Today I am thankful for the kindness of a total stranger! I needed to make an appointment with a medical specialist. Every place I called had new patient appointments months out. I spoke to one of the women who was scheduling the appointment for April, and that was the earliest time I could get. I started telling her about the situation and asked if we could be put on a waiting list and I would come any time, even last minute. She told me that she would send a personal note to the doctor and request a sooner appointment.
Today Wilma, we are now on a first name basis, called me back and said the doctor is going to give us an appointment for this Monday. It is far away but I am fine with that. I always tell my daughters that is so important to be nice and respectful to people and this is a time that I was certainly repaid in kindness!
What I really don't understand is why there aren't more doctors available to patients. Renee is in PA school and almost finished. If they can add more PAs, then why not more docs? I am sure some of it has to do with spaces in medical schools, but why not open more schools? And if insurance costs are problems for doctors, then they need to police their own people and stop covering up for rotten doctors. We found out so much about how doctors and hospitals cover for medical "mistakes" for their personnel. There is something called peer review protection for doctors. If a doctor makes a "mistake," which means they killed or disabled a patient, the hospital board calls the doctor in and they discuss the incident and no one can know about it. It is protected by law. It is supposedly to "help" the doctor in the future, But it is really a cover-up. Our attorney was able to subpoena medical records of Glunk's because the State Board of Medicine and the State Health Departments had done investigations of Glunk when I filed complaints after Amy died. The state departments willingly gave us the information they had. Our attorney found lots of information about Glunk in those papers. Glunk did everything he could legally to not allow us to use the information in court. But the judge ruled in our favor because we came upon those records in a legal manner. We found out that Glunk had restrictions on his use of the hospital operating rooms. He had to have another doctor supervise him during surgery because of his "mistakes." Our attorney even subpoenaed his Chief Medical Officer from the hospital and that doc threw Glunk under the bus! Glunk tried not to answer some of the questions because he kept claiming the info was peer protected info but the judge made him answer. I think peer review protection is ridiculous. There are so many bad doctors out there and they get protected. If the people in charge policed their own doctors, their malpractice insurance rates would go down! There are also a lot of wonderful doctors out there but it is scary to trust any of them because the information about them is hidden. It is good that their are sites online to check out how some patients rate their medical providers.
Today Wilma, we are now on a first name basis, called me back and said the doctor is going to give us an appointment for this Monday. It is far away but I am fine with that. I always tell my daughters that is so important to be nice and respectful to people and this is a time that I was certainly repaid in kindness! 
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