I do appreciate and respect healthcare professionals.  But sometimes …

This week was sometimes.

First.

In preparation for my knee surgery, I need to get an MRI.  (I also had to have a ton of bloodwork done – 6 vials of blood later and that’s checked off the list.) I was told this on May 19.  On May 20, I scheduled my MRI for May 29. 

At 8 a.m. on May 27, I get a call from the MidMichigan scheduling department telling me that they are cancelling my appointment because my health insurance hasn’t approved the MRI yet. 

Shit. 

I go online and “chat” with my health insurance carrier and I’m told there is no approval pending or otherwise in their records. 

Double shit. 

I leave an (admittedly) testy message for my orthopedic surgeon’s office basically asking WTSF. 

Next morning – again at 8 fucking a.m. (what is WITH these people – don’t they know fat old ladies need their beauty sleep?), I get a call from Nurse “Sam” from my surgeon’s office.  She is hell bent on explaining to me (in her view, clearly a fat old addle-pated lady) just how MRI approvals work with MidMichigan.  …

Bitch, please.  This is not my first rodeo (or MRI) through MidMichigan.  No need to try to teach grandma how to suck eggs.

She finally takes a breath, so I can get a word in edgewise, I tell her I contacted my insurance company and no approval had been sent in.  

Silence. 

Finally, “I have to call someone, I’ll call you back.”  Which she does.  Just as I’m falling back to sleep.  Fuck. 

Now she tells me, their office didn’t get the request for the authorization to their “authorization department” until May 23.  (No, I did not inquire why it took them 4 days to do this, much as I desperately longed to ask; or more accurately, scream into the void, since, I was under the impression, they expected me to get my various assignments done ASAP so they could get my surgery scheduled.)  And the “authorization department” is a third party company that the surgeon’s office had no control over (which I interpret to mean, it’s still sitting on somebody’s desk and nobody sent in the fucking authorization request yet, but that’s just my interpretation rendered by my sleep-deprived mind). 

So, I should call and reschedule the MRI.  Which I did.  The soonest I can now get my MRI is June 16. 

Thanks a butt load, y’all. 

What’s another couple of weeks of dealing with 24/7 knee pain? 

… to be continued