Yesterday my son was complaining of nausea (and has been nauseous for a few days), so he asked to stay home from school and I asked my mom if she’d mind running him to our doctor’s office just to be on the safe side.
While they were at the doctor’s office, the front desk was kind enough to tell my mother the following,
“Oh! There was something on your last chest x-ray so we’re scheduling you for a CT scan. Someone from the CT place should contact you later today.”
Mind you, my mother’s last physical was a month ago. I’m not sure how long it takes to see a “something” on a chest x-ray, but a month seems a bit absurd. My mom calls me practically in tears, she has no idea what the “something” might be because I’m fairly certain that the front desk at our Dr’s office is trying to win an award for being vague and unhelpful.
My mom finally called the office later in the day and asked them to tell her what it was that the doctor saw. They told her that they have identified a 1.2cm pulmonary nodule in the upper lobe of her left lung. I immediately hit Google because I am a masochist and decided that it was likely somewhere between scar tissue from a previous bad bout with pneumonia (2-3 mos ago) or OMGCANCER. Mom went straight for the cancer diagnosis, of course. I tried to tell her not to jump to the worst conclusion, but I know that I would do the same in her place.
She’s a 53 yr old non-smoker who worked at an electric motor shop for several years and is scared to death that she’s got cancer from the nickle-plating spray they used on motors back in the day.
The CT place called and scheduled her for a week out. I cannot imagine my already tightly wound and worrier of a mother sitting on her thumbs for a week while a nodule she’s apparently had for at least a month hangs out in her lung. Fortunately, a friend at work knows someone at a local hospital’s CT dept and we pulled some strings and got her scheduled for today.
Unfortunately the combination of health care bureaucracy and dr’s office ineptitude have resulted in some trouble getting pre-authorization for the CT scan. The dr’s office has advised my mom that, “You can’t just get the scan anywhere, we already set up an appt for you with XYZ.”
The health insurance company has advised that the dr’s office is dumb and you CAN get the CT anywhere that takes United, but they need the doctor’s office to contact them/the hospital for some information.
Right now we’re all waiting for word back from the care coordinator at the hospital who is working to, well, coordinate between the Dr’s office, the CT dept and the insurance. Eeeee.
I’m posting here to essentially vent a bit, but also to hopefully gain some insight from others who have experienced a wonky chest x-ray, CT scans, etc. What amount of time are we looking at for CT results? Does anyone have any experience with VATS (Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery), needle biopsy of the lung, etc?
In other news, if anyone has recommendations for primary care physicians in the Phoenix area who take United and/or Aetna, please let me know. I’m pretty much thoroughly disgusted the staff at ours.