Crunching the Timeline, Caregiver Tip #1

This is something I will mention often. It is important to know as a patient and/or a caregiver the ways you can shorten the wait, crunch the timeline, as I call it. I believe several ways I managed to shorten the wait or made decisions that resulted in a shorter wait is the reason Mathew survived for eleven months. Especially since the doctors at Moffitt were concerned, he may not survive until his first chemo. Of course, I didn’t know that until later.

If I hadn’t taken Mathew into the walk-in clinic that day, I don't know if his blood work would have raised any alarms before Monday morning. But it did get him admitted sooner. Even if it had been Monday, rather than the Wednesday appointment, he would have been admitted soon anyway because his condition deteriorated quickly.

At the Zephyrhills hospital, at that time, biopsies are only done on Tuesdays. That’s when the Interventional Radiologist is there. At the time I was very anxious that we had to wait and now in retrospect, I am mortified.

I figured within days of the biopsy; we would have a diagnosis. It would be almost three weeks.

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