I am a dental hygiene student, and I have to find my own patients. And not just anyone, but there is a certain amount and there are requirements about how periodontally envolved they should be(which basically means how bad their teeth and gums are). So...it's hard enough to find a person willing to come 1-4 times for 2.5 hr appointments and being accepted by instructors as a necessary requirement.

Anyways, my yesterday's patient totally screwed me over and she does not see any fault of hers in what happened.

Today I had another patient scheduled, he was an important requirement patient and it was supposed to be his last apppointment.He never showed up and his phones are off. I've left about 5 messages, trying not to lose my cool. Anyways, now I have to find another similar patient and my appointment times are extremely limited all the way till December.

In the meantime, trying not to waste another precious appointment time, I called my other patient. She could not come, but said her husband might, she just needed to call his cell to see if he was available. She was supposed to call back the clinic in a few minutes to let me know if her husband would come in. Here is the thing though, she is Russian and our front desk personnel speaks ONLY English, of course. I explained Mrs H the situation and went to my operatory. About 20 minutes later, front desk assistant comes back to me:" Venera, there's a russian lady on the phone for you." I go over, Mrs H has a phone in her hand, she hands it to me without a word. And there is my patient already apologizing in russian how sorry she was but her husband was stuck at work, I tried to add that it's OK, I knew it was a short notice, and that I'll see him next week. But the lady would not listen to me, she just kept on going with her speech, totally ignoring my words. After about a minute of a non-stop monologue she says"goodbye" and hangs up. I was lost. I cannot believe that she could be so rude to not answer my questions and just simply ignore me. So here I am thinking if I really want this strange patient in my chair. All this time Mrs H was standing right next to me, glancing at me from time to time with a weird expression on her face. So here I am all puzzled, and venting to Mrs H how weird this patient was on the phone, she just would not shut up, I could not even put a word in our conversation, she was just cutting me off and then just hung up etc. Mrs H looks at me and says:"Venera, it was a voicemail you were listening to. I assumed she left a message in russian and I could not understand, so I didn't erase this message, so you could hear it." Needless to say, I was on the floor after that phrase. It seems like these past couple of days are just on big prank on me and I want it to be over. I get it. :)