The Blood Work Debacle

I cried.

I felt ill.

My world was crashing down on me.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. If a transplant is not meant to be for me, then surely God has another plan for me, and I accept that. But I wish He would just show me some sort of definitive sign!

Well, watch this.

I went to see my rheumatologist last Thursday. My appointment was supposed to be at 10am. Appointments are rarely on time…and as someone who has gone to many a-appointment in my life, I’ve grown to accept that. But this time.. I was busy. So, I went up and asked when I could expect to be seen. The secretary told me that I was next. Since I had been waiting for so long, I asked the nurse if she could give me my blood requisitions and I could do my bloodwork now instead of later. She took the requisitions into the doctor that I’d be seeing before my real rheumatologist, had her sign the reqs, then gave them to me so I could do the bloodwork.

I went to do the bloodwork. Total amount of time that I was gone- about 5 or 6 minutes. At this point, it was already after 11am. When I came back, much to my horror, the secretary told me that the doctor took the next patient.

What?

She KNEW that I went to do blood work, and she (she=the doctor) KNEW that the clinic has it’s own phlebotomist (Sister Esther) so why would she not wait a few minutes for me when I just waited almost an hour for her???

I was livid. I told the secretary to book me another appointment because I was leaving. I wasn’t leaving necessarily because I could no longer wait, but I was really angry. Well, aside from that, if this doctor took an hour with the last patient, how long would she take with this one that she just took in?

“Please don’t leave!” the secretary implored. I asked her how long the doctor would take..knowing that she’d have no idea. I knew I wouldn’t stay unless I was going to be seen by a doctor in the next 5 minutes. She told me the next available appointment wasn’t until February 2011. I told her to book it.

As the secretary very slowly and reluctantly booked the appoinment (she was clearly trying to think of what she should do to get me to stay) my REAL doctor walked out. Much to the secretary’s relief, she told the doctor what had happened, and he quickly told me that he’d see me directly. Thank goodness.

So he and I went in and chatted. I told him that I was worried about my blood results and apparent trend that seemed to be leading towards a lupus flare.

When the doctor looked at my bloodwork on the computer, he saw something very peculiar.

Get this.

There were TWO sets of bloodwork for me on August 12. 1 set was normal (what my bloodwork usually looks like) and one set that was completely off. If I had drawn blood twice that day (which I hadn’t) it would have been impossible for someone’s blood work to change so radically.

The verdict?

All this time that I’ve been stressing, making myself ill, crying, etc..I had been crying over blood work that had incorrectly been uploaded to my profile. Those blood results belonged to someone else.

My doctor said that this was the first time he had seen such a thing in his whole career as a doctor.

On one end of the spectrum..i’m ECSTATIC that I’m not currently having a lupus flare. But on the other side…why me??

:S