Beam me up, Scotty!

Our family practice includes two nurse practitioners who I will often see as it is far more difficult getting an appointment with the doctor. I will often see Scott who is a very nice man. He presents as someone who is a wannabe doctor. He seems to have an answer for everything and is often very aggressive in his approach to medicine. One example of this is the time I went in for what I assumed was a virus that I had in October 2008. There were some different symptoms including a terrible pain on the right side of my abdomen. I suspected a virus because it seemed that all of us in the house had the same symptoms. I felt so bad and it lingered for so long that I decided to go get checked out. Even though Scott agreed that it was a possibly a virus, he seemed more committed to the fact that I had a "Hot" gallbladder and it'll probably have to come out. He ordered a sonogram, significantly freaked me out, and as you would expect it was negative. I decided to use Scott's aggressiveness in this case to get the tests that I felt should be done. Sue and I both went to the appointment. I described the symptoms I'd been experiencing since August. He checked my smile and agreed that there was a droop...or what he felt was a "Bell's Palsey" He said it may have been caused by lyme's disease. He ordered blood work to determine this and he also ordered 2 MRI's. He said he didn't expect to get anything out of it and wondered if the insurance company would agree to the tests. The tests were on the neck and brain. Scott told me that if the blood test was negative for lyme, to make an appointment with a neurologist. I did the blood test after work that day and we were awaiting the office calling us with the authorization #'s for the MRI's from the insurance company. They never called me at work, so when I got home I called them and the office staff reported that the insurance company has the claim in clinical review and that it would take as long as 48 hours. The next day we called again..the office staff reported that they still were unable to get authorization from the insurance company and that Scott was not in to review the blood tests. The following day, I called the office again and the staff reported that the blood tests came back fine, except that I should reduce my intake of carbs. There was still no word on going for the MRI's. Sue and I had become so convinced that it was lyme disease that we were surprised by the results. We researched it on the internet and I seemed to fit into a late stage lyme's disease, except that I had never recalled finding a tick bite, rash, etc. We also read that many times the blood test for lyme's comes out as a false negative. When Sue came home from work that day and found out the result and the fact that we had no authorization to get the MRI's done she immediately called the doctor's office. The staff member was somewhat nasty with Sue as she pressed for the authorizations saying "I just told your husband 10 minutes ago....." It was actually 2 hours before that I spoke with her. Nice, huh? Sue then called the insurance company and within 20 minutes, we had the authorization #'s we were waiting for. I called the imaging center and had to make 2 separate appointments for the tests...one on Thursday, March 26 and the other on Saturday, March 28.