A bank holiday

[lnr]

And a very relaxing one too. Friday night/Saturday morning we had to ourselves. Mike's parents joined us on Saturday afternoon and we drove over to Ickworth near Bury-St-Edmunds and wandered briefly round the gardens (before they closed) and more leisurely round the park including lake and vineyard. Cleverly we discovered that the loos at the house also close at 5, and the alternative loos are at the vineyard *after* we'd walked back up the hill to the carpark. Services on the A14 to the rescue. Mike and I were making the most of our new status as National Trust members (my birthday present to him) or it would have been a rather more expensive trip.

Sunday we had a nice breakfast, pottered round the garden centre, had a big lunch and then waved Evan and Gina off and spent the late afternoon and evening watching Snooker and playing Lego Star Wars. And Monday we attacked the garden: Mike did some weeding and some wonderfully aggressive pruning while I spread 200 litres of nasty smelling bark as mulch on the front garden (which consists mostly of shrubs). It looks great, but it's still a bit whiffy.

Ankle's still improving lots, which is great. And for the parathyroid I now have a letter from Addenbrooke's themselves asking me to ring and make an appointment (within 7 days of receiving it) which I attempted to do on Thursday - only to find the phone number redirects to the wrong bit of the voicemail system (asking me to enter a mailbox number) and it took 4 calls and quite a bit of redirecting before I got the (hopefully) correct answerphone and managed to leave my name, hospital number and daytime phone numbers. Since then they have entirely failed to call me back, and I'm beginning to get paranoid, but when I tried to call again today I got the broken voicemail again and just couldn't face more phone tag. I am not happy. The fact I've already waited 14 days + 10 days to even get the letter in the first place makes me even less so. I guess I'll try them again tomorrow.

Oh yes, and I'm not moving to Dreamwidth, although I am willing to read your journal there via openid if you've moved, see link in my LJ profile. I'll still be posting here.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Have you tried Googling for the phone number for the correct clinic/doctor? Or phoning the general switchboard and asking them to transfer you?

[lnr]

Yeah: googling Addies and ringing the switchboard got me transferred once, and then a machine hung up on me. I rang the switchboard again and they gave me the number they'd transferred me to and this time someone answered, took my details and told me I had the *wrong* endocrinology dept and had to call the number I first started with. When I explained she said that the lady I was looking for wouldn't be in until "a bit after 10", so I called at 10:30 and her phone was still redirecting incorrectly, so I tried the helpful phone number again and they sounded completely baffled until I mentioned the "after 10" bit and said "Oh you mean Nadia" and put me through to what I think was the right answerphone - it said if we'd had a letter asking us to ring and book to leave our details, so sounded plausible - it's just 2.5 working days later without having been rung back I start to doubt.

Of course I just have the name of the clinic, I don't have a doctor's name or even an admin's name other than the mysterious Nadia - the letter didn't have a name and no alternative contact details at all. I suspect from poking roundthat I've found the appropriate doctor on their webpages (though I've not written down so I'd have to do it again), but it doesn't feel right trying to ring the actual doctor to make an appointment when I've been asked to ring the appointment staff.

It's all just *fucking* irritating, when I've already had one "choose and book" letter, called up when I couldn't book, waited 14 days before calling my GP and waited 10 days - if this letter hadn't turned up on the 29th I'd have been ringing the GP again to chase it. Somehow I don't think they're going to manage to get me an initial appointment within 5 weeks of referral.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Have you tried this (http://www.cuh.org.uk/addenbrookes/services/clinical/ims/diabetes_endocrine_index.html) phone number or is it also the wrong clinic? Ooh, they are in the building I do.

[lnr]

That's the helpful-but-wrong-people number.

I'm pretty sure I'm eventually going to end up at this clinic, but they don't have a direct number for that online, and I suspect if they did it would be the right-but-redirects-to-wrong-bit-of-voicemail number.

(Actually I can find the phone number for that doctor and it's different to the "right" number, so if I have no luck tomorrow I might try calling that number instead).

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

Could try poking these people (http://www.cuh.org.uk/addenbrookes/patients/pals/pals_index.html) and see if they can work out what's wrong with the system?

[lnr]

That's a very useful link by the way. I should have checked them out after the hopeless orthopaedics appt for my ankle, but I think it's a bit late now.

[numberland.livejournal.com]

There does seem to be a general fail with the whole 7 day thing and not actually returning messages and the like. It does infuriate me. Not only the what if you're on holiday issue but this sort of bollocks.

I suggest trying once more, then phone the GP and get them to chase and/or follow arnhem's advice but definitely do something. It is really quite an issue but depending which bit of the system you may have to wait a while extra before getting an appointment if you miss the deadline. One tactic is to not hang up until you get them to do something that really should work (leave a note for the relavent person or similar).

[lnr]

The letter explicitly says if I don't contact them within 7 days I'll be referred back to the GP. Which makes it extremely important that the answerphone I left a message on was the right one. I've talked to the wrong people again and they did try and put me through and got the same weird voicemail thing, so at least now they believe me, and they've promised to leave a message for Nadia including my number.

But again I'm told she'll be in after 10 and only in this morning, so why did they tell me to call Monday-Friday 9-5? Argh!