Be Patient

I got a letter from my urologist’s office that says, in part: “In order to expedite and shorten your office stay, please visit our office website and download the patient information forms. Please complete and bring all forms with you on the day of your appointment; this will avoid the need for forms to be completed at your appointment.” It’s about time for my annual post-cancer checkup, so I need to fill out their form.

Dutifully, I went to their website and saw an option to do the whole thing online. Besides the normal stuff of name, address, insurance information, and to whom they can disclose my medical information, there were pages and pages of other stuff including:

·      Listing of surgeries (and there was room for me to put in up to eight!)

·      Listing of diseases (e.g., asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes)

·      Listing of symptoms (a full page of them)

·      Listing of family history of illnesses including details on cancer

·      Listing of all medicines and supplements and their dosage. Well, good thing I am doing this at home. I had to go into my bathroom and get over a dozen bottles of the stuff I take each day (all but one are supplements/vitamins). If I had done this at their office, I wouldn’t have been able to complete the form.

Even doing this online took me over 20 minutes. So, I’m glad I did this before my appointment, glad I did this at home, and glad they had the online form instead of my having to fill all this out by hand.