Indiana Jones Would've Made a Great Healthcare Provider

Let's cut to the chase: Today was an ordeal, and yet I still have my original chest port. 

After tossing and turning all night,* I got out of bed at 6:00, finished painting the wonder room** while I waited for my ride to show, and arrived at the UW Medical Center promptly at 8:00 ready for action. 

All things considered, "action" is not a word I would apply to what happened. 

First off, what sort of hospital hides the registration desk down a narrow hallway where no one can see it? UWMC, apparently, as when I made my through the front door, past the narrow hallway that I didn't even notice, and down the elevator to the Radiology Clinic, they immediately sent me back upstairs to hunt for registration. You'd think that particular office would be prominently placed just inside the front door. Ah well, we eventually found it.

So then we checked in at Radiology and watched the fish swim around the fish tank for half an hour. They had some very nice fish, and I was particularly fond of the little guys with the red heads and striped tails ("rummy-nose tetras,"apparently). But thirty minutes is a long time watching fish, even rummy-nose tetras and a psychotic gold fish.*** 

But after half an hour, one of the nurses came and got me and took BIL4 and I back to the prep room. I was given a gown, a pair of socks that were way too small, and a bag to put my clothes in. So I changed, BIL4 dragged a chair into the cubicle, and we waited again.

And waited, and waited, and waited. 

After about 45 minutes or an hour -- the clocks in the cubicles weren't working properly, so who really knows? -- the PA came in to give a rundown on the plan and get my signature on the release. Five minutes later she was gone, and we were back to waiting. At least another half hour went by before my assigned nurse came in. We played a game of twenty -- thirty? forty? -- questions, she took the basic vitals, inserted an IV and then she left to see if everything was ready. I'd say another fifteen or twenty minutes went by, and I was wheeled back to the procedure room.  

The procedure room was a lot like the one at SCCA. A big open room, with a very narrow bed in the middle of it, and lots of computer monitors, some rather large. Once I was on the bed, the nurse and the two technicians started wedging plexiglass under the mattress to serve as arm rests and what not. Once I was situated, the attending physician came in, talked with me a bit, talked with the staff a bit, and then decided that before they did anything he would check the port himself. 

Of course, it worked. No pooling contrast agent below the port, no clouds swirling around it, just the reservoir filling and then the contrast agent heading down the line and into my heart.

So the replacement was cancelled. Instead, they opted to do a TPA, wherein they fill the port reservoir and line with some chemical, wait two hours, and see what happens. So the nurse filled the line with drug, wheeled me back to the prep room so I could get dressed, and then BIL4 and I went off to get some breakfast and kill two hours.

 Until cancer, my experience of healthcare providers was a group of people with vast quantities of esoteric knowledge and definitive answers. Things have changed. How is it that half a dozen people at SCCA can't get my port to work and make the definitive declaration that the port has to go, but then a week later someone else at UWMC finds the port to be functioning properly? How can it be the case that when presented with a given symptom, say horrendous foot pain, the oncologist will decide that it can't be real since the official drug notice doesn't recognize that symptom? 

After today, I'm starting to think that healthcare is provided less by people with vast quantities of knowledge and definitive answers as it is by people like Indiana Jones...

I can't say I'm finding that realization comforting.

* It freaks me out when the doctors start messing with the port. 

** Well, I still need to pull all the old drapery hardware off the windows, patch all the holes, and then paint the window trim, but the main part of the room is done. 
*** One of the gold fish seemed to decide that the top front right corner of the tank was his space, and kept chasing off any other fish that got too close. Neither BIL4 nor I could figure out what made that corner of the tank so appealing, as there was nothing there but water.