Specialists...

What is it about medical specialists that makes them so impossible to get hold of?? The first time I tried to call Dr Brown (Avery's physical medicine guy) it happened by some miraculous allignment of the stars that not only did someone pick up the phone, but it just happened to be Dr Brown himself!! A modern day miracle! However, that was obviously the only time that that has or ever will happen. We just picked up Avery's valium prescription this morning, after about 3 weeks of trying to get in touch with somebody - ANYBODY - at Dr Brown's office to have them fax over the prescription to the pharmacy! Apparently it is office policy to never answer the phone, and to let it go to voicemail instead so that they can just call you back. Not only that, but on the voicemail message itself it warns that it will take 3 business days for them to return your call, but that seems to be rather optimistic. And then, when I finally did get a call back about the prescription, it happened to be during a rare moment when I didn't have my phone with me, so the woman left a message asking me to call back and leave a message for her to let her know which pharmacy to fax it to. So I tried, and went through the whole process of getting to Dr Brown's nurse's message line, and then couldn't even leave a message because their voicemail inbox was full!! Anyway, quite ridiculous, but probably not that unusual in the world of medical specialists I'm assuming. I also had a really hard time getting hold of Avery's neurosurgeon when we thought her shunt was malfunctioning a few months ago, and there are very few things as frustrating and stressful as not being able to reach your child's doctor when you're dealing with a potentially fatal problem! Of course, there's a whole system in place for moments like that, but having to call someone to have them page your doctor and then wait for what can seem like hours for him to call back, only to have a really hard time having a conversation with him because he can barely hear you out on the windy golf course he's on...yes, it's frustrating!