Step one: describe your symptoms to a scheduler, who types them into a system that has never once been described as intuitive. Step two: wait. Step three: wait again, but now holding two phones and one increasingly personal grudge.
Somewhere in the middle, a fax machine — a device that peaked during the disco era — becomes the load-bearing wall of your healthcare. One wrong digit and your entire medical history emails a stranger named Doug.
And the hoops! Goodness, the hoops. Jump here for a prior authorization. Jump there for a form nobody appears to read. Backflip annually to prove the chronic thing is still, in fact, chronic. It has been extremely committed so far. Congratulations to it.
This is not medicine. This is an obstacle course with a co-pay. And unlike actual sports, nobody hands you a medal at the end. You get another appointment. In November. To follow up on the follow-up.
