HIPPA

I can’t get my fax machine to work and everyone with a chronic condition knows that you must have a fax machine because physicians can’t email anything because of HIPPA. I think HIPPA was written to benefit psychiatrists because I’ll be needing one by the end of the day.

Alexander has a pre-op appointment today. We’re going ahead with surgery #4 for strabismus. I’d hoped that we’d be able to do it in December of 2012 but for a variety of reasons it really needs to happen now. None of the reasons are particularly interesting.

So once again I’m at UCLA hat in hand and begging for a cancellation appointment for my son.

In order to be put on the schedule Alexander must first have a pre operative physical exam from his pediatrician. This is mostly for the anesthesiologists.

I’ve known for the past few weeks that Alexander needed another surgery but it took me until Friday to act on it. I called the office at UCLA and requested Alexander be put on the cancellation list. The folks at UCLA told me they’d fax forms over and I explained that the fax machine was not on and that I wouldn’t be home Friday to turn it on so we agreed on a Monday fax.

This morning they sent the documents over via fax and I didn’t have it set up quite right. I adjusted the settings, called the office and asked them to resend it. They resent the forms and the first four pages are great, the next twelve are blank. My all in one was out of ink. Of course.

So I call to have them try for a third time but no one is answering the phones at just 11.30. I’m pretty sure they take lunch at noon so the lines must be jammed. I ask the service to please fax them a note and ask them to fax me and the doctor’s office directly. They don’t like sending faxes directly to the pediatricians because they get lost she explains and I try to not scream or cry.

I’m picking my son up from school early today to bring him to a doctor’s appointment, he doesn’t know why he’s having it. I didn’t want to ruin his weekend but I did ask him on Friday how he felt about his eyes. I asked him if he wanted to fix them because it’s a close call as to whether or not they need fixing. Medically it’s undeniable but if he wants to learn to live with it I’d be open to that, or at least I think I would be.

I’m back in the world of medical nonsense where gifted surgeons are surrounded by blithering idiots led by a team of lawyers who won’t allow them to simply email me a blank document because someone told them that someone might sue.

All because I ran out of ink.