Update

Since Mom is reading this I thought some other folks might be also. Here's the latest:

After leaving a message with "Jennifer the Amazing" last night, I waited until 9 to hear back from her. My back woke me up at 7, so 9:00 was much later in the day than it normally is on my days off. At 9:05 I hadn't heard back from the usually very prompt nurse, so figured Jennifer was wrapped up in something else. I decided to call in to the front desk and get the appointment process started with them.

I'm pretty happy with Dr. Williams, and Jennifer is great, but OPA as an organization is a very typical corporate medical institution with ridiculous hoops and phone trees. I try to avoid calling the front desk whenever possible. This morning was a good example of why:

Call 1: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed. For appointments press 5...(I press 5)...This is the perscription refill request line. Please leave the following information at the tone...(I hang up)

Call 2: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed. For appointments press 5...(I press 5 very carefully)...This is the perscription refill request line. Please leave the following information at the tone...(I try all the little secret get me out of this menu buttons I can think of including * and # with no success. I hang up)

Call 3: I try for Jennifer's direct extension again, but she's still not there and I'm not going to leave a second message to bother her.

Call 4: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed." This time I listen to the whole stupid menu and hear that I should press 8 for perscription refills. I press 8 hoping that the two lines are just reversed. Instead I get the emergency response nurse who is peeved that she's talking to me. She doesn't seem terribly interested in the fact that the phone tree sent me here unwittingly, and transfers me to the front desk. I sit on hold for a while, get a brief contact with someone and sit on hold a while longer. Eventually the receptionist gets back to me and I find out that Jennifer isn't in today so she's going to transfer me back to the operator where I should dictate a detailed message to be typed up and given to the person filling in for Jennifer today. Turns out that the operator is also the person who answers the emergency line, and she's again delighted to hear my voice.

I've left the message and I'm once again in a holding pattern waiting to hear back about an appointment.

Sigh.

The nice thing about cell phones is I can still go out to breakfast with my boy and I won't miss the call back. (deleted unnecessary snarky comment here) Maybe I'll give a couple PT exercises a try while I wait for Russell to be ready to go eat.


By the time I finished typing this I got a call back, and I'm heading straight to the office right now.