The Awkward Squad strike again!

Received a nice email reply from the senior specialist nurse yesterday in which she promised to pursue both the CT people and the surgeons to see if she could get things moving.

Came back from the local metropolis to find a 'phone message. 'Phoned back, got answerphone. Waited 10 minutes, woman in CT department 'phoned again; this time we managed to speak...................

Magically, the referral has been "vetted" (I though that was something that we commissioned for horses!) and an appointment arranged for tomorrow morning. Well done specialist nurse! Nice woman in CT department too: gave me all the instructions over the phone and seemed genuinely pleased to be helping.

Hint: if the hospital is not moving fast enough, identify the right people and give them a prod.

Just the surgeons to deal with now and impediments to getting on with things removed...........and thereby hangs a tale already.

Looked at the hospital website, checked out the identity of the secretary to the surgeon. Sent her a short email asking when the appointment would be. The following sequence defies belief, but it is true:

• Got an "out of the office" email. Will confess I did not bother reading it.

• Opened the email a few minutes ago to find that she has now left the hospital and had given the email address of the person to whom all enquiries should be directed.

• Sent an email to the new person

• Got an email back pretty quickly saying that she was not the consultant's secretary (she works for another department), but that she had sent my email on to the consultant. Full marks to her!!

The lessons from this one are 1. Do not believe what you read on hospital websites, and 2. Open all your emails even if they appear useless (obviously not the "your online account has been blocked" type!). Failed miserably on both I am afraid.