This should be a happy update to an ongoing saga: E’s arm turned out not to be broken after all, just a “bone bruise.” I know, all things considered, I should just be happy it was a few days of inconvenience for her (and me) and that her growth plate looks “textbook” perfect. We could be looking at weeks in a cast, hours of physical therapy, missed activities, and a lot more reliving the years of me having to help her bathe and dress than either of us wanted. I shouldn’t tempt karma yet again by being grumpy about how this all played out, but I just can’t quite seem to let it go.

I’m aggravated. I wasted a lot of time. And, this caused no small amount of stress for an already stressed-to-the-max tween. I realize that no system is perfect, but I feel like maybe when it comes to something as common place as a kid’s broken arm, maybe we could be a little higher on the technology curve.

I do have to point out that the flow between urgent care and a specialist was a positive. In both my knee episode earlier this year, and E’s arm situation, we were scheduled with an appropriate orthopedic specialist within a week. Unfortunately, the pediatric one recommended for E was over an hour away, and would require her to miss school, and for me to take at least a half day off from work. Again, not the worst thing in the world, and I was glad that we were going to get things addressed sooner rather than later. After a few days of trying to navigate with a cast and sling, neither of us were eager to drag this out any longer than necessary.

I was again pleased when we were taken back to see the doctor right on schedule. The less time we had to sit around, the less time E had to get more and more nervous. When the assistant (I’m honestly not sure if she was a nurse or a PA) asked us what we were there to see the doctor for, I should have started to get a little suspicious. “A fracture in her elbow,” I said, mildly irritated that she hadn’t reviewed the file. “Well, she doesn’t have one of those,” she responded. At that point, my mind immediately went in a dozen different directions. Did they have the wrong file up? Did we come to the wrong doctor? Was it something worse than a fracture? As they frequently say in medicine, I went looking for the zebras when I heard the hoofbeats, and it was just a horse. The urgent care opinion was wrong, what looked like a fracture was actually “a perfectly normal” growth plate and “this was a mistake they made all the time.”

Well, those were the wrong words to say to me. But, let me finish with our visit first. The assistant then asked me if there was anything else, dismissing me, and E. Oh, I forgot to mention that they’d already removed E’s cast, and sling, and tossed them into the garbage. The cast and sling that I was pretty sure had already been billed to me, sparing no expense. They had no idea that they were dealing with a Mama Bear who has been fighting the medical system since before her kids were born. I informed her that we had an appointment with Dr. XYZ and I intended to speak with Dr. XYZ before we left.

Sensing that things might have been about to go south, she quickly left the room to go get the doctor. Again, the positive was that he was happy (or at least pretended to be) to talk me through the X-ray and explain exactly what we were looking at, and I also insisted that he examine E’s arm, which was still causing her a significant amount of discomfort. As he reviewed things with me, he slid in a few more “this confusion happens all the times” and “we see a lot of this’s.” Finally, after about 15 minutes, I was satisfied that he was correct in his assessment and E would be back to normal within a few days or so, although there could be some soreness in the area for as many as a few weeks but engaging in all her activities could cause no more harm to the area. The 15 minutes we ended up staying justified the two-plus hour round trip.

In a previous role that I had, I did a lot of mistakes proofing and process improvement. Phrases like “we always” and “happens all the time” were two things that were problem identifiers. Hearing them come out of the specialist’s mouth was like nails on a chalk board to me. Not only had our time been essentially wasted, but our appointment slot could certainly be taken by a more urgent case. Then there are the bills that I know are coming. I already mentioned the sling and cast which turned out to be a waste, and now a visit to the specialist (and his assistants.) I wish I could turn around and argue that since it was all unnecessary, I shouldn’t have to pay for it, but we all know that’s not how it works.

It’s hard not to feel taken advantage of in a situation like this. Sure, my insurance will pay for most of it, and I have a health savings account to cover the difference. Is that low hanging fruit for the medical business? What happens to a family that doesn’t have those resources? This was a simple case of a broken versus not broken arm. It seems pretty undebatable. If this got nebulous, how many referrals and hand-offs could there be with a real mystery illness? It seems to me at some point, someone reviewing that file could have made a phone call and saved a lot of people some time. Is anyone reviewing how many of these cases get referred, and maybe providing some education on the front end of the process, rather than waiting until they’ve taken up a specialist’s time and aggravated a customer greatly?

The real kicker, though, is that two days after the specialist visit, I got another letter in the mail from the medical provider stating that “after the radiologist reviewed the X-ray taken it was determined that we should follow up with our provider to seek additional care.” At that point, I said to E, “how does the arm feel?” She flexed it and bent it a few times and said “pretty good.” That letter went right into the circular file.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing columnist who appears weekly in the Times News.