Eeek!

Believe it or not, completing my physical has gotten trickier.

Donald managed to get me signed up for off-base care with a civilian provider. When he got stationed at Fort Lewis and switched us from TriCare Standard to TriCare Prime, it took a month to take effect. That was the first 3 weeks of waiting, and the most reasonable.

Well, after I had all my labs taken (on the 9th) and had set up an appointment for the 20th, he hastily signed me up for civilian care. I'm grateful, I really am. I would have done the same thing, but... well, he didn't think to ask when it would take effect.
Well, it took effect immediately... and we didn't know it.

On the 15th, I drove to Fort Lewis after work (a 1 hour drive) to have my TB test read.
...and then was told that I didn't belong to their clinic anymore, and thus were not sure if they could read my TB test.

In very friendly and professional terms, I essentially told them to just shut up and read my freakin test because they had given it to me 48 hours prior and if they didn't read it then nobody could.

I then used my brief moment with the nurse to request my lab results from the 9th. Turns out I'm disease free! Everything came back clean.
Except HIV.
Which is to say, I couldn't be given the results to that test. Only my primary care doctor is authorized to give me those results due to some reasonable, yet highly inconvenient, privacy laws.

At check-out, I asked the front desk if there was a way around my HIV results (secretly, I wanted the results on paper so I could take all my results to my off-post clinic's PromptCare). They say no... then inform me that they must cancel my appointment for the 20th due to my switch to off-base care.

I spent the next hour being sent from office to office, trying to find someone authorized to bend some rules to make up for the misery I'd been put through.
No dice.

The best they can do is to "try", and then promise to call me back. They called once (a few hours later) to tell me they were trying, and then promise to call with an official answer later. We never got that call. I wasn't shocked.

The soonest my new doctor can see me is mid-October. EEK!

So I call TriCare and ask them how to have my HIV test sent to my new doctor's office. They tell me that they can't, and that my MD must submit a form to have the results forwarded to him by mail.
Which would-- you guessed it -- delay things even further.

Prompt Care would be a different physician, and not my primary care doctor, so they could neither submit the form nor be given the results.

Upon finding this out, I was on my cell phone while sitting in the clinic's parking lot - an uncomfortable place to have a meltdown.
So... I call Donald at work, hoping to calm myself down by maturely explaining the situation to him. Instead, I cried. A lot. And it was the UGLY CRY.

Luckily, I have the most amazing husband ever, and he came home early from work, let me cry more, and then took me shopping. After an hour at the mall, I managed to spend $12 on a bottle of body spray. Such a small thing, but it made me feel better. Then we picked up dinner from Safeway so I wouldn't have to cook, and finished our evening in front of the TV.

On Monday I'm going to find out if the clinic will allow me to have another HIV test drawn locally without having to meet with my doctor first.
I'm sure they will. It's a perfectly reasonable request.
If they say no, I'm going to have another meltdown. Possibly a loud one, right there in their office. Maybe it will get me a sooner appointment. Unlikely, but at this point I have nothing to lose.


The physicals are supposed to be some of the more straight-forward and simple parts of the home study and dossier, so if I wasn't experiencing this all for myself, I wouldn't believe any of it.

I'm choosing to believe that God needs us in Ukraine later rather than sooner.

I was listening to my favorite radio show host yesterday morning, and he said he wondered about how sick God must get of us complaining, and if he ever felt like telling us to shut up. Then, he reminded his audience that God gives us EXACTLY what we need, even if it doesn't come in the cute little package we want, and that instead of complaining about our less-than-perfect situations we should all just SHUT UP and be grateful.

So, I'm trying to be grateful. Hopefully, all these delays might finally make sense once we're in Ukraine.

PS - I have a cranky boy on the couch with me who's pushing random keys and poking me in the face. Someone's ready for bed, even if he says he's not.
...that someone would be my spouse.