Post Wedding Fun- The Medical Maze

As the bride and groom adjusted to married life, I still had a kidney boulder lodged in my body. I could not live on wedding memories alone. I've always hoped I could go through life without ever consulting a urologist but now I was entering Urology World.
The pain of a kidney stone is akin to an elephant trying to suck a bowling ball up into his trunk. I was ready to blast that sucker out.
The urologist scheduled me for a laser blasting appointment next week. She asked me for the CD from the ER, documenting where the stone was. Alas, they had not given me one. She was surprised. She told me to get an x-ray from the outpatient center and bring that to her along with the CD from the ER.
She gave me a paper to take to the Outpatient Center, which had no appointment needed. Sounded easy. Good thing, because I was not feeling up to par.
At the outpatient desk, a bulldog was running things. Not a canine bulldog but a human woman bulldog. She told me I needed a prescription from my PCP. I offered her the urologist's orders. She won. It was the PCP or nothing.
I had to go home and rest. I called my PCP and made an appointment for the next day. So the next morning we walked into my PCP. He was surprised that an x-ray was needed. But he obligingly wrote a prescription with STAT on it, so that would get me through quickly. A nice touch.
Back to the bulldog. I triumphantly waved my prescription. She looked it over through her thick lenses and said, "There is no diagnosis on here."
I had a whole purse of papers with the diagnosis from that very hospital so I fished them out and flung them at her. No good. Once again we were out in the street. My kidney stone was probably having a good laugh.
I called the PCP. The nurse promised to fax the prescription back over with the diagnosis on it. I rested for a bit and we came back to the now familiar Outpatient Waiting Room. It had taken so long that Bulldog was leaving as we came. She was not at all interested in the fact that I had finally achieved the right to an x-ray.
Another lady called me up to the desk. "We need authorization from your insurance."
I was losing it. "Look I have been here 4 times and each time they keep adding something on. Is there something about me you don't like?"
She called my urologist, not wanting to deal with an unstable person, and they put Angie on the phone. For some reason I could not get authorization for this procedure today at the hospital but I could go to a different place and walk in without an appointment.
Did that sound familiar? So we opted to go there, I called and got directions. We were told to be there before 3. It was 2:10.
We got lost 3 times. Each time I called I got a little more of the directions so that we were getting closer but not there. Finally I handed George the phone and he got the directions in his direct fashion. We arrived at 2:30. I had my x-ray.
Oh, one more thing. As George waited for me in the waiting room my cell phone rang. George answered it. It was the office where we were, asking if we were on our way. They were waiting for us. George had to tell them we were there already and I was already having my x-ray.