After Weeks of Anxiety and a Long Drive ... "Oops"

Two days ago, I wrote about the responsibility I have to my body to stay informed and ask my doctor any questions I may have about the meaning of my lab results. That blog, it turns out, was a timely piece. Just yesterday, weeks after I received lab results that yielded some rather disturbing numbers, I drove an hour to my endocrinologist's office to discuss the findings with her nurse practitioner. Given that some of the findings were abnormal, I was told that it was necessary for me to come in to discuss the results, rather than hearing about them over the phone.

Of course, prior to the appointment, I had been brimming with anxiety for days. The numbers on my lab reports were already showing early stages of kidney damage and diabetes, which, if the numbers were accurate, would have been a reasonable—although not inevitable—occurrence for me, in light of my recent diagnosis of Sjögren Syndrome. 

Forty-five minutes after my hour-long drive, the nurse practitioner entered the examining room. "Do you have a problem? Why are you here today?" she asked. Puzzled, I explained that I had in my hand the voluminous twelve-page results of the tests the endocrinologist had ordered a month earlier, and that I was told to come in to discuss some of the results that were abnormal. The blank look on the practitioner's face was an indication that something was wrong here. I proceeded to show her what caused my concern. As she flipped through the report, she bristled. "Well now, wait a minute ... oops! This isn't your lab test. This belongs to 'P. Sweeney.'" She then grabbed, one by one, four pages of the twelve-page report, folded them up and said, "This isn't even yours. How did you get this?" I told her that her office had faxed them to me. With a nervous laugh and a wave of her hand, she dismissed the incident without an apology. "Oh, well, this isn't even yours. Obviously, 'P. Sweeney' has kidney damage and diabetes, but you only need to address your calcium, protein, and potassium levels, which we can get under control." 

I was horrified and angry. What I had in my possession was someone else's confidential lab results; equally disturbing was that apparently someone else had mine. Before leaving the office, I demanded an explanation for the careless error. The embarrassed nurse practitioner ordered follow-up lab tests for me, and promised to get to the bottom of the "mixup." I have yet to receive that explanation.