Category Archives: doctor

May 25, 2011

WHY must you send me ten bills?

By simply three cents

For a $250 emergency room visit, WHY must I get eight bills?

First, let me just say I am happy to have the luxury of health insurance. I know there are many people who are without it right now and I know I am fortunate to have it.

Couldn’t the billing process be streamlined a bit?

I have already received a bill for $161.20 from the actual hospital , $44.20 from the doctor IN the hospital and $3.57 for a variety of blood work. According to my health insurance website I’m still waiting for a variety of bills for people who helped treat me. Clearly I’ve just touched the surface. I only received these three bills so far. Looks like I can expect another four, and those are just the ones who have submitted the claim. The woman at my health insurance told me I can probably expect close to ten bills in the end. FOR ONE VISIT?

Couldn’t the hospital compile all the bills so I can just make one payment, in one shot? Some of the bills I am waiting for are $2.57 and $3.87. Seriously? It can’t be consolidated into one bill?  This is 2011. The system is this inefficient?

For all I know I am paying $4 to the guy who wheeled me around for tests and $6 for a technician to read results. These people are needed for the process, but don’t they work for the hospital that already sent me a bill?! Is there no way to streamline bills so the hospital can distribute payment to the appropriate parties? At this rate, I’m waiting to see if I owe any money to the woman who checked me in at the front desk or the man who gave me the CDs of my results.

On top of getting multiple bills for a 8 hour stay, there must be a lot of people who don’t pay their ER bills. Three days, THREE, after I got the bill from the hospital, I got another, identical to the first. I didn’t have time to pay it in three days, so they send another bill? Another day or two passed and then I got a call from the hospital billing department asking for payment over the phone. Really? I know I have about 30 days to pay it, but could you at least give me ten days before you send the billing department after me? What’s next – collections at two weeks?

When I lived in London, I had COBRA from my parents and thankfully I never had to visit a hospital or doctor in all the time I was away and traveling. If I was feeling sick, I went to the chemist. I’d tell him or her what was wrong, they’d direct me to an aisle, and I’d get meds…some of which would be considered prescription in the States. There, most everything was available over the counter. Paid for the meds and possibly pick up a few more things (it was like going to CVS or Rite Aid in the States) and I was on my way.

Obviously, when your doctor tells you to go to the emergency room – and he says ‘do not pass go, do not collect $200,’ you go. There was no way around it. But couldn’t the hospital just collect the $200 or $300, or whatever the costs after insurance will ultimately be, and distribute it to everyone that gets a cut?! WHY is this billing system such a waste of time, effort and paper? WHY?

WHY Wednesday.

1 Comment | posted in doctor, why, WHY Wednesday

April 4, 2011

Pedicure on the Brain

By simply three cents

The pedicure I had this past Friday, the color of the rented Nissan Cube that I want on my toes, and my scalding shower injury brought to mind pedicures and injury. Again, not so common. But for me, and my luck, it happened. 

I have a long, injury filled history with pedicures, and I can’t find the write up for “The Pedicure that Required a Tetanus Shot.” Instead I found this…a saved email exchange between myself, my sister and a friend while I was getting a pedicure. This happened a few years after “The Pedicure that Required a Tetanus Shot.” When I find that story, I will post it (yes I do save these things). In the meantime, happy reading.

me: Am getting a pedi and the woman is pulling the gross dirt out of my toenail and it looks like where she pulled started to bleed under my nail in that crevice with the skin. She doesn’t speak English well but she thinks its the old color. But she already cleaned thre old color off. What do I do? This place is right by work and work peeps go here. Ughhhhhhhhh is my tetanus shot still valid from a few yrs ago?? My foot is soaking in the water so I can’t see if its blood or not.
friend: Tell her its bleeding get some peroxide. I think you need to start getting the expensive pedis. The cheap places aren’t doing well for you — ouch!

sister: Why do you continue to go to those places? I’ve never had anything but problems when I get a pedi from someone I can’t communicate with. It may be pricier to go elsewhere but it’s well worth it in the long run. Also, why do you have so much dirt under your nail?

me: Dirt=Flip flops in the city! And it wasn’t dirt for that incident I think it was skin she pulled from under my toenail. It was long and skin like. It didn’t look like dirt when she pulled but there is dirt elsewhere. I just inspected and I think she pulled some skin off leaving me with a small hole. Nothing drastic. And some of it may have been color.

me: Ok I peeked at my toe. But can’t tell. She’s telling me polish on the skin. Why doesn’t she clean it off then???? I can’t tell and the color I picked is dark so I’m not going to be able to tell once she paints. But when I leaned she was spraying that stuff on my legs and I think it got in my face. I should be banned from pedicures.

sister: I only get dirt on the bottom of my feet from wearing flip flops… Anywho… try to enjoy the rest of the pedi but if you go back to those kinds of places again I love you but I don’t want to hear about it. You need to go to the type of pedi place where they give out sedatives like candy and wake you when they’re done!

