Preparing for desense - a guide to a visit to Scripps San Diego

[Guest guest]

I wanted to post a note about preparing for and visiting Scripps desense clinic

in San Diego. In summary, the best way to prepare for and make the desense

journey is to contact their Allergy clinic and talk to their desense department.

Here is my experience.

My desense was coincidentally a few weeks after polyp removal. However, I

started planning for my visit by contacting the Scripps clinic and scheduling a

visit - planning it for after surgery. You cannot just show up - they can

schedule and accommodate two patients per week. You therefore must make an

appointment - I made my appointment about four months in advance. The main

point of contact at Scripps is the Allergy Department's nurse - who guided me

through the process. She needed a physician's order for this - I got this from

my general physician " GP " - not my ENT. I made an appointment with the " GP " ,

and he wrote an order for me to visit, faxing it to Scripps.

The next thing I needed was an insurance review. Scripps provided a list of CPT

Codes (these are USA insurance codes). I then contacted my insurance company

with the list of CPT codes and see if they covered them.

Scripps then wanted me to do a lung function test. My ENT was nice enough to

order this and I did a lung function test at my local medical center. The

results were faxed to Scripps via the medical center. My ENT otherwise had no

influence on this visit - but he did get the results.

Throughout this process the Scripps Allergy Department kept up with me making

sure we were on track for this process.

I made travel plans for Scripps then - they are in northern San Diego, CA USA in

a town called " Del Mar " - about two miles from the ocean, near La Jolla, CA.

Scripps has special hotel rates for patients - about $US 105 per night. The

hotel is three walking blocks from the clinic. A rental car is needed to get to

the area from the airports. San Diego airport is about one hour south - but in

theory the clinic could easily be reached from LAX or Orange County/ Wayne

or Long Beach Airport, all about 1.5 hours north.

My desense was over three days - starting at Monday 7:45a and ending at about

2:45p daily. Three days is unusual (about 20% of cases) - two days is typical

and the other patient I was with was done by afternoon of day two. You have

seen other posts about the desense process -dosage, etc. Let me remind you that

this is an outpatient process that allowed me enough energy to go out at night.

At the end of desense, I was given some ASA to get me through the days until I

got home. The ending dosage is 650mg twice a day.

The bottom line is there is paperwork and coordination that must occur with

desense at Scripps. The staff there was wonderful and caring and I am

satisfiable with the outcome.