Dr. Cynical's receptionist

Now here’s something quirky about the Ontario health system. If you have something wrong with you, you go to the doctor. If the doctor can’t fix it, and you persuade him or her that you really need fixing by someone else, he or she will refer you to a specialist. But the referral isn’t a piece of paper handed to you. Instead it’s an invisible magic wand that works when you aren’t looking. My cardiologist, Dr Cynical, when I last visited him, decided that I might live after all and suggested that I get an ablation (that’s when they snake a tube up your leg into your heart, provoke tachycardia, then burn the parts that are tachycardia-ing, sealing the spots that have been short-circuiting for so long). I said, no thanks, I was fine on the beta-blocker. I like the beta blocker. It has all these cool side effects.

Then the wedding happened. That evening, since Robert and I had moved out of our house earlier to lend it to the bridesmaids, I had my overnight things packed in a bag to go home with me to where we were staying with Bob and Cayla. Unfortunately, when someone picked up Elai’s bags to go in the get-away car, mine got swept up, too. So that night I didn’t have my beta blockers. They were at a fancy hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and I wasn’t about to go get them!

No problem. Nothing happened. And even if my heart had picked just that night to start thumping away at 200 beats/second, I could have gone back to my home-away-from-home, the Niagara Health System (what a name for a hospital; no English teachers on that committee), and visited my bald doctor friend who would have stopped my heart for me again, free of charge. Like I said, no problem. But it set me to thinking. What if something like this happened in Mexico? In March I am going to Tlaxiaco for a week to give a seminar on church planting. Tlaxiaco is at 7000 feet. Altitude provokes the 200 beats/sec thingy. And it’s very far from any bald doctors with heart-stopping medicine. So then what would I do?

So I called Dr Cynical (I mean his receptionist) and explained the new plan. She said, ok, she’d get back to me, but not to hold my breath. It could be weeks or more. So off I went to Chicago to see Elai’s new home and meet her new cat and help her get her paper on an innovative Swedish Law finished. It was a great few days with her and Mikael. I got to see Julius Caesar performed by an all woman cast. I got to go to Elai’s theatre class and chat with her teacher who was a student there when I was. I got to hang out in the Stupe again. Good times.

But I had turned my phone off while I was gone, and when I crossed the border and turned it back on, it chimed and chimed and chimed to welcome me back. Several of the chimes were Dr. Cynical’s receptionist calling about an appointment with a surgeon. The next day. I called back from just outside Windsor, and the receptionist very sweetly chewed me out. “I’ve been calling several times this week with an appointment for you, and I can’t ever get through. How am I going to set up an appointment for you if I can’t reach you by phone?”

See in Canada, your doctor’s patient receptionist sets up your appointment with the specialist first, without checking with you. Once she has a date and time, she calls you to confirm, and the clock starts ticking. If she can’t get a hold of you within a certain time, well, you lose the appointment, and she has to start over. I lost the next day appointment, and she had to start the process all over again.

So then I was supposed to go visit my parents in Florida for a few days. To avoid another polite scolding from the receptionist, I left my phone in Canada and called in a baby-sitter. Janey. She carried my phone in her back pocket for four days, and when it rang, she got to talk to my patient receptionist and snag the appointment. For Tuesday. In Hamilton in the cardio wing. 4E.

In some countries, cynical doctors' receptionists work for you!