If you tell me this never happened to you, I probably won’t believe you. You’re in/on line or in some other way waiting your turn to see whomever you’re supposed to see, and the person ahead of you is taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r. What are they doing, re-inventing the wheel? Then one day, it is your turn to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r, and you have to hope the folks in the waiting area at Maccabi are not thinking the same malevolent thoughts about you that you would have been thinking about them.

I had come back from the Roladin branch on the main floor, having purchased a passel of crolerin, small pastries so scrumptious they should be illegal. Barbara’s number had been called and she was engaged in a prolonged discussion with Galia in the Maccabi office. The first item under consideration was to get me a chit-hayvut (a commitment to pay for a visit to the specialist I’ll be seeing next month), but things were not going well. There are, if you think about it, two kinds of people in this world: the ones who, if you tell them ‘I just need a chit-hayvut,’ will dutifully start working on it. The other kind will say, ‘Wait a minute, what’s all this other stuff?’, looking at the mass of contradictory information they’ve been shown, unable to proceed until they understand what’s going on. (Type 1 functions very well in the military.) It wasn’t any deficiency on Galia’s part; the only reason we understood any of it was because we had been there and done that.

So let’s go back a month or two to my appointment with Dr. Moshe Rubin, my regular gastro guy. I’m feeling a lot better now that I’m taking the Creon capsules, which I’ll be taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r, right? (Right.) I’ll need another hafnaya (referral) to Dr. Alon Schwartz so he can fix my umbilical hernia. That would have been simple, but, as we all know, we don’t simple – if we can avoid it. Dr. Rubin took a gander at some of my test results, and now I’ll also be off to Dr. Arye Benson, another specialist with the following referral:

“85 year old man with MRCP with a stone in the papilla no pain but has a dilated main pancreatic duct and has pancreatic insufficiency… Refer for EUS and consideration and or ERCP pending the results.” That’s me, an alter kake with pancreatic insufficiency, of all things. (By the way, EUS and ERCP are invasive procedures where they shove a tube down your throat – under anesthesia, of course.)

And so, on Oct. 7, Barbara and I headed out to Shaarei Tzedek Hospital for my appointment with Dr. Schwartz. Except that the chit-hayvut we had received from Maccabi was for the wrong procedure, as we discovered when we showed up at the hospital office. What to do? No worries. Remember, we are in the Land of Workarounds. You pay up front for the visit; you go back to Maccabi and get the correct chit-hayvut, which you fax (Remember fax machines?) to the hospital and they refund your money. It does work.

Remember me, Dr. Schwartz? I saw you over a year ago, and you couldn’t deal with my umbilical hernia then because I had a catheter. That’s dealt with. But… I also have a referral to Dr. Benson, which I have right here. Would anything he might need to do affect what you would be doing?

You know the answer to that question without me telling you. Our surgeon’s response was to give us the following good news: If it turns out that my gall bladder has to be removed, he can do that procedure and fix my hernia at the same time! Given the delay in dealing with my hernia, let’s try to go Sharap (‘Services, Medical, Private’ in Hebrew; you pay them and you can cut the line.)
First thing, go back to Admissions and tell them to cancel today’s visit; it’s as if we hadn’t seen Dr. Schwartz. Of course, void the credit card payment. Some people, if you tell them that what just happened didn’t happen, they’re fine with it. Other people? I don’t understand. The woman we explained this to did not understand, and who can blame her? After a few go-arounds, she ran back to speak with Dr. Schwartz. Whether or not she ultimately did ‘understand,’ she at least had proper authority to proceed. The appointment we just had never occurred. Even though we weren’t there, we were free to leave – after a light meal at Aroma, one of the stores in the lobby.

Why did we assume that this visit-that-didn’t-happen wouldn’t come back to bite us?  Some things don’t get completely erased from the system. As far as Galia at Maccabi was concerned, my non-visit was not there, but it was there, lurking in the background. (I can’t explain it any better.) Barbara was explaining in her functional Hebrew what had happened, and Galia was responding in her functional English, and I would chime in from time to time in my semi-functional Hebrew. And then when that issue was resolved, we went on to why we were there: to get a chit-hayvut for my visit to Dr. Benson. We were able to explain that the non-visit in October and the visit-to-be in November, both at Shaarei Tzedek, were in fact two different visits with two different doctors and not a mistake in the system. But there was a different mistake, because why wouldn’t there be? The referral for the consultation with Dr. Benson that Dr. Rubin had authorized had listed the code number for one procedure, and the confirmation of the visit from the hospital had a different number. How could Galia start processing a chit-hayvut? I think we settled on Rubin’s information; let’s hope that’s right, or else, we’re back in the muddle again.

If it had only been dealing with the paperwork for my visits, we would have been done and gone. But Barbara also had medical visits to deal with, orthopedists and eye doctors to see, and there were paperwork issues there as well. Are we done now? While we’re here, let’s make appointments for our flu shots. All of you waiting patiently for your turn to see someone in the office, please understand. It’s not our fault. Even though I have an insufficiency. You might, as well. At least, mine can be handled with modern medicine.

At least for the time being. Who knows what my next specialist will come up with? As usual, once I find out, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, there are elections to occupy our minds, or at least distract us from our insufficiencies.