Buzz, boop, bing! My phone is hopping all over the place like I just won at the slot machines. Sadly, money isn’t pouring out of the earpiece. This is a full-scale notification assault reminding me to check in, confirm, reconfirm, and extra confirm for an upcoming doctor’s appointment.
It feels like the older I get, the more doctors I collect. Every time I turn around it’s, “Have you seen this doctor?” immediately followed by, “Well, you’re going to need that doctor now.” There was a time when I had a primary care physician and a dentist. That was it. Simple. Elegant. Manageable.
Now I have a starting lineup: a primary care physician, a dentist, a gynecologist, a mammogram team, an eye doctor, a dermatologist who has seen more of me than most relatives, and at least one specialist whose name I can never remember but whose number is permanently burned into my phone. Somewhere along the way, my body became a group project.
The majority of these people are paid by the same HR department. So why do I have to fill out fifteen minutes of online paperwork for every single appointment when I know they all have access to the same information?
I recently had my annual physical. Before I spoke to the doctor, I had to provide the same information I had filled out a week earlier for a different in-network appointment. Nothing has changed. I did not decide to get an extra arm added in a van in Mexico. If I had surgery, someone on your team would have performed it and hopefully added their notes to my file.
Why isn’t there a button at the top that simply asks, “Has any of your information changed?” Unfortunately, the medical world hates joy and whimsy, because I must now inform the woman at the desk that nothing needs updating in the twenty minutes since I completed the form you texted, emailed, and called me about three times in the past day.
Then comes round two.
I now get to answer all of the exact same questions I just filled out and answered at the front desk. This time to the medical assistant while they boa-constrictor my arm and then ask why my blood pressure is a little high. I don’t know, Susan. Perhaps if you read my chart you would see that I have high blood pressure? Such a foreign concept, I recognize.
When the actual doctor arrives, I get to do it all again. Same questions. Same answers. Third time’s the charm, apparently? At this point, I start to wonder if this is some kind of medical integrity test. Are they trying to catch me in a lie? Waiting for me to slip up and say, “Actually, I do smoke socially…with squirrels behind a dumpster in Old Town”?
I feel like I should at least get a punch card. Answer these questions correctly five times and my next appointment is free. Bonus points given if I get a new prescription, followed by a brief but mandatory tête-à-tête with a pharmacist.
But this madness isn’t contained to adulthood. Enter: children.
Every summer, we must prove that we still live in the same neighborhood that feeds into the same school in which our children are already enrolled. I now have to contact the Tax Assessor’s Office for the exact same document I have submitted to the school district for the past decade. I’m sure they love stopping everything they’re doing so they can send me paperwork for someone who already has it.
Then come the questions. So. Many. Questions.
Emergency contact information. Does your child ride the bus? Any medical concerns? Do they have a taste for human blood? If so, how strong is that urge on a scale from “mild curiosity” to “full moon situation”?
The more children you have, the more times you’re required to complete this administrative Spanish Inquisition. And if you don’t finish it fast enough, your children are punished. No schedules. No laptops. Just side-eye and anxiety.
Oh, and while you’re at it, please pay this sign-up fee and that contribution. You should also probably buy this $600 sweatshirt embroidered with our mascot, because if your child shows up in Kelly Green instead of the approved Spring Green, it’s straight to detention for the little heathen with parents who clearly neglect them because they didn’t click on every single piece of the bicycle in the picture. Perhaps they should join you on the first day?
Just when you think the waterboarding is over, your cherubs arrive home with a backpack stuffed with the exact same photocopied form for each class - asking all the same questions you already answered electronically in a system every teacher has access to.
Oh, wait. There’s more! Add in the forms to play a sport. Sprinkle in after-school clubs. Toss in a permission slip that must be signed in blue ink only during a very specific and unexplained window of time, and suddenly you’ve been robbed of your will to live and handed a migraine as a party favor. By this point, it’s clear the system is testing endurance, not outcomes.
Between medical portals and school forms, the information feels irrelevant since no one appears to be reading it. If I’m going to spend hours of my life repeating myself, every form should come with a glass of Veuve and a free month of Netflix, or at least the creative license to make up wildly inane answers. Now, where does witness protection say I’m living these days?
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Tracy Winslow wrote this article in the “additional information” section of her annual physical exam at check-in. When she’s not filling out medical and school forms, she’s filling out forms to order the best fibers for the premier yarn store in the Low Country, Shrimp & Knits. Come cast on a new obsession with her through classes in knitting, crochet, felting, yarn art, and more at shrimpandknits.com.