One man’s voice

I hate Kaiser Permanente almost as much as I hate anxiety

Posted on July 14th, 2008 in Rants

Tonight, on my way home from work I got a call from my wife. She was noticeably upset over the phone and asked me in a whimpering, exasperated voice to stay on the phone with her. I asked what was going on and she told me that her chest was feeling heavy again and that she was really panicky. This was the way she was feeling Friday night when I was on the phone late into the night trying to find ways to calm her down.

Seeing as I was about 15 minutes away from home at the time I suggested she just keep talking to me. I was actually heading home earlier than normal because she had a doctor’s appointment tonight and I was taking her to it. She told me she had called the Psychiatry department at the hospital looking for something that could help her anxiety. The doctor she talked to prescribed her something and told her it would be ready later in the day. It just so happened to be later in the day.

So I got home, picker her and the kids up, quickly loaded everyone into the truck and headed to Kaiser. I got her to her appointment and then took the kids into the pharmacy to get Sandi’s medications. They had no clue what I was talking about.

Apparently the doctor did not send the prescription to the pharmacy as she said she did. At least that is what the pharmacy told me. They also told me that I could head up to the doctor’s station and see if I could get the prescription resent. So I headed up there and was able to speak to the receptionist for the psychiatry unit. That was revealing.

The doctor never did anything with the prescription. Never filled it out, never called it in, never sent it off… whatever a doctor does when they prescribe meds was exactly what this doctor did not do. So it left my wife without medications that she desperately needs to calm her down. She was having a very bad episode tonight. Again, I was a little concerned for her safety (I know the effects of anxiety and its outward manifestation so I don’t panic too much over it) but really I was just freaking pissed off at anxiety and, more specifically, Kaiser for their lack of attention to detail that left my wife suffering for another day.

I so cannot wait to get through this crap. I am so over it. The doctors need to get off their cabooses and get some freaking answers out to us because this just plain sucks. People should not suffer like this at all.