After giving the matter extensive thought, I decided on Tuesday to reach out to the new doctor and ask him to take Lemon on as a patient, without the involvement of the nurse practitioner. I felt that the new doctor was the best fit for us, and he had a lot of ideas that I wanted to try to improve Lemon's care, both to address the immediate issue of the area of his lung that is collapsed, and for long-term preventative care. So, I sent the new doctor a message saying we wanted to switch over Lemon's care, and that we would like to begin the treatment plan (antibiotics etc) for the lung issue right away. And....nothing. Not a peep, other than the response from the nurse saying she was passing the message on to the doctor.
So, it has now been 9 months since the June x-ray, when this problem should have been detected, 2 months since the CT scan that drew it to everyone's attention, and 1 month since the repeat x-ray showing that our efforts with manual chest PT were unsuccessful. And we still have no treatment plan, and no conclusion about who will be leading Lemon's care going forward. This, my friends, is just awesome. Luckily (?), we have our regular quarterly clinic visit with the nurse practitioner scheduled for Wednesday, so maybe I will have more luck in person figuring out what is going on, who's talking to whom, and why nothing is happening. I am a relatively patient person, but I am about at the end of my patience with this situation.
The other thing we've been keeping our eye on is of course the corona virus situation. This has been on our minds a lot this week since Opa just returned from a trip to Italy, and Uncle Jared is supposed to come from New York on Friday for a visit. I think the odds that either of them has come into contact with the virus are vanishingly small. But, the consequences of Lemon getting the virus could be pretty grave. So, how does one weigh that? The benefit of the family reunion against the almost (but not quite) zero chance of something bad happening? It's a puzzle, and with new information coming out at a breakneck pace, it's a new puzzle every day. I would say I would ask our clinic for guidance but I'm honestly not too bullish on them at the moment (see above).
