Healthcare’s Downfall

Last year, I cried at my mammogram, which is cringeworthy for someone like me who abhors crying in public. Back in 2022, I wrote a post about a very positive experience with my 3rd mammo ever, but 2023 was quite different. The appointment built on several layers of issues, effectively creating a massive sandwich of distress. I don’t yet know what my 2024 mammogram experience will be like, since my appointments continue to be pushed back, and I occasionally need to reschedule on my end as well, the annual mammo continues to fall later and later into winter and now spring (I think they mean to schedule it in May this year). But I wanted to share a little story from February 2023 that I think does a good job of depicting the state of healthcare post-COVID. 

I started off the scheduling process with some mild anxiety; my oncologist had wanted me to schedule the mammogram exactly six months after my MRI, which would place it in March, and the radiology scheduling department wanted it to be exactly a year after my previous mammogram, which would place it in early January; the months weren’t adding up, but the calls from radiology kept coming in, so I finally locked down an appointment in February 2023.

I managed to hit every damn red light in town on the way to the clinic, so by the time I arrived at the clinic, I was already 2 or 3 minutes late. Not a great start. The parking lot was crammed with people (and their badly-parked vehicles, thanks to the usual Midwest winter snow/ice parking lot disaster), more than I’d ever seen there, or at least more than I’d seen post-2020. I had to dart out of the way of two cars whose drivers weren’t paying any attention as I walked all the way from the empty spot at the back of the lot.

I then found myself pressed into a huge herd of people trying to enter the one tiny doorway by the front for initial screenings and then into a line of at least 20 people waiting to be checked in by one of just two receptionists. I waited impatiently; I felt I was tricked into being late by this line and a lack of staff.

Another staff member must have sensed the impatience of the long line because she gestured to three brand new kiosks that were now also being used for self check-ins (of course, one was already covered with a “Out of Service” sign). I quickly typed in my information only for the screen to say that I was too late to check in using the kiosk and to please check in with the receptionist.

I looked back at the two receptionists to see there was now only one woman there and that the line was longer than ever. I sighed outwardly, and the woman who gestured me to the kiosk saw me and the kiosk behind me and said, “Oh, I’ll help you. Wait here.”

I waited as told, wondering if she was going to check me in somehow without my knowing. Instead, imagine my astonishment when she reappeared a couple minutes later with a business card from the radiology department and said, “Here. Call to reschedule.”

“What? I am right here. I’m only a few minutes late because of this long line.” Okay, so I was initially two minutes late; that was on me and the traffic. But if the check-in process wasn’t so abysmally horrible, I would have been 4, 5 minutes late, tops. Totally within range to still be seen without throwing off the rest of the day’s appointments. I was now approaching 15 minutes past my scheduled time and feeling flustered.

“Sorry.” She shrugged.

“I drove half an hour to get here. I’m a cancer survivor. I need to get my yearly mammogram. Can I please just get in there? The Breast Center is right behind us.” I pointed ten feet away, where there used to be a pleasant check-in person and was now only an empty desk because the hospital doesn’t want to hire receptionists anymore or pretends they can’t afford to (although, haha, the extravagant bills my insurance company and everyone else’s are paying them every year really beg to differ).

“You have to reschedule. It’s all you can do.” The woman waved me off.

Well, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t leaving. I shuffled over the Breast Center, which is a section of radiology dedicated to mammography. It has a nice little separate waiting room and a glass door into the area with the staff. I walked over and knocked on the glass door. No answer. It was worth a try.

I walked down the entirety of the Breast Center waiting room (empty; imagine that; it’s not like my late appointment was infringing on anyone else’s time). At the end of the waiting room was a half-open door, behind which I found a woman at a desk. A plaque on her door read “Lead Technician”.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, now really near tears. “But I just want to get my mammogram done and nobody will check me in and I’m a cancer survivor, so these appointments make me a bit anxious. The line made me late and–” I broke off and tried not to sound like a complete basket case. What was I doing? I should just go home.

“Oh, here, let me help you.”

She walked me over to the receptionist area, which now had an amazingly short line, and I was checked in quickly and easily and brought back to the Breast Center. Embarrassingly, I started crying. I kept apologizing to the lead technician, who was still walking alongside me. She assured me that it was fine and that there used to be a receptionist in the center, there really should still be one, and not to worry.

Two gray haired women walked into the Breast Center then, and I tried to dry my eyes, still feeling incredibly embarrassed that I’d lost it in the clinic. I recalled my very first mammogram. I hadn’t cried at that one, even though I’d had an enormous tumor that was squashed painfully by the machine and my one-week-old baby sat in a carrier in the waiting room with my husband. There had been so many people hovering around me– at least two comforting technicians and a receptionist who held the baby while Eli ran to the coffee shop that used to be in the lobby for warm water to mix his formula. I couldn’t help but feel I had been in good hands then.

In contrast, I’d felt herded like an animal this time. An unwanted one at that. At least until I’d interrupted that poor technician, the only person who had offered to help.

I’m not employed in the healthcare field, so I cannot speak for it as an insider. But from my experience of living through healthcare as a cancer patient, it has changed a lot during and since the pandemic. I feel like some of the compassion that I remembered from the start of my treatment has evaporated. Don’t get me wrong as I still have amazing doctors and nurses, and I appreciate them immensely, but they seem to be in the minority. And the outside face of the hospital has grown bitter and clueless.

Maybe a part of it is simply the effects of life after cancer treatment, where you’re no longer surrounded by folks trying to keep you alive (and comfortable) and you’re simply abandoned to your own devices. But I wonder if some of it doesn’t boil down to the general staffing issues, the stressed-out doctors and nurses, and new staff members who have no clue what they’re doing (cue the woman who told me to reschedule an appointment I was already there for). Either way, these post-cancer appointments have been more stressful at times than I ever imagined they could be. And I don’t think it’s all in my head.