Discrimination Take Two

K found a lump in her breast two weeks ago. As I've mentioned before, we have family history of bre@st c@ncer in the 20's. K is uninsured and has been since she delivered A, three and a half years ago. Her school is a c0mmunity coIIege that does not offer student insurance, so I had to find a place to help. After calling a few places I was basically told that since she was under 50 there was nothing we could do except go to one of the two income based clinics here locally. I decided to go with the clinic we didn't go to last year because of the bad experience we had.

The lady on the phone told me we couldn't schedule an appointment until we came in to fill out paperwork. She said after that, they would schedule me an appointment for next month. I explained our situation and family history, telling her waiting until next month wasn't an option. I was told I could come in between 8 am and 6 pm as a walk-in, but they couldn't tell me how long I would have to wait. Having worked in a doctor's office, I understood and didn't mind. I told the lady we would be there two days later, on K's next day off of school.

I wasn't sure where the clinic was located because I hadn't traveled in that area before. When I got to the street I was supposed to turn down and found a roadblock, I was confused. I traveled in a square trying to find an entrance to this place with no luck. After asking two crackheads and a guy at an auto shop, we ended up at the health department, which apparently was not the right place. The nice lady gave us directions thinking we would avoid the roadblock and detour, but I still found myself running into cones and signs. I even called the clinic to ask for directions, but the lady told me she wasn't from the area and couldn't help me. I saw a lady running out of a cemetery and asked her if she knew where the clinic was. Luckily, she did. She told me to drive around the roadblock sign and take a right.

I drove by the roadblock signs but still couldn't seem to find the clinic. I finally decided to pull into the high school, hoping someone would at least be able to give me directions. I asked the first guy I saw if he knew where it was, he pointed down the hallway. What? A health clinic in a high school? Why didn't anyone tell me this as I was going in circles?

When I got to the front desk of the clinic I told the lady K was here as a new patient walk-in. She promptly told me I had to schedule an appointment to get seen. I could tell by her voice that she was the lady I had spoken to on the phone two days before. I told her I had called and was told by someone (playing dumb) that I could walk in between 8 am and 6 pm to get an appointment because of the nature of the visit and our family history. She realized who I was and told me so. Except, she said she never told me to come in between 8 am and 6 pm, she told me to come in and fill out paperwork. I told her I wrote down everything she told me because getting an appointment was very serious for K to me. She rolled her eyes as she told me "I didn't tell you that. Maybe you didn't feel like writing down what I told you." She handed me a clip board and told me to fill out some paperwork.

After I filled out the paperwork, which by the way caused flashbacks of my Mom filling out paperwork for three kids every year on school registration day, I handed it back to the lady at the front desk. She called our name after about 15 minutes of shit talking and laughing to her co-worker. She asked what we wanted to do. "Get seen", I said. It was then that she told me they only do walk-in's from 8 am to 11 am. "And you didn't tell me this on the phone two days ago because..." I asked. She told me she "wasn't are-gue-en wit me because I ain't try-en duh be rewd wit chew." I told her it was too late to be rude to me, you're lying to my face about what you said on the phone and it if was you're 22 year old sister with a lump in her breast with a family history of c@ncer you wouldn't want to be treated this way. During my rant, she rolled her eyes, huffed and puffed, answered at least seven phone calls without saying "excuse me, hang on" one time.

I finally said to hell with this shit, I want to talk to your manager. Funny, no one could find a manager. As I was waiting for the phone number, her coworker told me to come up. She told me she could get me in Wednesday, six days later. I told her to go ahead and schedule me and I would talk to the medical director between now and then. They gave me the phone number and I called him and left a voice message on his phone to call me, but it's been 10 days and I haven't heard from him.

We went to the appointment on Wednesday, but after getting K weighed and going over her medical history the doctor made the decision to have us come back two days later. They had K coming in for a lump in her breast, but felt it would be an injustice not to do a complete physical at the same time. She told me she didn't normally work on Fridays, but made an exception for us.

Friday we came in for the physical. She said it was only cysts and told her to cut out caffeine. She gave her two scripts and told her to come back next week to discuss her lab results. She has an appointment scheduled on March 18th (because apparently the front desk bitch lady said there aren't any appointments until then despite the doctor saying to come in next week for results). If there are any bad results, I'm sure they will let us know before then. They are also trying to see if she qualifies for an ultrasound to check her breast and abdominal area since she's been complaining of abdominal pain, too. On the bright side, her cervix looks good which we were worried about because she had precancerous cells shortly after A was born and we were worried the abdominal pain was from that.

I have to say, I am really fucking sick of being discriminated against at these clinics. The two times we take advantage of "help" when we need it and we get shit on while everyone else around us gets help. I have a feeling why, but I guess it's best left unsaid.

I do plan to try to get a hold of the medical director guy again this week. I don't appreciate the way we were treated, insured or not. It's unacceptable.