Dr. Appointments

     So...for any one else that has to see a Neurologist, does your appointment take a million years? Ha, mine always do. My mom and I turn it into a special event - well it already is one since it takes up the majority of my day - so we try to turn it into something kinda fun! 

    First, we head off to Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth, which is about an hour drive.  We used to try to get the first appointment in the morning - because normally in doctor's offices that means you get seen close to on time - but then we realized that also meant we had to deal with rush hour construction traffic. (We didn't have this problem in the other cities we have lived in). So we have learned to try and schedule it for somewhere closer to 10am. It doesn't matter, because either way, we wait forever.

     Cook Children's Pediatric Neuro department used to have this huge open waiting room, and everything echoed. With neuro patients, you usually get a lot of 'loud' patients...so the waiting room usually ended up giving me a headache. Especially because we had to wait forever.  Sometimes I have to get MRI's, Cat Scans and/or X-rays, or a Neuropsych Evauation, or whatever is in plan for that day and then see the doctor.

     Luckily for me, I have always had very nice and friendly doctors. My current doctor, Dr. Donahue, and his associate Dr. Honeycutt like to tease me because even when I was about to go into surgery and they asked how I was doing, I still answered, "Fine!"  And my mom couldn't live without their nurse assistant Sue. She will talk to my mom at anytime to answer any questions, no matter how long it takes.

     Sometimes we do have to wait awhile to see the doctor, and it gets frustrating. But my mom has told me that there were times when I needed emergency surgery because my shunt failed, and my neurologist had to leave his appointments in order to come do my surgery. So I can understand if our appointment is late - someone else could be having an emergency.

     After the hospital, we go find a cool restaurant in Ft. Worth. There are some great ones on West Magnolia. After that, on the way home (at like 2, 3, or 4pm or even sometimes 6pm - just NOT rush hour!) we go get cupcakes! Yay! Sometimes we stop at some stores or something I've been wanting to look at.

  

   I don't even bother going to school on these days because at my old schools you were marked absent at 10 am even if you were there the rest of the day. So, if I didn't make it home before 10 which I don't think I ever actually have, then I don't bother going to school. So, then I never was able to have 'skip' days for fun, because they were all taken up by dr. appointments.

   I remember there was one time my mom and I had to go to my neurologist, and my dad was traveling, and my brother was all upset because he was the only one that had to "work" that day - meaning "go to school"...so he was mad everyone else had a free day off except him! He seems to forget the other time when I had an appointment, my dad was traveling, and my brother was going to an Academy where there was no bus so my mom had to drive him.  Because of where his school was located and the time of my appointment, there was just no way she could get him to school and get me to the appointment, and then be back in time to pick him up. So he got the day off because *I* had an appointment!

    Yeah, spending 7 hours at the hospital is EXACTLY how I like to spend my days off! Ha! :)

Cook Children's Hospital in Ft. Worth