Helen:

My meeting with the pulmonologist was the exception my typical experience. It took me month to get an appointment with the surgeon who kept me.waiting 2 hours. It took 2 weeks to get my scan back then another 2 weeks for the pet then another month to schedule the surgery. It is a frustrating and burdensom process. The only person who is in a hurry is the patient. Medical people are human. They have vacations. People in their families who are sick. Too many patients and not enough time.

I took my car into the mechanic who is a friend of mine. He told me he couldn't get to it for two weeks. This is just a fact of life

My neighbor is a physician and we are good friends. She's 47
I saw her the other day and noticed she lost a lot of weight. She told me she has been terribly anxious having a 2 cm mass on her ovaries and her doctors want her to wait. She is a doctor and her husband a radiologist who questioned the report of the radiologist as being not thorough.
We live in a system. The system does not allow for interaction as far as I can tell. I mentioned my experience like someone would mention seeing a cow jump over the moon.
It is what it is. My pcp tells me, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. He tells me to have sharp elbows when dealing with being seen. After 2 months I am having surgery. It is all I care about in my situation. I don't need to know details about things too complicated for me to understand. Doctors are not my friends. It would be nice if they were but they are people who are doing a job. Some of them are just managing conditions.
Another friend of mine is a doctor, an orthopedist. We are very close. He is much younger. He tells me his philosophy is hurry up and treat them before they heal themselves. It takes 2 months to get an appointment with him. If I need to see him I just walk in the door and take him to lunch. There is a great deal of randomness in this procession to healing or being a professional patient.
It is a frustrating process sometimes. All of us here have been through it i am sure.

Wr are with you in spirit and know that you can navigate it too.

Love,

Frank