1 Comment | posted in doctor, in and around NYC, observations, why

March 29, 2011

Bruised Arms, Black and Blues and Broken Glasses

By simply three cents

Judging from the title of this post, you would have thought I got in a fight. I look and feel it but thats’ just not so.

Four days after my ER experience and I now look like a battered woman on both of my arms. The nurse’s needle work  from taking my blood and inserting an IV have caused my arms to look like I got beat up. Like seriously black and blue. And! Oh this is great, I have a wedding on Saturday.

Will need to find some fantastic makeup to cover these bruises up. Oh, what’s that you say? Go into my makeup and find the best cover up? Oh that’s funny. I am probably the only 30 something year old woman whose makeup supply is barely non-existent. Mascara, eye cover up that doesn’t work on plain old eye circles, a couple of lipsticks and an eyeshadow palatte is not going to cut it for these bruises. That will be a fun trip to explain why my arms look the way they do when seeking professional guidance.

And to sweeten the pot, just as I was about to walk out the door for the first of several doctor’s follow up appointments yesterday, I went to wipe off my glasses lenses, and wouldn’t you know it…they snapped in half. The timing is impeccable. Thankfully I already have a prescription for lenses and I did buy frames while in Argentina, so today I had the pleasure of figuring out my vision benefits and where I can get my lenses made. Now I just need to take care of that, oh ASAP, since I can’t see without contacts or glasses. As an added bonus, I have very dry eyes, so I like to take my contacts out as soon as I get home, so I really need to fill that prescription quickly — otherwise, no TV this week.

What also sucks is that I sleep in those frames and they had yet to break. Furthermore, I have had those frames for years, and they were going to be my backup pair for times like these. And that plan went haywire.

I know in the scheme of things, this is hardly a crisis. I think it’s G-D’s way of making me laugh.

Leave a comment | posted in doctor, why

March 28, 2011

Pain Poem

By simply three cents

I have unexplained pain
Does it mean that it will rain
Poked and prodded with more than one test
I need to know what’s wrong, alas I cannot protest
There’s been no one to explain
I wish my medicine was champagne.

1 Comment | posted in doctor, just silly, why

March 27, 2011

Wild, nah, Mild, Weekend

By simply three cents

The boyfriend gets upset sometimes because I don’t really like to sit and watch movies. Call it bad movies, call it ADD but I just can’t sit still. Until this weekend.

Sunday movie day! In fact, there were so many good movies on, I had to keep switching channels and/or recording others. Let me make it clear that my idea of good movies is hell for my boyfriend. There was My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill, Serendipity, Miss Congeniality and I stumbled upon a Sex and the City marathon. Even though I saw every one of these movies and shows countless times, I still managed to spend precious hours on the couch on Sunday.

While I am typically not good at naming movie quotes, I now know it is because I am never asked to quote these kinds of movies. Clearly pop culture never picked up these references and put them into Trivial Pursuit, or bar trivia nights, but it is these references I am good at because I was able to say the line (or close to it) before it happened, detailing the scene before it started.

Movie watching, and small portions of mint chocolate chip ice cream, is part of the recovery process from my trip to the ER on Friday. I did step onto the balcony for a hot five minutes early this morning for fresh air and took a short walk later in the afternoon to fend off stir craziness. Thank you, ridiculous cold spell at the end of March for making my weekend indoors, and mostly on the couch, perfectly acceptable.

Please don’t think I was a complete waste this weekend (even though I am allowed to be). In addition to watching television and sleeping, I showered, did laundry and even managed to clean the floors in the bathroom AND kitchen. Apartment living has its perks – there’s only one bathroom and a small kitchen 😉

I cannot remember the last time I had a weekend this lazy. But for the record, I’m okay to not have another for a long while.

1 Comment | posted in doctor, food, winter

March 26, 2011

Nothing like a Friday in the ER

By simply three cents

Spent the day yesterday in the ER. Wouldn’t recommend. But when your regular doctor tells you to go to the ER and to not pass go or collect $200, you don’t really have any other options.

