Meeting the Surgeon 3, Doule take

"I'm sorry which surgeon do you have a booking with?"
"The wrong one, so I need to get some clarification from my doctor, do you think you can contact my doctor for me?"
"certainly, which doctor was that?"
"Dr Robert Still"
"We don't have a surgeon by that name, did you have an appointment with him here?"
"No, I am sorry, he is the doctor who recommended me to one of the surgeons that is here. I need to contact him regarding his referral."
"Oh, I see, and what was the problem with the referral?"
"Well, I am booked into see the wrong surgeon, so that the problem"
"Oh and you wan't to contact Dr Still and talk to him?"
"If that is ok."
"That should be fine I will put a call through to his office." Handing me the phone.
I was hoping here that they might break into the Dr's list of after hours contact hours once they got the recorded message, but as I had not properly heard the message I also wanted to check what it said.
"It appears that their offices are closed, do you have another number?"
"No sorry so what would you like to do?"
"I don't know? When is the next appointment for Dr Alan Burn?"
"We won't be able to get you in until..." to long " would that suit?"
"Not really, can you give me some information about Dr Alburn?"
Turns out he does happen to be a knee surgeon and apparently he is equally recommended by Robert. The only think that they couldn't tell me is why Robert might recommend Alexander over Phil. Which is all I really wanted to know. If they could say that the waiting list for Alexander was shorter than for Phil, I would have something to go off, but they would not commit to anything. This made it very difficult to decide what to do from here.
Options:
1) Tell them to cancel until I have had a chance to talk to my Robert,
2) Book another appointment with the correct doctor,
3) See this doctor and hope he seemed capable. Check with Robert on Monday

1) I didn't want to wait to get another appointment, I had to wait two month's for this appointment.
2) The wait was still too long for this option
3) Was I going to waste $140.00 on a quack?

As I was going to be able to cancel anything that was booked (even though it would cost $140 for the pleasure) I went ahead with 3.

Dr Phil Alburn, he turned out to be fairly decent, he was able to give me answers where I had questions, even to why was Alexander recommended instead of him, he guessed it was a numbers thing, according to him, Robert recommends %50 each way. Didn't seem unlikely, as I didn't have a particularly difficult case according to Robert. He also assured me that I could change at any stage if I needed (which I didn't want to) as it was no skin off his nose, he would not want to perform surgery on someone who was not confidant of his ability.
So I booked the surgery, for the next week (much to my delight) and started filling out forms.
Several hours later...
NIB "What do you mean my insurance doesn't cover this operation."
Hospital "How much?"
Hospital "upfront..."
Hospital "no medicare rebate!"
Public system option "wait how long?"
Several hours later...
after calculations "I can afford it without insurance, go ahead and book it all in."
白龙在下 "I will put in $1000..."
2 days later...
Hospital "What do you mean that you missed something on your earlier quote? How could you miss something that costs $1500"
Anesthesiologist "But I told you that there were two possibilities in duration and you said they were the same cost!"
Several hours later...
Surgeon "So I get 6 weeks to pay..."
Anesthesiologist "So I get 6 weeks to pay..."
Assistant "So I get 6 weeks to pay..."
"See you Thursday!"
Tuesday morning,
Hospital "So I will be refunded for all services I don't use..."

-----I think I will actually be able to afford it-----



(provided I do not get the most expensive option, but that is out of my control)