Have to hammer, Shoulder shrug

So last Tuesday when I had my high res chest CT I was told that the results will be available in 2-3 business days, meaning no later than Friday.  I heard nothing by then but I was so busy doing party prep I hardly cared.  When Monday passed without a call I again disregarded it and figured I would call Tuesday when I returned to work, a full week after the test was completed.  I left a message and awaited a call back.  When that call never came I called again on Wednesday, leaving a more irate message.  When mid-afternoon hit with no call I called once again.

This time I actually got a person.  I told the woman I had the test over a week ago and was told only 2-3 days for the results.  I then said I had called the past two days and had not be contacted.  She told me they got the message and someone would call me back by the end of the day.  Well of course you know where this is heading, they didn’t call.  So I called this morning and complained again and was told once again someone would be calling me asap.

After hanging up, just for the hell of it I checked my patient portal for our health plan.  I saw that someone did actually post the CT results in there finally.  The Cliff Notes version is my lungs seem fine and the nodule that they saw hasn’t changed and it is still believed to be nothing significant.  It also said “no acute cardiopulmonary disease”.  So I guess it’s good news except that the right side pain and extreme fatigue I feel at times when exercising remains unexplained.  I scheduled a follow up with the on campus med clinic to talk about other options.  Hey I don’t have a problem just living with the symptoms, assuming they are not a precursor to me dropping over dead.

I met a guy from the company that installed our gutters yesterday.  I called because it seems that water is not flowing freely towards the downspouts in some sections which contributes to all of the debris that I found stuffing the gutters on Friday.  He took a look and agreed that water is pooling in some spots but he didn’t have a great remediation for it.  He said because the eaves of the roof slope downward they are limited on how much they can adjust the angles.  He did agree with me that gutter guards would be a good idea for the parts of the roof that are adjacent to the massive oak tree to minimize the clogging.  He also agreed with me that only having one downspout on the left side of the house was an odd recommendation by their sales guy when the gutters were laid out.   When the gutter guards are installed he is going to also add another downspout to that side to help drainage.

If I have learned one thing as an adult, it’s that if you go through life waiting for people to come to you with answers to your questions/problems, you are going to spend a lot of time just treading water.  You have to pull action out of them with repeated, sometimes aggravating effort and determination.