Insensitive email triggers total meltdown

Melissa, me, and Dr. Marty

So this happened.

I had a checkup scheduled for today, with Melissa, at 2 p.m. before the light therapy on my blood. It was a shorter interval than usual – four weeks – but we made it for that because I had several ongoing matters to discuss.

Then I realized I had too much to do work to do this week. I emailed Melissa with a copy to Nicole, the (relatively) new scheduler, and I asked if we could move it back two weeks.

She wrote back,

"I am happy to move your labs and appointment to 11/7. Unfortunately, Melissa will be transitioning to a different department so you will see a different nurse practitioner.

Please let me know what will work for you.
Regards,
Nicole

This triggered an automatic meltdown.

If you've read this blog for even a little while, you know how attached I am to my nurse practitioner. She's seen me through ups and downs for more than 10 years.

For International Women's Day, when Healthline asked me to pick a woman to honor in their "day without her" feature by picking a woman it would be hard to live without, I wrote,

“My nurse practitioner, because she knows how much I go through and calms me down when I get nervous, always saying the right thing. She helps me coordinate my many doctors’ appointments, answers emails even on a weekend when she is busy with her husband and two young sons, cares as much about my mental health as my physical health, and most of all has become a true friend.”

Back to the meltdown.

I don't know why this happens, but often when I get very upset I knock something over. It happened the day Joe moved out, when I was crying so much, and not paying attention to the space around me, that I knocked over a glass of Gatorade...right onto my MacBook Air. I had to get the insides replaced. It was a costly mistake.

Yesterday I was sitting at my kitchen table, where you can often find me typing away, looking out onto the patio and the so-called garden, when I read the email.

I started crying. And knocked over a glass of water. It spilled all over the kitchen table, soaking pads and papers. It just missed my computer, though. I mopped it up. I texted Melissa, "Can you call me?" I don't know which she saw first, that, or the page that I sent.

Due to the tears, I could barely answer.

She said, "What's wrong?"

I said quickly, "It's not my health," because what with all my mishaps, that would be the first thing a person would expect.

I told her about the email.

She said she hadn't seen it, she was sorry about the way it happened, and she had wanted to talk to me in person. I said I would go in a little early today so we can talk in person. I mentioned that it hit me especially hard due to what happened with Mary Lou. That was shorthand for the clumsy way Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's decided that I could no longer see my longtime social worker because she would be in-patient and the other social worker would be outpatient.

First Mary Lou had said she could stick with longterm patients. Then they told her that it wasn't the case. She wasn't even supposed to respond to my emails...a total cut-off of a vital support person. My sister and I talked to the social work department heads. They said, not in these words, to suck it up.

Mary Lou said that if I went over to the sixth floor at the hospital (my old home away from home), she could meet me in a conference room from time to time. We did that for a while. It was good to see her, but it felt like we were sneaking around. At this point she seems to have disappeared. I asked some people if she retired, and they said they didn't know.

Meanwhile the social worker who I was supposed to see, who I didn't want to see because we weren't a good fit, saw me a couple of times and then disappeared. I got a new social worker with no background in oncology. The questions she asked me sounded like she hadn't read my file. I said I didn't want to see her again.

People move around. We always felt the world would end when we lost a tennis coach. But how you take it has a lot to do with the way you learn about it.

I feel guilty griping about the place that saved my life, but hey, we transplant recipients are "babies" with sensitive skin.

Actually I don't think you even need to be super sensitive to be thrown for a loop by an email like the one that I received, about Melissa.

I believe that the two more experienced schedulers before Nicole wouldn't have done that. I think they would have checked in with Melissa and asked how to handle it.

As I wrote in this post for Health Union, how things are said determines how they are received. This sounds like a truism but still it doesn't always work out that people present sensitive topics in the best way.

I sometimes regret it when I dash out an email, but I don't regret that I wrote back, "Not ok to find this out by email."

To be continued, after my visit today.