Wednesday: Mama Took Matter Into Her Own Hands...

As of this morning, Mama (me) had had ENOUGH.

Mama basically said, heck with everything, and just picked up the darned telephone and called Wake Forest and got a shakedown rolling that is going to end up with them calling us back in the next 24 hours with AN APPOINTMENT AT WAKE FOREST BAPTIST IN WINSTON SALEM.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And almost CERTAINLY A SCAN.

How it came about:

This morning Bill woke up feeling horrible. He has a lot of things wrong that I can't mention, plus he noticed that his liver is swollen and hard and can be felt through his abdomen. He let me stand behind him and he put my hands on his left side and right side, and I could definitely feel the difference, something hard and round and big on the right side (the liver area). I think that scared him enough to realize we just had to act.

So I called Oncology at Wake, and it took a half hour of explaining and re-explaining and holding on, by phone, which made me so distressed that my fingers and toes got icy cold and I was shivering with anxiety. Bill sat near me to correct me if I (in his words) exaggerated any thing to the nurses.

Turns out that when the local oncologist faxed her update to Dr. Torti, earlier this summer, she wrote something like, "future treatment is undetermined." And apparently that phraseology does NOT activate Dr. Torti to resume care--so since June, we have had NO ONE monitoring Bill's case! That's why we missed the July scan, and no one called us and we just sat here wondering what was going on. Gulp!

So I laid out the symptoms, no holds barred, and made it clear that we need Dr. Torti to resume oversight of Bill entirely. So they said Torti's nurse would text him, set up everything, and call us back very soon with dates.

Phew.

I was trying to cooperate with Bill's way of doing it, but the swollen liver put me over the edge, and I just went rogue and made the call.

In the end, he says he is very glad I did it, and thanked me for taking on the anxiety of calling, repeating the story to receptionists and nurses, making it clear, not irking the nurses, it's all so delicate, it seems.

I'll write again after the phone rings. I'm staring at the phone for the rest of the day, until this is resolved. :)

Love to all.....