High risk pregnancy in Ontario's excuse for a health care system (I'm allowed to talk like that, I work with it) is an exercise in liability-avoidant bureaucracy.
My "family" doctor can't tell me anything other than that midwives will kill both me and my baby.
The OB she referred me to won't even let me MEET her until I have a full nuchial screening clutched in my tired little hands. I was standing outside her office with the ultrasound pictures and heart rate readout and everything, and her admin wouldn't even let me near the door.
The midwife that I met with last week, the nice granola one who laughs at all of Dave's jokes (she's a SAINT I tell you!) and who has ten years of massage therapy under her belt (woo!) WANTS to see me, but her agency won't let her until she has confirmation from my midwife-hating doctor that I'm not clinically diagnosed with hypertension, so much as just someone who has oddly high blood pressure.
So until an hour ago, my next four weeks were going to look like this:
This week (week 1): Second ultrasound in order to determine baby size and due date since the numbers are kind of funny.
Next week (week 2): Third ultrasound to look at the fold of skin at the baby's neck to see if it looks like Down's. Proceed with printout of this screening in order to book appointment with Mt-Sinai OB.
Third week: Go meet with most likely midwife hating OB who will further terrify me that I'm going to have a stroke during labour, and that it will likely be caused by a midwife looking at me funny. (can you tell I'm a little frustrated?)
Fourth week: Meet with midwife again to determine whether or not they can take me into their care. By then midwife will have spoken with my family doctor, cardiologist, the OB, and have looked at all THREE ultrasounds. (You're only supposed to have TWO over a pregnancy, not three barely out of the first trimester!)
Granted, I should be touched by the amount of care that I am receiving, and the midwife's phone call at 8pm today while I was lost in thought in the meat aisle of the grocery store, was above and beyond the call as far as I'm concerned. She attended a labour YESTERDAY and is already calling me back to make sure I'm okay.
After we talked a bit, the plans changed again:
No more ultrasound next week at Mt-Sinai, land of the suffocating soul-death.
No more waiting for appointment with soul-dead Mt Sinai OB.
The ultrasound this week will cover everything, and next week I'll meet with a nearer OB right off the bat on the midwife's referral, and we'll talk shop. AND, this way if the midwife CAN'T be my primary caregiver, she can still remain involved, and I can be assured that my doctor is at least relatively human and not a paperwork monkey.
If only fatarse physicians could pay as much attention to privacy legislation that protect patients, as they do to the regulations that cover their oversized asses.
Ahem.
This was brought to you by the letters: short on sleep, and confused by the system.
In other news, today my VP let me order him AWAY from the WHITEBOARD, and he actually sat down and giggled when I instructed him to "sit still and listen".
Amazing the kind of charisma I'm managing to muster once in a while these days...