Part 2

Alright, here is Part 2 of my story.

Monday morning I called my cardiologist. Now, a little background. The cardiologist that I had been seeing since I discovered a had a heart defect left his practice a couple of years ago. A new doctor took over his practice but I had had a hard time getting to know and understand him. I had only met him once and he seemed a nice enough guy, but his office staff was not great. The first time I had tests with this new doctor it took me 4 months to get tests results back. The doctor had told me to call about the results but each time I called the office staff would tell me they weren't sure what I needed so they sent me to a voicemail for the doctor's nurse. I called once a month getting that same answer for 4 months! I don't feel like I am a very demanding person. I know doctor's offices are busy places so I gave them plenty of time to get back to me. After 4 months I finally called the manager for the facility and that got me some answers pretty quick. After that experience I haven't had much follow up. So when I called Monday morning the office staff started giving me the same run around. I explained what had happened over the weekend, that the ER doctor had wanted me to come in that day, etc. etc. The lady on the phone told me that she didn't know what they needed to do. She said she would have to call me back later. I hated hearing that answer because they NEVER call back. I asked if she thought I would be able to get into see the doctor that week and she told me she wasn't sure what she could do for me. I then tried to explain that I wasn't feeling well and felt nervous about what was happening. She once again told me she didn't know what she could do and she would call later. I hung up the phone in tears... I decided right then that that was enough of that.

I have a good friend who works over at the new Intermountain Medical Center in Cardiology. I gave her a call and explained what had happened. Megan was great! First, she listened to my story while I was super emotional then made some phone calls to people she worked with. Within minutes she was able to tell me more about what my irregular heart rhythm meant and what doctor I should call about it. I immediately called the office she referred me to. The office staff there was super nice! I explained some of my heart history and what had happened over the weekend. They told me that I needed to be seen asap and it just so happened they had an opening available that day with one of the doctors my friend Megan told me to see. What a miracle! These heart doctors can take forever to get into!

That afternoon I went into this new facility, had some tests done, and meet with this new doctor - Dr. Rueben Zitto. What a great guy! He was wonderful! He asked me lots of questions about my past heart history and then gave me a foundation of new knowledge! He first told me that he didn't feel like he could answer any of my questions. He said he had been practicing medicine for 30 years and he had only seen my birth defect about 10 times. He was surprised I had been seeing a regular cardiologist because they don't deal with heart birth defects as much as other pediatric cardiologists. So he said I needed to go see a certain doctor named Dr. Angela Yetman. He felt confident she would have the right answers for me. I really appreciated his honesty and was glad he didn't try to make up answers for me. He did tell me that he thought my heart was going in and out of regular and irregular heart rhythm so I needed to get that checked out soon. He scheduled me for a special test the next day and told me to call this new doctor as soon as possible.

It was wonderful to get some good answers! I felt very relieved and knew that the correct doorways were opening.

The next morning I went in to get a brand new heart monitor that the Intermountain Medical Center had just got the previous week. Getting that was another miracle. I went in first thing in the morning to the hospital and realized that my insurance wasn't covered at Intermountain Medical Center. So, we tried calling some other hospitals to see if they had this same heart monitor available but no one did because the monitor was so brand new. I called Keven and told him what was happening. He reminded me that we did have coverage for this test because we had paid extra for certain insurance benefits that year. So I went and got the right documentation we needed and was able to get the monitor. How grateful I am we elected to get this particular coverage!

When I got home my friend Yeehaw called and said that the family who had the daughter with the same heart defect as mine would be able to meet with me that night. I was pretty surprised we found a time so quickly since when YeeHaw and I first talked about getting together we thought it would have to be in a few weeks. But then we suddenly were able to make it work and I was very anxious to chat with them. What a blessing!

And the start of just that visit with them is a whole other story that I will save for my next post.