Chasing that unicorn called “Paperless”

Technology is not my favorite. 

Oh sure, there are a lot of ways it makes life easier. I get that. But it also adds some stressors that I definitely do not need.

So here is a hopefully funny tale of our adventures this week facing the worst sides of it. 

We have our annual checkups next week, which, as you probably know, require blood work. Our doctor’s office, which is located in another town we frequent regularly, faxed the orders to our local hospital a few weeks ago. 

On Monday night, Russ and I did that lovely thing we call fasting where you can only have water after 6 pm. It was delightful to watch the clock tick away as we sipped our tasteless beverage. 

Tuesday we had to get up early and got ready for the day with no coffee.

NO COFFEE. 

We got all checked in at the registration desk, went to the lab and were informed that they had no record of a fax from our doctor.

Awesome. 

Since it was super early, we had to wait until the office opened to try to reach the nurse. Of course no one answers the phone, it’s all automated. I left a voicemail asking them to fax the orders again and we would stop by later to pick up a paper copy just to be certain we had everything for the next day’s attempt. 

I never heard back from the nurse as we were heading north, so I called again and went through all the prompts and left the same message. 

As we entered the doctor’s office that afternoon, it was a bit like triage as there were temporary desks set up and a lot of staff manning various places. The reason for the extra chaos and the fact that the nurse never returned the call was because their computer and phone systems had been all day. 

This paperless office handed me a piece of paper to write out my request so they could take it to the nurse. 

We sat and waited quite a long while and it was running into crunch time to go pick up the grands from school. I got back in the line to ask about my request only to be told that since the system was down, the nurse would have to ask the doctor to rewrite all the orders and this could take a while.

Also awesome. 

We left without our papers but cheerfully understanding that we would at least be able to eat and drink after 6 PM.

Yay for us. 

The next day I was able to talk to the nurse and she said she would re-fax the orders and also make paper copies for us to pick up. Since we were going back up for a basketball game Wednesday evening, it worked great. 

This morning, fasted and up early again, armed with paper copies just in case, we headed back the hospital for our lab work. 

I told the receptionist there should be fax copies, but she reached out her hand and took the rather fat envelop from my hand. She said it was very good we had those copies as the only person who could access the fax copies this morning had called off work and no one could have pulled them up for us. 

Wow. 

This is why I kind of laugh, and cry just a little, when an office tells me they are going paperless. 

Really?

Because paper never “goes down” or “calls off” ….

So three cheers for paper <3