Bad news, Changes and Good news!

Yesterday started out rough but became better as we and the clinic staff here at Fort Huachuca, did some research. Before I go too far in depth with everything, let me lay out some of the information that we gathered BEFORE his PCM appointment. When I found out that there are military doctors at some larger posts that preform vasectomy reversals, we decided to see which posts had those doctors. We found out that Fort Bliss (approximately 4 hours away) had a department and doctor that did them so I told Jay about it and he made the phone call. During the discussion we found out that we need a referral from a PCM to get this done and that they didn’t do them often. Jay asked them if they had a waitlist and they said NO, that there weren’t that many people in that area seeking vasectomy reversals. So Jay scheduled his appointment with his PCM and last week his PCM said that he’d put in his referral.
Well, yesterday started out with a routine follow up phone call to Tricare to see if they had received his referrals from his PCM. When he went to his appointment to get the referrals the doc said he would put two in, one for the Urology Department at Fort Bliss and a second for Tricare to send him to a local Urologist. Jay called Tricare to see if they had received the referrals and they hadn't received anything. Jay was starting to get frustrated. We waited a week to give time for the referrals to get to Tricare and all that time seemed to be just wasted. So Jay called his clinic to find out if the referrals were even put in. He gets a hold of a case manager and he tells his story all over again, what we want to do, when he saw the doctor, what the doctor said. She told him that the doctor's notes were vague so all they did was put in a referral to Fort Bliss which was accepted. She then gave Jay the number to Fort Bliss to start his process.

Then he calls Fort Bliss and they tell him they could set up an appointment for Monday, April 1st. Sweet!! Is this the appointment for the procedure or a consult?? The clinic lets him know this is just a consult. After the appointment on April 1st, you'll be put on a wait list. So he asks how long is the wait list, he is told there are 45 people already on the list and they don't do them very often. Well crud, that's not going to work. So he calls his clinic back and speaks with his case manager again. He explained what information he received from the clinic at Fort Bliss and she said she would do some research for him to see if there were any other options at other clinics in the area. The “area: consists of the entire West Coast! After a few hours, Jay called her back to see what she had found out for him. She had called San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston, in hopes that their waitlist wasn't as long as Fort Bliss, or if it was that they did the surgery more often. She found out that San Antonio has a similar waitlist and surgery frequency as Fort Bliss, so she called Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, WA. This is where the good news comes in.  Madigan does them rather regularly, weekly from what the case manager gathered and that while they aren’t sure the length of their waitlist, they do go through the list fairly quickly and that the time frame is anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months to get the surgery done. So she asked Jay if he would like to be referred to Fort Lewis and of course we said YES!

If we have to use our savings to get to Fort Lewis at the last minute we’ll do so. We just hope that friends at Fort Lewis would be willing to help us if the moment arises. No sense in getting all worried about that yet, we have no idea when we’ll get the phone call.

<3 Traci