We found an amazing doctor on Thursday after what can only be described as an adventure.
First, I love to add in context: we were so done with Sam’s old doctor, Park. I mean, where do I even start? She had a reputation for being “not great at bedside manner” and “super busy” which apparently translates to “will leave you hanging for two months after a colonoscopy before bothering with a telehealth follow-up.” And even then? She didn’t show up. A brand-new PA took the call, and only in the last three minutes did Park pop in to say, essentially, she was too busy with other patients. Nope. Unacceptable. If the follow-up to a procedure isn’t within two or three weeks, I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous.
I probably do need vent all my frustrations at some point.
Anyway.
So, we started doctor-shopping. Insurance gymnastics aside (ugh, thank god I don’t deal with that), we lined up a few interviews. J did most of the work on it. One of them was actually my doctor, who I don’t see often because I prefer my PA. But she’d impressed me the last time we met, and for Sam, she did the right thing: admitted she’s not an IBD specialist and referred us to a new guy she liked. Great. One catch: her office is not digital (welcome to 2025!). Instead, she handed us a paper referral with addresses.
The chaos started.
Husband makes the appointment, adds the address into the shared family calendar and here we are, on the day of the appointment.
We get in the car, and I had already told Sam to sit in the front. For a few reasons. But there was a small discussion between them about the address but I wasn’t really paying attention. So we drive, it takes us 35 minutes and then we arrive to a residential area. I had been on the phone with my boss for 10m during the car ride but we all start looking around once we got there and it was clearly not a doctor’s office.
I hop on Google Maps and we all determine at the same time from different ways (including Google Maps!) that the address was wrong. The one in the calendar was something like 8311 Brookhurst but the actual address was 83111. Wow. One tiny typo, one 26 minute detour.
To J’s credit, he had double-checked on Google Maps, but still we’re circling houses instead of finding doctors. No one yelled, which was good. But there was some silent tension.
I hate silent tension.
Sam called the office and, of course, hit the answering service. They said they would call back. (Spoiler alert: they did not call back.) At that point, I shrugged: “If they can see us, great. If not, maybe it’s the universe telling us to stick with UCI.” Because honestly, I did not want to me making the drive to Fountain Valley every month.
Then Sam, ever the Type A, pulled out her receipts: the referral page itself had the wrong address. Not J’s fault. The doctor’s office had printed the wrong address. J lost the tense energy but I couldn’t let that slide. To be fair I thought about doing it when I wasn’t in the car so I didn’t look crazy to my family because I knew they wouldn’t like it but I am who I am so I called to let them know. The receptionist? Could not have cared less. Zero interest in fixing it. I was polite, but I left that call gritting my teeth.
Sam was antsy because she didn’t bring her snacks and this was all taking so long. Anyway, we get to what is VERY CLEARLY a huge medical center and J let’s us out while he goes to park.
Sam and I hop out, find the elevator, and hunt down the office on the 5th floor.
We were gobsmacked.
WHAT. THE. HELL.
This was a huge epic joke the universe was playing on us. We both just laughed. I texted the photo to J and then we walked back to the elevator and found J in the elevator. J had ended up putting the car in valet and we had to wait.
While waiting, I asked Sam to call the office but at that point, I was like no, I’ll do it. Luckily the front desk picked up and I explained things and she said NO, please come, I’ll fit you in. She did say she had a spot at 2:15 and it was 1:30 at that point but I kept that detail to myself.
Do we go home? Do we continue on this journey? Why were we doing this? Well, we had invested all this time already. (That is the worst argument – sunk cost fallacy – to keep doing something horrible but maybe it’s not the same thing since it was a doctor interview?)
Anyway, it was 8 minutes away which was better than 26 so away we went.
It was this little hole in the wall doctor office. Such a strange area for this big IBD specialist. But the office was immaculate, and three front desk assistants were up there. I was able to explain a bunch of my issues that I wanted fixed – IN A NICE WAY – and they were so responsive to it.
- Sam’s email address would not work for the previous office and we had read them out all the letters and finally FINALLY we realized my doctor put it in as “famfolo” instead of “samsolo”. Ugh.
- Sam didn’t get ANY phone calls as reminder so we checked the phone – yeah, they had the husband’s phone. Who bans ALL calls that aren’t in his address book and doesn’t check his voice mail. Sam and I rolled our eyes.
- I explained about our adventure and one of the gals took notes, looked like she was going to help change it, and was validating. She will have Marketing contact the doctors office and update the address AND they will fix their Google Business Maps address.
My irritation – and maybe Sam’s? – was that the husband seemed to know they had misspelled the email address at the first doctor. And this was something I kept obsessing about out loud to both of them at random moments in the past few weeks. I was on the phone with my doctors front desk telling them that something was wrong if they couldn’t email my daughter. And the gal was SO bored and insistent that it just didn’t work. I read out the email again. I kept saying out loud to my family that maybe there was a space after the email because if they can’t get it to work… what the hell? So the husband was like, no I knew they had it misspelled. And Sam and I just looked at him like WHY didn’t you say anything? He said, I did! And both of us were like, we do not remember that conversation. And then he said, oh well I just figured it wasn’t worth speaking up about again. I’m irritated because I did insist that I spelled it out for them and they confirmed the spelling. “Well, S and F sound similar”.
So now my learning is that next time I will make them read it out loud. Good learnings. Sigh.
Inside the exam room, Sam set a time limit for how long she’d wait. She almost bailed at 2:05. Then, at 2:08, the doctor walked in.
And wow. He stayed with us for 45 minutes. He was funny, smart, current on studies, big on treating the whole patient, and yes… he even talked about diet and nutrition!!! He said the words “leaky gut”! He’s on the board of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation – one of the chapters, I already stalked him. He’s engaged in research and fundraisers, and he listened. Really listened. J and I walked out giddy, both thinking the same thing: we adore him.
I would like him to be my new best friend. I just spent about 15 minutes stalking him. I think he’s my age. I’m wondering if he was wearing eye makeup. I wonder if he’s gay. We now have his email address. He responds to us late at night on the weekend. He said all the greatest things.
Sam, for her part, held it together during the appointment but cried afterward. Because while J and I felt hopeful, she’s the one carrying the weight of all the “bad stuff” she hears in these meetings. Both feelings are valid: joy at finding the right doctor, grief at facing the reality of chronic illness.
So yes, it took wrong turns, wrong addresses, and one tragic email typo, but we landed exactly where we needed to be. Sometimes the universe’s detours lead you right.
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