North by Northwest (or how to clear a doctor's....part 3)

Do you remember that movie? Cary Grant trying to convince James Mason that he really wasn't who James Mason said he was? I sort of had that experience today. When I received the mail there was a letter addressed to Mike from the Children's hospital where he spent the night in late August last year. It went something like this:

"Dear Mst Mike Q, A appointment has been made for you to attend the Young Adult Diabetes Clinic. Your appointment details are as follows:.....Your doctor has already sent us this referral. etc"

Well I rang the Young Adult Diabetes clinic to say we'd received the letter and that Mike was 5 (I don't think this qualifies as a young adult). They informed me that Mike was therefore too young to attend the Young Adult clinic. I assured them that this wasn't really a problem as Mike had not been diagnosed with diabetes. After a bit of investigation by the receptionist (whilst I listened to some canned music) it was discovered that a Mike Q had been referred to the Young Adult clinic but no one had thought to check that someone with the same first, middle and last name as Mike did not have the same birthday as Mike (2003) and therefore was a completely different person. Hubby and Lloyd thought the part of the letter asking if an interpreter was needed was rather appropriate. At times it is hard to make out what Mike is saying.

It's not the first time this has happened. A person with exactly the same name as Hubby lives just a couple of streets away from us but he's about 20 years older. When I went to the library one day with Hubby's card to get a book on hold for him I was told that the computer said that Hubby had two cards so they wanted one back please. I've come across a mix up with this other Mr Q at the pharmacy also. Likewise the library had not checked that the birthdates were different. When my sister-in-law was in hospital having one of her babies there was a lady with exactly the same name as her in the maternity ward at the same time so across the top of the chart was written in red, "Please check patient's birthdate as we have two patients with the same name."

Then, just this week when we attended a college orientation for Lloyd (where he's doing some part-time study whilst completing his high school), it seemed that there were three students in his sub-group of 13 with the same first name as Lloyd. Hubby commented, "I knew that we should have named him Judas Not Iscariot." I don't think there would be too many people in the world named that.