Twice in the last few months I’ve experienced something I don’t remember ever occurring. Last night I went to sleep early, about 6:30pm, after a very exhausting day navigating the medical system. I woke up at about 7:30. It was only an hour later but it felt like I had slept the night and overslept into the next day. It took several minutes for me to realize it was still Wednesday, but the state of my mind, still mostly asleep, made it hard to decide if it was truly Wednesday or if I had to get out of bed and be somewhere.
Because this happened before, a couple of months ago, I was more quickly able to determine what was going on. But the last time this happened it took over an hour for me to understand that I’d woken up a couple of hours after turning in, not 12 or 14 hours later. I did sleep well, though. This time. But only after making a pit stop on that 7:30am landing pad.
Yesterday proved, once again, that I am too stupid to use Zocdoc, or else Zocdoc is just stupid. I do not understand its purpose or why Ibelieve in it, but it has almost always sent me to a doctor it says is in my network but in fact they are not. I showed up at 10am yesterday to an eye doctor on Easy 58th Street, only to be turned away. Apparently this office accepted certain parts of my coverage but not anything I could have used yesterday. I don’t know what that means exactly but I called the insuror who said they do eye coverage under a prograam called EyeMed, which I’ve never heard of. He transferred me to EyeMed and that number told me to call the number on the back of my EyeMed card. I don’t have an EyeMed card.
If not for the meds I take these days I might have been overcome by anxiety and anger at all this back and forth. I was distressed because I have an eye infection that needs tending to. I didn’t just need an eye exam I needed antibiotics and, on a personal level, assurance that this really was an infection and not a result of self-harm that I have been known to inflict upon myself under certain circumstances. There was no bruise or bleeding as there has been in the past. No black eye this time, though a slightly visible inflammation is there for the staring-at.
I did finally make it to an opthalmologist who, without me asking, said it was a sty that got infected. I’m guessing it happened in my sleep, which can sometimes be violent. This time, though, it does not seem to be the case that I did this to myself. I did, however, wake up with an unexpected bruise on my left arm, a minor injury almost certainly incurred during a sleep torment.
I feel fortunate I was able to get to an appropriate doctor at a 1pm same day appointment. No thanks to ZocDoc, mind you. I learned this time that it’s best to stay within the insurance provider itself and leave aside the clever, intrusive apps. I seem to remember one doctor’s office where someone implied that ZocDoc was a pain in their collective ass and they told me not to use it. I know that it is not reliable in terms of appointments. The 1pm appoointment I landed through the insuror’s website was not available on ZocDoc, for instance. ZocDoc also does not know if a referral is required, which would fall under my responsibility to know but I don’t see doctors often enough to stay fluent in these things.
A lot of other stuff happened yesterday but I gotta get going now.
