Mt. Sinai Hospital is renowned for making clients wait.
Lugging my gallon jug of urine, my mother and I arrived for my 8:30 appointment. That's a.m., as in having to leave the house by 6:30.
Other patients already filled the seats in the reception area. We approached the desk, gave our names and were told, "We don't schedule 8:30 appointments." The receptionist pointed us back to the room of other people apparently not scheduled. "Take a seat."
We waited.
And waited some more.
And more.
Finally, at nine-thirty, someone freed me from my gallon of urine, and I was called in for my psych eval. All donors will have to meet with a social worker to determine if they are mentally competent to share a kidney.
"Why do you want to donate a kidney to your brother?" She asked.
"Because he's my brother."
"But why?"
Why? He's my brother, and he'll die if he doesn't get a kidney. "He's my brother."
I guess they assumed I loved being dissected and my superfluous body parts apportioned out. I'd seen people like that on the TV show
ER. But, I simply loved my brother and didn't want him to die.
"Do you have any concerns about the surgery?" Her question interrupted my musing about her repeated question about why I thought Alan should have a kidney.
"No."
"You seem pretty relaxed. Any worries?
I wondered if I was supposed to be more worried. But so far, no fears arose about the course I was taking. "This feels right," I said.
She asked a couple more questions and my interview ended.
After three hours of getting to the appointment, my psych eval lasted about ten minutes.
Thank heavens they were also taking a chest x-ray to check for tuberculous and an EKG to make sure I had a heart. Otherwise, lugging a gallon of pee for a ten minute interview would have been a long ordeal.
But you don't need to know the ordeal the rest of the day proved to be:
- Mt. Sinai wouldn't accept the information I gave them about Alan's insurance (his would pay for my testing because this was for his health).
- forgetting to fax said insurance request to my brother
- waiting hours for this to not be done
- walking cross-town for the EKG--which wasn't done at Mt. Sinai
- being told the address on the appointment form was the wrong address
- returning to Mt. Sinai to find the fax-lady was out to lunch
We were sent to a another receptionist. He looked at my chart, told me everything was there, had been there from the start and that we should have had no problem.
I went to another exam room, stripped, got x-rayed and finally could head home. (Remember, home was seven hours away--I'd head north the next day.)
Oy vay--and the testing wasn't done.
Neil picked me up at the airport and drove me home. There I had a message waiting for me. Mt. Sinai had not drawn enough blood for all their blood tests. Would I please come in at my earliest convenience?
