Ah, Technology

I took FF to a well-visit recently. I don't think I've explained properly about how well-visits work in this country, so here it is in a nutshell.

Children aged 0 - 6 do not go to their pediatricians for well-visits. Instead, they go to "Tipat Chalav" (lit. "drop of milk") where a nurse tracks their development and gives them their childhood vaccinations. (Yes, "vaccinations" and not just "shots": we get the oral live polio vaccine in this neck of the woods.)

Until now, we've been lived in places so small that Tipat Chalav was rolled into the medical clinic that we went to for all standard doctor appointments, so things were pretty straightforward. Now that we've moved to Rehovot, however, we've entered the standard system wherein Tipat Chalav has standalone clinics run by the municipality.

This meant we got the chance to transfer medical records. I'm not entirely sure what it entailed, other than many phone calls and follow-ups from both me and Tipat Chalav, but I'm reasonably certain that BSM and FF has their Tipat Chalav records printed out by the medical clinic they had been going to and mailed to the Tipat Chalav clinic in Rehovot. Or hand-transcribed and delivered by courier. Whatever happened, it took about two months to get the records transferred, but luckily our previous Tipat Chalav nurse had warned me before I moved that the process would be ridiculous, so I wasn't too concerned.

Anyway. So there I was with FF at his first Tipat Chalav appointment here in Rehovot, secure in the knowledge that records had been transferred, when the nurse asked me if I happened to know if FF had had his blood count tested last year, and what were the results? You see, she said with a smile and a sigh, the records came through all right... But the records sent don't include bloodwork. Naturally. Because just why.

Why no, I emphatically do not remember who had what blood test run when and what the results thereof may or may not have been. Luckily, I realized that whenever I get tests done at the doctor's office, instead of waiting for the doctor's office not to call (not entirely fair: I did get a phone call from my doctor once when the results said I needed antibiotics), I look up the results with the handy-dandy app on my phone, which I initially installed so I could easily schedule appointments for me and the kids.

So I logged in, and sure enough, within a minute I located the list of lab tests FF has had, found one called "hematology" from around the right time, and boom! The nurse found what she wanted.

Ah, technology.