Failing to Operate

I had this bad feeling... it didn't go away...and sure enough my suspicions were true - Robby's tonsil surgery was canceled late yesterday afternoon. With a grocery cart filled full of yougurt, pudding, popsicles, and ice cream, the ENT office called to let me know that St. Mary's Hospital denied his surgery for this morning due to his heart murmur. Sitting there in stunned silence, I asked the most obvious of questions. "Are you serious? Don't you realize it is tomorrow? What took them so long to cancel it - he's had the heart murmur since he was born; the surgery has been booked for more than a month. Isn't there anything I can do?" Simply put...no. Today's medical world does not operate (nice pun huh?) like anyone I know. They refuse to be considerate and fail to recognize that some of us work for a living. They didn't care that I had to pre-register him 3 times b/c they kept missing information. They couldn't process my insurance b/c their computer system and back up system were not working. And now, they wouldn't consider him for surgery even though they operated on him in the same condition a year & a half ago. It is no wonder that people become frustrated w/ our medical society. Ironically, someone from registration called me 30 minutes after I received the cancelation to tell me what time I should arrive at the hospital this morning. Nice. So I'm trying to let it go. We've had two surgeries canceled on us in the last two weeks. Thank God I have awesome co-workers and substitutes that have let me make-up these days since I have no more sick time left. We've decided to no longer use St. Mary's services or doctors related to them. And now, we wait. Robby must be cleared through a pediatric cardiologist before his surgery. Once done, the surgery can be rescheduled. We already have appointments for a new ENT (through DeVos) as well. We were hoping to tackle the 7-10 day recovery over Spring Break so that I wouldn't lose more time off, but we'll just have to wait and see now. I'm begining to think that having a child w/ Spina Bifida may not be that difficult - dealing w/ the doctors might be what throws me over the edge.