july 7

Fuuuuuuuudge.

My family member, the coughing one from California, finally received his Covid test results. NINE DAYS AFTER HIS TEST. Postitive.

Poor guy had a lot of calls to make today (and we had a few, too). It’s not like he’s been licking everybody, but it’s the right thing to do to let people know they may have been exposed.

For my household, it meant the mad scramble to get everybody tested. And it proved only slightly better than my experience in Visalia.

I’d heard King County had free drive through testing sites – and several friends had posted about the quick and easy process. Perfect, I thought. Well, turns out the sites in Seattle take appointments and there are no openings until July 11.

I find several other testing sites that require a doctor referral. So, we set out to get six of those.

Trouble is, I don’t really have a doctor. I saw a Nurse Practitioner a couple times at UW… what was her name? It took some doing, but I was able to track down the provider who took over the patients of the random NP I’d seen several years ago. I guess that nice lady retired last year.

Next, I had to schedule a televisit with my new doctor so I could legitimately get a referral.

Same sitch for the other five members of my family. We had to schedule televisits with the kids’ pediatrician and they were then referred to Children’s Hospital for testing.

After my referral went through, I called UW to schedule my test. The woman said an appointment just popped up for today! 2:55pm! As she tried to book it, she said it disappeared. Next best appointment would be tomorrow morning. Fine.

Moments later, Jeff emerges from the bedroom and says, “I’ve got a test at 2:55 today!”

In the meantime, I was instructed by the pediatrician to call Children’s Hospital to schedule the kids’ test. The automated message said to leave a message and they’ll call back during business hours. After an hour, I called again hoping to talk to somebody live. Obviously, the sooner we have results the better! Anyway, no dice. Five o’clock came and went and we never heard from Children’s.