Unloading

I had a bad night. I already called and moaned at my mom but I feel like getting it off my chest just one more time. Because the teacher had been so concerned about Ben's attention span, we decided to take him to see a private child psychologist and have her evaluate him. With my husband's company we can use the Employee Assistance Program to see a mental health provider for 5 visits at no cost. If it's determined that more visits are needed, it then goes to the regular insurance. But we figured if there was nothing wrong, 5 visits would probably be plenty. It was worth it to us to get the peace of mind. It's just a one-person practice, right around the corner form our house. We went in last week for the parent meeting, and the psychologist seemed fine. She said, "Mmm hmm" about every 2 or 3 seconds, which made it a little difficult to talk, but she seemed to know her stuff. Our appointment for her to meet with Ben for the first time was tonight. We arrived a little early for our 4:45 appointment. Just after we got there, another family arrived. The receptionist told me to take Ben back to the doctor's office, but then the doctor called her into the office and closed the door. The receptionist came out and told me that the other family would be going ahead of us. I said, "But we did have a 4:45 appointment, right?" And she said yes. We waited for a few minutes and I asked her would that family be in there for a full session. She pulled me out into the hallway to tell me that they were supposed to come for a 3:45 appointment but they were late. I was pretty appalled that I was being shunted aside for someone who should have had to reschedule, but I took the kids out for some pizza and came back around 5:40. The Late Family was still in there. Finally at 6:15 I asked if we were ever going to get to go in, and she said she didn't know. I took Rebecca to the bathroom and when we got back the receptionist said to go on back. When I walked in the doctor's door she didn't say hello, sorry for the wait, nothing, just, "We won't have time to do a full session with Ben." I was shocked. I reminded her that we had an appointment for 4:45 and it was now nearly 6:30, and I didn't see the point in doing just a short session. She suggested that I come back another day. I told her that I was feeling very upset and pushed aside, and she said she was sorry but she was running behind and had some emergencies. I told her that we might come back another time, but I didn't make another appointment and don't plan to. I have a suspicion that the other family were "regulars" who pay her regular rate, and she probably gets less than that from the EAP for seeing us. So it made better business sense for her to see the full-price-paying family even though we were the ones who were courteous enough to be on time. When my husband gets back into town I'm going to ask him to phone the EAP and make sure that they know about her behavior and that she doesn't try to charge them for our non-visit. If EAP participants only get second-rate service, what kind of motivation will they have to use it at all? It doesn't seem fair. Okay, I'm actually not all that upset about it anymore but earlier I was pretty darn mad. I was having second thoughts about doing it anyway, because Ben's school reports are SO much better now that his assignments are geared toward his learning level. I think starting some kind of official evaluation process could have caused more trouble than it solved. So it worked out in the end. I just hate to be treated like that, you know?