then there’s the medical forms. i have a 37 page deck of paper to give to my primary care physician. how do you think she’s going to feel about that? now about half of those pages are explanations or backup info to help her fill out the forms. but i’m afraid to even give it to her. maybe i should hide it behind my back and first tell her that i’m having an awful anxiety attack, then show her why.
why oh why did i ever admit to half the stuff i did? oh yeah, full disclosure and honesty. but filling out a two page form because i have shoe inserts? and are shoe inserts technically orthotics? they cost me enough (not covered by insurance) to count as something, i suppose.
gotta get the vision form filled out. i hope they have all the right info from my exam and don’t have to do something additional.
then there’s another smaller packet of forms i had to send off to a specialist. hopefully that won’t take too much hoop-jumping.
oh, but there’s still the big rub: sleep issues. among all those forms, they didn’t send me anything concerning sleep conditions. but i know i’ll have a bunch more paperwork when that gets revealed. or at least i hope i do, because the alternative is ugly. they don’t like people with sleep apnea. it’s considered a condition for which most people are disqualified from service. and having a CPAP makes placement even more difficult, if not impossible. (after all, how many places with reliable, consistent electricity actually need the peace corps?) so i somehow have to convince them that i don’t need the CPAP and that the apnea does not interfere with my life, which may be medically impossible to get by. (the ultimate irony is that the CPAP doesn’t even help! and none of my sleep problems have been resolved.) one saving grace is that i have an appointment with a sleep neurologist, so when they finally send me forms, i can get a specialist to fill it out. maybe i only need to convince that doctor that i don’t need the CPAP for peace corps purposes. that appointment, however, which i made about a month ago, isn’t until august 30th. i guess they figure that if you have to wait over 3 months to get in to see the doctor, you will have slept sooner or later along the way.
Hi Lori,
ReplyDeleteYou did the right thing by being honest, especially if there are things that will come up along the way. Better to be honest than have someone think you were hiding something!
I had the same "How can I ask her to fill all this out?" feeling. What I did to make it easier was write out all the information I had for each thing requiring explanation - dates, symptoms, etc. I used colored sticky flags to indicate all the places a signature was required. In other words, I made it as easy as possible for her to go through page by page by having it all prepared for her. I won the lottery when her next patient after me cancelled, so we had twice the time to sit together. Then, I left it with her and picked it up fully completed two days later.
Hope this helps, and good luck!