Another Great Monday.

What a frustrating day... which is the last thing I need.

I went to get my blood work done around 10am...I went in to the blood clinic and dropped off my health card. As I suspected, there was at least 10 people who were in front of me so I ran upstairs to drop off my neupogen package (all my used needles, containers and the package they came in), ordered my drugs for my next chemo session and I also dropped off a package of old drugs. The pharmacy there is running a program to properly get rid of old drugs, apparently you shouldn't flush any medications down the toilet...never considered this before. Anyways, I then went into the chemo treatment area to speak with Sheila about the computer workstations and chairs....She was very excited. She wanted me to speak with the people that are in charge of donations and such, so she got on the phone to see if they were available and I went back downstairs to get my blood work done. I was down there for about 10 minutes when Sheila came back down to get me because Victoria and Sharon were waiting to speak with me (and Sheila said that she would do draw my blood upstairs in the chemo area). So, I met the two ladies and they too were excited but said that I needed to speak to Lynn who was not in at this time...so it was left that they Lynn would call me in the next couple of days. Sheila then drew my blood and off I went. It was around 11am.

Late last night I got an email from a friend who works in the pathology department (I didn't know she worked there...) saying that she would help me any way that she could with finding my slides. I saw her today at the cancer center working in the blood clinic and I was able to say hi and thank her...

So, after the blood drawing I went to the pathology department to see if my presence could help anything...Ug. So I was able to get in quick and talk with Erin (I believe that she is an administrator). She had spoken with the nurses and Lena from Karmanos. The nurses told Erin that they are 100% positive that they mailed them...and Erin is 100% positive that they have not recieved them. Ug.

Knowing my audience I can't curse and swear as I would like.

So I asked Erin about worst case scenario - what if the slides are lost? Can I get more slides made...she wasn't sure and she said that she would have to go speak to the director. So she came back and said that he wanted to talk to me...ok. So I went in to speak with Dr. Shum who is the Medical Director and Chief of Pathology. Essentially, he just wanted to let me know that there is a chance that if they were to try and make new slides, it may not work. Several reasons; not enough tissue (I had 33 slides which requires a lot of tissue and these were cut from 3 blocks) and the results of how they treat the slides may be different. My discussion with him was at least 15min and much more complicated than what I am typing...What he recommended that I do for when I wanted to deal with Dr. Gascoyne, is to sign out the blocks myself, so that I am responsible, and let Dr. Gascoyne to the slide preparation. I am not sure if this will fly. I'll have to find that out...

So...I went home and paged Dr. Runge Morris's nurse again to see if they had discovered anything. She called me back fairly quickly and we talked for about 10min. Bottom line - they are 100% positive that they were mailed and that there is nothing I can do. She threw out a ton of scenarios and options for me....I could contact the postal office in Windsor because it is waaay different than the one in the US because it is waaaay smaller and it could be just sitting on the shelf (are you kidding me?). Or, it could be sitting on the shelf at the Windsor hospital mail room...so I should go look there. OK I said...so what about the US postal service and the postal office at Karmanos...it could just as likely be there...she stumbled on that one and referred back to how small the Toronto office is...yes, she said Toronto. I asked why it would be sitting on a shelf at the post office...she said a wrong postal code...so you're saying you may have written the wrong postal code - stumbled again...no...it could have been read wrong. Ug.

So who is accountable? and how? .......

Anyways...looks like I'm screwed. I may be totally screwed too because I may not be able to get my slides redone.

So then I called the cancer center to get my blood work results. What happens is that I leave a specific question as a message for my nurse to call me back. This was around 2pm because I know it takes a few hours to get the results and I really don't want to bother them. I waited patiently until 4pm to call them back (because the center is open until 4:30) but my nurse had already left for the day.

More cursing and swearing.

So no blood results. I hope to find out tomorrow.

Other than all the crap today...I feel fine. No head ache or nausea.

Ciao.