Delayed communications - this is starting to worry me!

Sorry but I would be upsetting the consultant, the secretary, the GP practice and the hospital that was doing the scans by now......one thing you may not have tried...has the hospital , consultant etc have a Facebook page or Twitter account..??...I guarantee that if you can complain on line for the whole world to see something will happen quickly. Complaints going viral get the response an individual cannot get any other way these days sadly!

No way should you cancel the bone scan. You would then go to the end of the queue and have the same wait over again, or even longer.

The scan is for your health, not the consultant's. If you don't receive that letter by Friday afternoon - or perhaps by Friday morning, we all know that everyone likes to get off early on a Friday and they could all have left the office - get on the phone and start throwing your weight about. You are the patient! the customer! and the customer is always right!

If necessary, burst into tears and say you are so worried and scared about why they are sending you for this test, because it has not been explained to you, and you have been waiting for four weeks for more information, in spite of being promised a letter.

Thanks for your advice everyone. I do not wish to cancel the bone scan and realise that I would go back to the bottom of the list, but I am not happy about having it if I do not know what it is for. I will wait till Thursday afternoon before ringing again - our post does not arrive till after 2 pm, so if I wait till Friday then it is likely I will be too late to speak to anyone at the hospital.

I am also concerned because, even after these two new scan appointments, I will probably finish up waiting another couple of months before I know what is going on. It does feel a long time!

All I can do it sit tight and wait - the only other thing I can think is to go to the GP and ask him/her what they think, but I probably won't get an appointment there till the end of the week. Big sigh.

As an ex medical secretary who has just retired I would say that the medical secretary you are dealing with is being very very unhelpful.

I would never have left somebody hanging for 3-4 weeks. I would have found the consultant on call, go armed with the patient's notes and ask him to look at the letter and sign it. It could be faxed then to GP surgery.

And I think the GP surgery is not being forceful enough. Perhaps the GP could ring him/herself.

Thanks bookdreamer - I rang the GP surgery and asked if one of the GPs could make a doctor to doctor call in order to unlock this situation. I left it with them and what they did was to ring the secretary, which was what I have been doing. I am fairly new with this practice and don't want to get a name for being a pest. I can only think that I might try and book an appointment with one of them.

It is 10 weeks since I had the original scan on which, I presume, the decisions about these further investigations are based; and at least 4 weeks that I have been trying to chase it all up.

It sounds as though you were a really good medical secretary with the feelings of the patient foremost in your mind - well done!

I have just been to my GP who agrees that the communication is terrible and that I cannot just go for a scan with no idea what it is about. She has arranged to chase it up and to ring me tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

I've not looked at this thread for a day or so, that's awful that you're still not sure of what's going on. It's a fine balance isn't it between being insistent then being labelled stroppy on the one hand and not pushing enough for answers to perfectly reasonable questions on the other. Let's hope your GP galvanises into action now and gets you some answers pronto!

Thanks queenie - I appreciate your good wishes and also hope that some action will appear. My GP was very clear that it was not acceptable to ask me to have these investigations with no idea of what they are for.

Lucky - I admire your patience and hopefully you're on the way to getting some answers.

Having been in a similar situation with my mum last year I was calling the consultant's secretary twice a day; each morning I told her I would ring for an update in the afternoon and each afternoon I told her that I would call again in the morning. I apologised for being a nuisance and explained that I understood she couldn't give me information herself, but that I needed to have it so that I could make necessary arrangements as quickly as possible. Three and a half days and seven phone calls later I spoke to the consultant - and thereafter he always took my calls.

Do feed back your experience because it will be happening to other people too. There's obviously a glitch in the system.

Well - the GP did manage to get the information - I do not know how.

Apparently there is a "signal change" on the MRI at T4 in my spine. They consulted the radiologist about it and he recommended that I have the thoracic spine CT and the whole body bone scan to try and decide what it is. So.....still don't really know what it is about, but it sounds as though it might not be something very bad. GP recommends that I have the scans because the radiologist has recommended this.

So - in some ways I am no further forward, but the GP thinks it should be checked out, so I will go and see what happens. I don't feel quite so worried about it now.

Glad the situation has improved for you but it just shouldn't have happened. ?