Medical Effieciency

Ok - So after whirlwind day or so here is where we are at:
My mom was admitted Tuesday night to the hospital. She had gone in for a follow up scan from her normal quarterly bone scan (PET, MRI -- some sort of acronym). The neurologist took one look at it and admitted her because there was what they called " a soft tissue mass" on her thoracic spine
English translation for those of you that are not doctors, don't spend time with doctors or you did NOT stay at a Holiday Inn last night... She has a tumor on her neck around her spinal column.

At this point, we are trying to figure out what they are going to do -- a year and a half ago she had a series of surgeries on the same general area, so we didn't know if we were going down that road again.
Of course all of this gets complicated by the following:

• I live in Iowa - my parents in Kansas
• My dad was scheduled to get on a plane today to fly to California as my sister Melissa is moving back to KS and needed someone to drive cross country with her.
• My sister Courtney had purchased a plane ticket for the holiday weekend to go to Dallas to see friends.
• My brother was scheduled to return to Iraq today.

Now while there is NEVER good timing for this sort of thing, clearly this was REALLY bad timing.
So being the tactics guy that he is -- and if you have never met my father, he IS a tactics guy. You make a plan, you execute the plan, you don't deviate from the plan.
Army inbreeding is what I chalk it up to.

Anyhoos
So, Patrick is trying to see if the Army will grant him a medical emergency extension of some sort, My Mom & Dad decide that he really needs to go out West as Melissa on her own -- well, that is a whole other post. Actually, could be a whole other blog. And I, well I have the most flexible schedule at this point (translation: I am lame and had nothing planned for the long weekend) So, I get to head home. Decide to come down today, rush through work yesterday, making arrangements, getting a loaner laptop to take with....basically chaos.
Head home to finish up some laundry, etc. And my dad calls around ..I dunno, later in the evening while I was at book club.

"Meghan, this is Dad. The neurologist reviewed your mom's films again and
decided that there is nothing that could cause any sort of permanent
neurological damage, so they are discharging her. And your brother got a week
extension on his leave".

He mentioned some other stuff, but that was the crux of the voicemail.
Call back home. No answer.

So, Long Story Short
I am not going home today, probably not going home tomorrow and debating on the weekend as I was going to have to cancel a wedding to go home.
So, in summary.
Spent the last day and a half jumping through all these hoops, GLUED to my cell phone for calls from home and it all came down to the same person that wanted her admitted, changing his mind about what he saw.
Doctors. They get paid all this cash, cause all this stress and one change of the mind = not a big deal.
Grr.
I mean, it is a big deal, we still have to address the fact that she has more growths of cancer, but that is back in the oncologist court. So at this point, no surgery.