The Doctor Follies

When they decided to refer to me an ENT yesterday, they chose the specific doctor to refer me to based on the fact that it was an office I’d been a patient of in the past. This would be easier for everyone, since I already knew them, they already knew me, I would be in their system, and so forth. This made a lot of sense, even if it meant having to drive down to Sandy Springs rather than finding an ENT who was actually in Alpharetta.

So this morning, I drove down to the Mount Vernon Medical Centre…a familiar drive, since I went to see this particular doctor every 2-4 weeks for over six months. I parked, took the elevator to the third floor, walked around to the corner office….and they weren’t there. It was another doctor’s office.

Hrm, says I. Oh well, maybe I misremembered the floor. So I tried again on the fourth floor, the fifth, the second. Having worked my way back to the lobby, I consult the directory, and discover the reason I cannot find them.

They aren’t there. They’ve moved out of the building.

Admittedly, it’s been a year almost since the last time I was here. Checking the referral form, I find no address, but a phone number. So I call it.

Amazingly, in 2004, you cannot actually speak to a human being at a doctor’s office. Not knowing which of their several locations I wanted to get directions to from the voicemail menu, I tried to connect to their appointment line. And waited on hold. For 20 minutes. All the while being assured that there was “one call in front” of me.

Giving up, I called my primary physician’s referral coordinator and left her a message, and then drove to his office, where I sat in the lobby until she was free to see me. To her credit, she’s always been extra-special-wonderful, and managed to get me a new appointment for 2:30 pm IN Alpharetta, at a location that I actually know the address of. So life is better than it was.

But what a frustrating, and ultimately wasted, morning.