I really hate sorting out hospital appointments. Archie's been sent two recently, both are in the term time and I don't want him to miss school for hospital appointments that aren't urgent, I'd rather push them into the school holidays. But changing them is never straightforward.
Apparently the first, an ENT appointment, has been graded A which means the appointment booking person can't change it by more than a week. She suggests calling the Consultant's secretary, which I did. She was very pleasant but has no idea why it is a grade A appointment, can't help me change it and suggests calling the appointment booking people. So I'm back where I started.
The second appointment is to see a consultant in Bristol where Archie attends a bone dysplasia clinic.
When I call to change it the booking person points out that Archie usually attends a bone dysplasia clinic and the appointment I have been sent is for a normal clinic. She looks up the first bone dysplasia clinic but that's still in term time. The next one is late August , lord knows what we will be doing then but I book that one.
What's annoying about a lot of hospital appointments is that you wait a long time for them, spend ages waiting around on the day, go in and then it turns out to feel like a bit of a waste of time as nothing really happens. Perhaps 'nothing really happening' is a result in many people's eyes but having had a whole childhood of appointments where 'nothing ever happened' I've had enough of them.
As well as the inconvenient timing of the appointment the other issue with this one is that it is for a different consultant to the one Archie usually sees. There's a real issue when you have a rare disability, like Kniest Syndrome, when there is a lack of consultant continuity. The advantage of the consultant that Archie usually sees in Bristol is that he knows something about Kniest which is a pretty key criteria, it could be this other consultant does too but I don't know that for sure - if he doesn't then we're back into 'real waste of time appointment' territory. I don't want to go there.
In the old days I would have just rolled over and accepted it but nowadays I think it's really worthwhile asking why there has been a change of consultant and if there is no valid reason to insist on seeing the one you've got to know and who's got to know you. It's easy to feel slightly in awe of the medical system but to get the best out of it sometimes you have to assert yourself, it's been a long time coming and I never did it for myself but at least I can try and do it for Archie.
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