A couple of observations:

1. The ER is NOT like Grey’s Anatomy. My doctor was very nice, smart and calming but he was no McDreamy, McSteamy or Sam, Pete or Cooper (if you watch Private Practice) by any stretch of the imagination.

2. My nurse was very nice too. But, she needed two tries to get the IV in my arm and now I have a huge welt where she got it in on the second try. Then, the first amount of blood she took wasn’t enough and the lab needed more. Yay – jabbed twice for that too. Shouldn’t it be one and done?

3. It doesn’t look all that clean. There was a big stain on the sheet of the bed (clean sheet, old stain – still gross), a hair on the floor of my ‘room’ – ew – and shoe scuff marks on the walls (how? why?)

4. It’s not all that sanitary. Both the doctor and the nurse had gloves on at one point, and both left the ‘sanitary’ confines of my ‘room’ and then came back – the nurse to take blood, the doctor to examine me. What did they touch outside the room before touching me? When I asked the doctor if he was going to put on new gloves he told me this is not a sterile environment. Um, it’s a hospital, shouldn’t it be a sterile environment?

5. Germs everywhere (realizing that this not a sterile environment). The woman in the ‘room’ across from mine was diagnosed with mono. We had the same doctor. What’s to say I didn’t pick up mono in the hospital? When I asked the doctor about that, he brushed it off and asked if I came into contact with her. Hello? He did! He was in contact with her, and me. Shouldn’t she be in a room with a sealed door, not just a curtain dividing her from the hallway! And if I am really going to go nuts, shouldn’t she have a completely different medical team that is dressed in space suits so none of us get any of her germs?

6. I have never just walked into an ER before, as a patient, alone. I have typically traveled by ambulance and I am usually in some sort of shock. Going in as a walk-in, you can see it’s really quite efficient. Before I was done registering, I was already being called into triage. Got out of triage and settled into the waiting area, no more than 2 minutes later, I was called in for more insurance stuff and before we were done I was called to my ‘room.’ Then I waited – but not too long because…

7. The nurse was in within minutes, and the doctor was in pretty soon after that, which is nerve-wracking because you never want to be the worst one in the ER.

8. I am really funny when I am scared. Cracking jokes with the nurse, with the guys wheeling me around to various tests and even with the doctor. Scare the shit out of me and I am a regular stand-up comedienne.

9. When they make you drink a lot of liquids for tests, of course you are going to have long pees (is that a word?). The toilet is set to automatically flush like 10 seconds after you sit down. Really? Someone should reset that flush setting if they are going to make you drink a gallon of liquid.

10. The lab techs must be good poker players because every single tech I encountered didn’t reveal anything on their faces. ‘Wait for the doctor’ they say. For one of the tests there were students in the room. I couldn’t get anything from their faces either. That must be one of the first things they learn…don’t show anything on your face so the patient can freak out waiting for answers just a little longer.

11. Assuming the worst, and being in a room alone, gets the mind thinking. So I came up with a list of 25 (or so) questions for the doctor. Because the worst didn’t happen, I only got to ask 3.

12. Daytime TV seriously sucks.

13. There is no volume control on the remote. The only volume available was far too loud. I could hear the program on the TV in the ‘room’ next door without even having my volume on. This must be so annoying for the staff when it’s a full ER.

14. Surprisingly, the Weather Channel on mute is kind of calming.

1 Comment | posted in doctor, observations

March 21, 2011

Who Would Have Thought?

By simply three cents

After weeks of hobbling up and down stairs, along with the knee, leg and achilles pain since we returned from Argentina, I decided to visit one of my bff’s…the orthopedist.

I tell him the story and he doesn’t seem surprised that I am in pain. He also tells me that my achilles is swollen. Of course I ask about it popping and he said the chance is so minor. Hello, do we not know my luck?

He did the exam and then took some x-rays of the left knee. He also had me hop on my left foot. Before I do it, I ask it if could pop. He said if it does, you are already in my office. This is not comforting.

Diagnosis: I have tendonitis in both my knees and in my achilles. He wrote me a script for physical therapy. The left leg pain, just under the knee, is just a massive bruise and we’ll just have to wait that out for the pain to go away.

What a relief. Don’t get me wrong because clearly this is a pain – pun totally intended. But, as I’m a bit of a hypochondriac I had actually been anticipating emergency surgery to repair whatever it was that could have been broken, torn or otherwise damaged. So tendonitis? I can take that.

What is surprising is that I must have injured both knees at the time of hopping over crevices and hiking up and down the glacier but then, the pain on the right was so much more. Who knew I actually screwed up both.

Back to physical therapy!

Leave a comment   |  tags: | posted in doctor, why