When the doctors are suddenly out...

My mom had two recent unfortunate incidents with two doctors. Last week, I went with her to a surgeon for a 10 A.M. appointment where the doctor was supposed to see a small lump on her buttocks. We waited for like an hour-and-a-half at the hospital's waiting area before one the women in the receiving area had the brilliant idea of looking for the doctor. After making a few phone calls, the woman said to us that the doctor wasn't available after all because he was in the operating room with a patient and would be available in the afternoon yet. She asked us if the doctor really knew we had an appointment with him. I said of course he did, he was even asked by the person I was talking to over the phone two days before that, and I heard him say that yes, he was available at 10 A.M. that day. Anyway, maybe the operation he was doing when we came in was an emergency. Maybe he didn't really forget our appointment with him. We didn't anymore return that afternoon. But I took pity on Mom because she wasn't really feeling well, and we had to sit it out for more than an hour in the hospital for a doctor who never was to come anyway.

Today, since my Mom had been sneezing and coughing for over two weeks already, she decided to see a pulmonoligist referred by a friend of hers. The doctor was supposed to have a clinic from 11 AM - 1 PM (in the same hospital we went to last week). I called up the doctor's secretary at 10 AM to ask if the doctor was coming. The secretary said yes. My brother came with my Mom to the hospital this time. A few minutes past 11 AM, my brother called me up to say that the doctor wasn't coming because she had to go to a burial (I hope the dead person wasn't her patient!). I wondered how long it took for the doctor to decide or to know that she was to attend a burial that morning. Her clinic was supposed to open at 11 AM. She could've at least advised her secretary a bit earlier that morning that she wasn't be going to have patients that day to avoid inconveniencing patients, especially the older ones. Poor mother of mine again didn't have a luck with her doctor today.