Thursday, November 09, 2006

It's not everyday you get resurrected

That's EXACTLY what happened to me this afternoon. No kidding!

I had a doc appt then had to get some bloodwork done, so I go to pre-register. She asks if I work in the hospital, since I'm wearing my scrubs, and I wearily say, "No...I just finished the 11th day of my shift and I'm starting to shut down now that I don't have to do anything and I'm REALLY looking forward to going home." She does the usual, asking for my insurance card and the script. She pulls up my record and I hear her say, "Hmmm...it says, 'This patient is DECEASED.' I've never seen that before."

I laugh and say, "Well, I almost died a month ago after surgery." She looks concerned and says, "Really?"

"Oh, you know, drug allergy and everything that goes along with that...and nearly slipping into a coma..." I explain, still laughing. At this point in the day, my exhaustion has me delirious.

She asks me to confirm my demographics. What I say matches what's on the screen. She is stumped and calls over her supervisor who coaches her through a variety of screens, but then the SUPERVISOR says, "Wow, this is really strange. We're going to have to call MR (Medical Records)."

I'm enjoying playing along with the humor of the situation and say, "Can you find out WHEN someone decided to kill me?" They had obvious difficulty trying to find the last change date.

The registrar makes the call to MR. I hear her explain the situation which sounds really funny. It's something like, "I have a patient here to pre-register who's showing up as deceased in the system and I was told to call you to have her switched...yes, it's her...yes, we've verified her demos...she's sitting right in front of me!" Moments later, the supervisor asks her to take the person waiting behind me while they sort this out, and I move to the next chair. I say, "You know, this is like when you go to the grocery store and ALL you need is a loaf of bread and ALL the aisles are full of people with jam-packed carts..."

They nod knowingly...as I almost nod off. The supervisor asks me for my driver's license to make a copy, I guess so they can match my photo to be sure I'm me. FINALLY...a third registrar comes along, asks me for my script again, says it was a coding error, apparently a single digit mistake! She sends me on my way.

I go over to the lab and am overjoyed to find some decent reading material: Dog Fancy magazine. After a short wait, a cheery phlebotomist takes me back. He checks my labels against my script and says, "Hmm...one says Wray and one says Way."

I say, "Oh, that's nothing. Half an hour ago I was dead according to your computer system!" We both laughed. He said I made his day.

Upon leaving the hospital and seeing the parking lot jam, I thought, "Oh noooooooo!" But miraculously, I dodged all traffic jams on the way home. This was not only due to my rebirth but my excellent collection of lesser known short cuts. It was a joyous rush hour trip actually, laughing all they way.