Settling Up

So much has happened. I don’t know where to start! So I will babble until something comes together. I am feeling great by the way, even hung out on a ladder yesterday, only three steps high, but still the boys were nervous. HOOT! I have been doing my stretching exercises. Thanks for asking…okay only one person asked and she is a physical therapist! LOL!  Thanks Marie!  Jack has a chin up bar set up in the office doorway. So I started reaching for it for a nice stretch. It was strange at first because my left hand reached it easily, but my right was a hand length short. They used to get to the same place over my head at the same time!   Just reaching for the bar each time I walked by last week got me evened out in just a few days. Now they  DO get there at the same time.  So this week I tried this yoga pose.

click picture for instructions on this pose

Using the bar overhead so I could ease into it. The great thing about this pose is a two way stretch, reaching up with the arms overhead and pulling down into a sit with the lower body. Holding this stretch each time I walked by the bar really made my back and side feel stronger.  I can do it now without easing in with the bar, but I ease out of the stretch each time, just in case.  Don’t want a repeat of the rush to the ER. This injury might have cured my reckless streak…or its just on hold?

Oh! That’s a good story to start with…

Settling the ER Bill

I am no hospital veteran, but I have been around enough to know to ALWAYS get an itemized copy of a hospital bill and look it over before paying. ( check for double entries, stuff you didn’t get, etc) So when a straight statement arrived for $1800.00 for my 45minute ER stay. I was sure there was a mistake somewhere. That’s a big bill for x-rays and a shot.

Let me digress a moment: Jack has full coverage medical free as a perk of his job.  It would be over 700.00 a month to add me and even more to add our boys. Yes, Jack works in the medical field and we can’t afford his company’s insurance plan. Ironic? So we private pay. Over the years this has caused us some jitters, but for the most part the boys and I have been very healthy so we have saved money all over the place paying as we go.

So when the itemized statement arrived with no mistakes. Only had 5 listings. One being 150.00 for administering the shot another for the shot itself 80.00. Pricey! Jack and I talked it over before I called back to negotiate the bill. We had issues with the x-rays/radiology report not being delivered to Dr. Squishy for the first follow up. So we had to delay his diagnosis until we got another set. Sure we didn’t have to pay for the second set because Jack works for an imaging company and all my imaging…X-Rays, Cat Scans, MRI, Ultrasounds, Mammograms, are free. 

But our biggest issue was the ER’s treatment path, prescription choices and diagnosis.

Remember when I said, they asked me Psych questions…” Are you sure your not just having a anxiety attack right now?” Well I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t really want to get into it, but throughout my time at the ER…the crazy questions continued. I blew it off mostly because its was Christmas Eve and its obvious that people who need attention or are mentally ill do frequent Emergency Rooms on holidays. I just thought it was part of the protocol. Jack and I both gave each other funny looks when the crazy questions kept coming back up, but still thought little of it.

You know the worst time to declare you are NOT crazy is right after someone insists you are.  

In the end I was discharged with “Chest Wall Pain” but we had scripts and it was Christmas so we didn’t look up what that meant. Turns out its a blanket diagnosis for pain caused by anxiety,  stress, or mental disorientation. And those scripts we got filled, were also for mental disorientation, and anxiety related pain.  We didn’t look them up right away so it took a few days for us to “get it”. The meds were pacification drugs for me to get over my crazies and were not meant to treat real pain. 

Once we realized this we went to Dr. Squishy. He scratched his head at my prescriptions, told us to throw those pills away ( we gave them to his office staff and they did it for us) and prescribed muscle relaxers and pain killers. Real pain killers. Ordered more x-rays which confirmed I had lung contusions and lung fluid/possible pneumonia. Oh yeah, and remember? He gave me the squish of my life, my first re-alignment. 

Jack and I both agreed we were thankful for the ER doing what they could to make us comfortable. We value the service to the community it provides. We understand no one died from the missed diagnosis. I could still feel a lot of the pain even after the shot at the ER and after a few days on this medication I started to have horror dreams, uncontrollable twitching, speech problems. So although we were thankful for somewhere to go in  flash, we were also not paying the entire bill as if we were fully supported, or properly diagnosed.

So back to the negotiations. When I talked to the hospital’s agent I started out with the x-ray fiasco. She was as tough as nails as one would expect a person charged with collection of debt for a hospital should be. If we did the x-rays you will pay for them. Period.

So it was then I decided to state my purpose. “Jack and I had decided the level of care we received was worth 800 to us.”  She reminded me in a sarcastic tone the bill was 18 hundred dollars  not 8 hundred and they would be knocking off 200.00 for us being private pay.

I then told her my head case vs. lung contusion/pneumonia story and you could have heard a pin drop. She may have stopped breathing. At this point I thought about asking for the bill to be dismissed, not for any other reason that because I could and her sarcastic tone of earlier. Maybe my friends were right? Maybe I am being a fool to pay them anything. 

Temptation is an interesting thing…strongest at one’s weakest moments. And often seems SO logical, making doing the “wrong” thing so easy.

Then I remembered we are trying to raise our kids beyond this generation. Pebble in a pond motivations. Passing on values that we often feel more of our countrymen used to have, but lack on the whole in this present day.  Courage to do the right thing. Honesty when its not in style. Letting go of Entitlement drummed in by media ads with the mantra “ You Deserve This”.  Forwarding attributes to make a country of people proud, not mighty at all costs. Jack and I feel a country of change starts with resisting little temptations like this. Pebble in a pond motivations.

I said again, “ My husband and I believe the level of care we received was worth $800 to us.” 

“The hospital can do that”

Like a warm breeze, the change in her voice was one of relief. We weren’t going to sue the hospital, she was still going to collect something, and she didn’t have to work too hard at it either. One phone call and done.

We both hung up happy.

Then my inner brat screamed to me “Sucker!” …LOL! Way to ruin a Zen Moment, Brat.  I gave her a Clementine and a nap. Inner brat was good with that.  

Happy Weekend! 

Jodiann

PS: Going to work on the Joining Prize for Life Without Lemons Contest this weekend! Stay Tuned!