We were told that during the surgery it was possible that Dr. Lee might remove one or more parathyroid glands in addition to the thyroid, but that this was common and the parathyroid glands would be reimplanted into the muscle in Tanya's neck. This did happen. The parathyroid maintains the calcium levels in the blood, among other things, and we knew that Tanya's calcium level might be a little off for a few days. When we were discharged on Saturday, the discharge slip contained orders for the blood work for Monday to get the calcium levels checked, and for the results to be sent STAT (within 4 hours) to Tanya's Endocrinologist (Dr. Kimmel) and Dr. Lee. That should be no issue, right?
When we went to the lab where we have had other work done, they told us that they couldn't take the discharge slip as an order for the STAT blood tests. In addition they couldn't seem to be able to fax the request for the blood work to the Dr. Kimmel's office (tried twice) and couldn't find the Dr. Lee or her office in their system. The lab did draw Tanya's blood, but wouldn't do any tests on it without the order. I finally talked to the Dr. Kimmel's office and got them to fax the request to the lab. This whole process took close to 4 hours. We found out the next morning that the Dr. Kimmel's office still hadn't received all of the results they needed...
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