Telephone Tracking

In a blog entry from April 2011 entitled “Survivor,” [To read this entry, click here.] I described my love of reality competition television shows, such as The Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars, and The Apprentice, and I suggested a challenging season for a perennial favorite—Survivor: Autism. For this season, contestants would have to complete tasks autism parents regularly face, such as fighting insurance companies for benefits and searching for the best therapies and interventions to help their children, as well as patiently dealing with their children’s unusual behaviors, including watching videos repeatedly. This week, I realized that one more challenge could be added to my proposed reality show: "Telephone Tracking," in which contestants armed only with a phone try to get needed information as quickly as possibly without losing their tempers or their sanity.

One of these tasks would involve tracking down medically related information. About a week ago, I called Alex’s psychiatric nurse practitioner’s office with concerns that he was jittery upon awakening, like someone who had drunk too much coffee. He would physically shake and tell us that he was “nervous.” As with many medical offices, to speak with a human, I had to listen first to the recording that warns the caller, “If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911” before I could speak with one of the nurses. After explaining Alex’s condition, the nurse relayed the message to the nurse practitioner, and the nurse called me back promptly, which I appreciated. Thinking that Alex’s bedtime medications were not carrying him through the night until his morning medications became effective, his nurse practitioner decided to increase slightly two of his bedtime medication dosages. This change made complete sense to me, and I was glad she was willing to make this adaptation without needing to see Alex first. To monitor the effects to these slight modifications, she also wanted him to have a blood test after one week to check the levels of these two drugs to make sure they were within proper ranges. I asked the nurse to send lab orders to the lab where we have taken Alex the past several months to have blood draws, and she told me she would take care of this.

Because my goal is to keep things always moving smoothly for Alex, I decided to call the lab a few days ahead of the blood draw to make certain that they had received the orders from the nurse practitioner’s office. This lab test requires fasting, which meant that we would be taking Alex as soon as he awakened and before he took any of his morning medications and before he’d had anything to eat. I didn’t want us to get to the lab and have any paperwork confusion while we were also dealing with a hungry kid in need of his medications. When I called the lab, they checked through the records and did not have orders for a lab test for Alex, so I had to call his nurse practitioner’s office again, this time armed with the phone number of the lab. The nurse told me she would check his file and call me back. Once again, she returned my call quickly and informed me that they had sent the orders to the wrong lab. I asked her to send them to our chosen lab, and she assured me that she would do so. After waiting a few hours, I once again called the lab to see if they’d received the orders, and they told me that the nurse practitioner’s office had faxed them that afternoon.  So, after four phone calls, we seemed to have everything straightened out for Alex’s blood tests.

On Wednesday morning, we waited for Alex to awaken so that we could take him immediately to the Chesterton Health and Emergency Center for his lab work. Once we arrived, we were pleased to see that we were the only ones in the waiting room, and Alex happily watched the big screen television with Ed as I completed the necessary paperwork with the registration clerk. As she was typing in the information, she asked me, “Is his doctor’s office open right now?” This made my stomach turn, as I suspected some crucial piece of information was missing. I told her that I knew his nurse practitioner was likely at the hospital doing her rounds in the morning rather than being at her office. Then I asked why she needed to call, and she said that the office had failed to provide a diagnosis code for the testing, which insurance would need. Immediately, I told her that his diagnosis is autism, which is code number 299.0. She still seemed a bit hesitant, and I more assertively told her that every test we had done there had been under the 299.0 diagnosis. Apparently, I was convincing because she went ahead and completed the registration process without calling the doctor’s office.

After that, the lab technician called us back to do Alex’s blood draw, and he, as he always does with lab tests, handled the procedure amazingly well, calmly sitting still the entire time. Moreover, he didn’t even flinch when the needle went in his vein. The lab technician was efficient and pleasant, and we were relieved to have that task behind us. One surprise in all this, however, was that they told us his nurse practitioner wanted the test repeated in a week, which her nurses had not conveyed to us in the four phone calls I had with two of them.  And so, we will do this again later this week, and hopefully Alex will be just as cooperative as he was last week.  On a positive note, the change in medication seems to be helping Alex in the morning, so the efforts I’ve made through the various phone calls have been worth my time. Also, the lab has the orders for the upcoming test, so I won’t need to make phone calls regarding that. However, I’m betting that I will have to call the nurse practitioner’s office to get the test results. It’s a good thing my telephone communication skills are polished so that I can track down the information I need to help Alex. I realized this again later this week when I received a letter from Medicaid stating that Alex’s benefits would be discontinued because of my alleged “failure” to send them financial records they needed. This put my phone skills and patience to the test once again, but that’s a story for next week’s blog. To be continued…

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8