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When the doctor's office calls and you don't know who they're calling about
— Elena Vasquez (sandwich-gen / MSW, contributor)
I had three medical phone calls open on my desk this morning. One for my mom, one for my son's allergist, one mine — about a follow-up I keep forgetting to schedule.
The receptionist at one of them said "hi, this is about your appointment tomorrow" and I genuinely did not know which appointment, or whose. I said "can you give me the patient's name?" out loud, to a person I'd just been told was calling from a clinic I've been going to for 4 years.
She was kind about it. Said "it happens, hon."
I cried in the car after.
Not because of her — she was fine. Because of the small recognition that I have stopped being a person with my own medical chart. I — anyway. I am a logistics center. I have a calendar with three colors and none of them are mine.
I don't have a tidy ending to this. I just want to know if anyone else has had a moment where you realize you've fully outsourced your own life to keeping other people's lives running, and you're not sure when that happened, and you're definately not sure how to undo it.
If you have, I'd like to read about it.