Jinni had her second round of chemotherapy yesterday and the process is a real day-buster. Although I can't say enough good things about the people at the Regional Cancer Center, one thing I can say is that they are not particularly respectful of anyone's time but their own. The appointment was for 9:00a and we didn't finish until well after noon.
One would think that since every room in doctors' offices have computers in them, they would actually use them for something other than billing you for their services. Say, like ... scheduling. Believe it or not, all of you hospitals and doctors, cancer patients (and their men/women in waiting) have lives to live and incomes to produce so that we might have a shot at paying your bills on time.
Surely, by now, doctors know the average amount of time it takes to consult with a cancer patient and the amount of time it regularly takes to administer each prescription of chemotherapy.
Some patients might need one hour of consultation, and another one 15 minutes and another 30 minutes. Take those three numbers and do what my 5th grader does very well - average them together, docs. You will come up with 35 minutes, which is the amount of time you should allow for each patient. That is how the rest of the world plans their day.
You will find that if someone needs longer than an hour, it will probably be off-set by someone who normally takes an hour but only required 45 minutes of your time. By applying this simple math you could easily get patients dispensed with before frustration raises their blood pressure through the roof, thereby requiring additional medication and office time. God forbid that doctors or their staffs should actual experience 10 minutes during the day when there aren't patients stacked up like jets waiting to land in Atlanta.
Scheduling isn't brain surgery... its more like rocket science .
Anyway... Jinni's treatment went smoothly, although the the amount of time it took was just a bit excessive.
We found out that our fears about Jinni being overly suseptible to germs and infection were unfounded, for now. One of the drugs she is taking is designed to boost her white blood cell count even as the chemo works like crazy to destroy them, and it is performing wonderfully. As of yesterday, her white count is considerably above where it was before she began her treatments, so you probably couldn't transfer your cold to her on a dare. So...
Note to neighbors and friends... its OK... you can come back and re-populate our kitchen and drink our Bourbon and kiss us all square on the mouth. The doctor said he will let us know when we need to bar the door, but it won't be anytime soon. Come spread some Christmas cheer.
7:05:26 AM 
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