Frank at the UWMC and asked to have the CDs made so that I could pick them up. "We don't make them until you come in," he said, "and it takes quite awhile since the files are so big."

Okaaay.

So off I went this morning to the basement of the UWMC, requested the records, and sat in the waiting room for more than a hour while they were made. The technician who was handling this for me was very nice, and even came out to give me an update after about 45 minutes.

Once he turned over the CDs, after another 30 minutes' wait, I asked why they made patients come in and wait for them, rather than burning them in advance. "A lot of patients don't come in and get them," was his reply.

OKaaay. And the problem with that would be?

However, I've been doing this for a long time, and it clearly was not the technician's fault that this policy had been established, so I just thanked him and left, paying $6 for parking on my way out. (If I could have just swung by and picked them up, I could have parked for free.)

And we cancer patients have nothing better to do with our time, right? Like smell the tulips, walk our dogs, clean our houses, hang out with our kids, volunteer, and all the other things I have on my agenda for the day.

Maybe I should bill UWMC $75 (my hourly rate for editing services) for my time?

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.