Four months!

I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that I got a call from my doctor's office yesterday. They left a message on my cell while I was at work. Luckily I remembered to check for messages at the end of my lunch hour, because it seemed that every male coworker under the age of thirty was having lunch at the same time, and I wouldn't have suffered them to see how teary-eyed I got when I heard that my GP had decided on a referral at last.

I could barely understand the name of the clinic in the message, but what I could make out sounded very generic. No clues as to whether it was a dermatologist or an endocrinologist. I tried to surreptitiously Google it at work, but as I feared, there were a ton of clinics in the city under that name. For all I could tell, it was a chiropractor.

But I was determined not to have to call the doctor's office back, or wait for the clinic to send me their mail-out to find out just what kind of clinic it was. So when I got home, I rolled up my sleeves and gave it another go, this time cross-referencing the clinic's phone number. Among the links that popped up was one for a paper on PCOS, and my eyes stung anew. Bless my GP! Not only was it a clinic for endocrinology, but it was possible they treated quite a few women with unwanted hair. I felt so grateful. I hadn't realized how much I did not want to see a dermatologist again.

So what's the bad news? My appointment is not until mid-November.

Yup. Another reason to be assertive about your health from the start: appointments are like a rare treasure. You have to quest for them and then guard them with your life.