1:00 AM appointments don't seem to solve the Exam Room problem.

I left home at 12:30 PM today for an appointment at 1:00 PM which has been scheduled ostensibly to reduce the crush for Exam Rooms, where the PAs want to interview patients to assure privacy.  I arrived just a minute or so before scheduled time but had to wait to register and then wait again until Sara, a nurse new to me, came to take me in to put a line in my port and draw 2 vials of blood.  She called Bernadette to come take me to an Exam Room for my visit with Mary Steinbach, the PA I was to see, but she had to leave a message and after standing in the registration office I was directed to take a seat in the Hallway waiting area and it was almost an hour before Bernadette came for me  She took me for weighing and then to the Infusion Room to be seated because there were no Exam Rooms available. The reason for the 1:00 PM appointments on the first Mondays of each cycle would seem to disappear if Exams Room are not available.  I guess I am confused.

I had four different nurses do some work with or on me today.  I was told Laurie would be my nurse and she did draw some more blood to fulfill a request that Dr. Kuo, our internist, whom I saw last Wednesday and had given me to deliver to the clinic.  But when it came time for the Velcade infusion, much later, it was given to me by Kristy assisted and observed by Chris, another new nurse who was new to the Infusion Room, but has worked for the Huntsman Cancer Institute on other floors for some time.  I had asked Laurie for a printout of the bloodwork results, just as I had done on my visit April 27 and which she had forgotten to do just as she did today so Chris printed it out with results for two previous visits and removed the line from my port so I could go home.  I left the parking garage about 4:25 and missed the worst traffic on Foothill Blvd and I-215.  But it was almost 5:00 when I got home.  A long day almost entirely spent waiting.

When I saw Dr;. Kuo last Wednesday he told me there was some defect with my red blood cells as shown by previous blood work that he had requested be done at the BMT clinic, which he thought might be corrected by me taking Vitamin B12, which I have been doing twice a day since the visit. He told me that otherwise I seemed to be in good health, which is what Mary Steinbach told me this afternoon.  Whenever any of them ask me how I am doing I tell that I am doing as good as an old codger can do, which always produces at least a smile.