Connie had an injection today, and while there we decided to change oncologist. That is the short version.
A friend of ours was there too (Debbie, with her husband Sam), who are both going through their own cancer difficulties. They both have Dr. Tetreault and think very highly of him. So we spent some time on the parking lot talking with Debbie.
We actually had an appointment early on Wednesday with Tetreault, kind of a consultation concerning possibly switching from Dr. Ellison to him. Honestly, he definitely wasn't selling himself. Matter of fact, we kind of got the impression that he was, if anything, underselling himself. But he said it was our decision, and it is not at all unusual for any patient to switch doctors. Sometimes rather often.
So while Connie was undergoing the chemo treatment, I decided to just go sit out on the parking lot in the jeep. While there, I was stewing over the new found information that Connie would be undergoing chemo every week now. Three chems one week, then two weeks of one chem each, then back to the three chems. 3 chems, 1 chem, 1 chem, 3chems, each week. And as far as I know, one shot of that Zarxio every Thursday to increase white blood cell counts. I sure didn't like the idea of there not being any break in the chemo so Connie's body could try to recover a bit. So I decided to text Dr. Ellison to see if there was some alternative treatment that could put Connie back on the chemo just once every 3 weeks. Well, that conversation took an interesting turn. Evidently Ellison thought we had an appointment with HER this morning instead of Tetreault, and the impression I got was that it irked her. I mentioned that we felt we wanted to talk with another oncologist, and we felt that we just were not getting information in a timely fashion concerning Connie's treatment changes. Ellison said that IF we had kept our appointment with her this morning, that would have been explained to us. Frankly, I didn't find that believable. We should have been informed about this at least a week ago when the change was thrown at us. Besides that, as for the appointment, we had on paper that we had an appointment with Tetreault, not Ellison. Matter of fact, the office called Connie Tuesday night to confirm that appointment with Tetreault. So yeah, that just gave me a very odd feeling about this person who had Connie's health (and possibly her life) in her hands.
BTW, I did show the text conversation to Debbie, just as a sanity check to make sure I wasn't coming on too strong, or being way out in right field concerning my interpretation of how that conversation went.
Then to top that off, Connie has been having a pretty severe cough for quite a long time, so the nurse in the infusion room suggested getting a prescription for something for that cough. So he forwarded the request to Ellison to call in a prescription for a cough medication. Ellison just bounced it back saying that Connie needed to see her primary care physician about it and obviously wasn't going to call in the prescription.
Well, that pretty much settled it in my book.
So, today after Connie's shot, while still on the parking lot we just talked it over about changing doctor's and just walked back into the facility (Florida Cancer Specialists), talked to the office manager and made the doctor change request official.
Will that make things better? Heck, I sure hope so. But suppose that Ellison is Tetreault's daughter or something?
