14 October 2022
The visit before she was about to start a week-long vacation, Kristine the LVN texted she couldn't make it because she had gone to the ER the night before with severe pain. Kidney stones.
I did the dressing change that Wednesday morning on schedule but in the afternoon a substitute LVN called offering to come by after 4 p.m. Joyce passed on that.
Last night Sami the LVN, who has been here before, called to schedule the Friday visit today but she couldn't get here until 2:30.
She has done it before but not quite the way we are doing it now and and Joyce has no way of explaining that to her since she's never seen how it's done herself. But I'm not going to be here so I'll do the dressing change on schedule this morning and Sami can drop by to take vitals.
I have to go to my mother's for an appointment at 12:30 with a house cleaner who is coming to give us an estimate on cleaning the place. Mom hasn't had anyone in since the pandemic hit but before that she had two women who cleaned the place every month.
The whole place doesn't need monthly cleaning, we've discovered. But the bathrooms and kitchen could use more frequent attention. We'll have to see what she can afford.
Meanwhile Nate from the clinic (not Mark, who used to handle this) called the other day. I'd sent a photo of the wound to Dr. Tong and asked if we should make an appointment since we haven't seen her in, what, two months.
He offered an Oct. 31 appointment at 9 a.m. which just doesn't work. I was willing to do it if we were going to see Dr. Tong herself since her schedule is tighter than mine but not for a physician's assistant.
But it turned out Nate didn't have a nurse scheduled for that time so it wasn't available after all. Since it was already after 4 p.m. (which is when the clinic closes), he said he'd call the next day.
But he didn't. So the day after that I called him and he said he was still working on it. He promised to get back to us by next week.
Except he called yesterday with a Nov. 1 appointment for 1:30.*
Dignity Health called late one day last week. I answered the phone but no one responded. Instead I got a recorded message telling us to call Dignity Health. Hey, you called me.
Of course, when we tried to call them, their dysfunctional phone system made us jump through hoops for 15 minutes, keyboarding various codes and dates before putting us on hold only to disconnect us.
I think the game is to frustrate us into paying $21K. Nice try. As previously reported, we've faxed their bill (due last Wednesday) to Kaiser for payment, have told them what we've done after following up on the fax with a phone call and haven't heard from anyone since except for that crank call.
It did occur to me on thinking about the April 1 billing date that it's for only half the sessions. So we can expect another $150 co-pay and another $21K bill from Dignity Health in a couple of months. And do this all over again.
And that's where we stand at the moment as the music abruptly stops.