So my glorious plan is not getting off to the best start. Yesterday I received a statement from my health insurance company stating that a rather large portion of my $25,316.27 charge from the hospital where I nearly died in March is my responsibility. Part of it was not covered because I was only "precertified" for the outpatient surgery. I guess when you are bleeding to death and require something like eleven hours of emergency surgery, a blood transfusion because you are nearly transparent, a four day stay hooked up to morphine and oxygen with various other tubes shoved into you in places you don't even want to think about, and three rows of staples sticking out of your abdomen you need to stop and wake up right there on the operating table when things just start going downhill and ask the surgeon (who is currently shitting his pants hoping you don't end up a big ass cold dead malpractice lawsuit) to run out to the waiting room and tell your husband and three little children (who have been sitting there the whole fucking day and night bewildered by what is happening and wondering if their wife and mommy is ever coming out again) to call the insurance company and see if it is okay if they go ahead and save your life. Or rather at 11:30 p.m. when you stir from your morphine stupor long enough to look at your ghostly white husband who didn't know what the hell to think or say to you about the fact that they had to rip you open and cut out your uterus and say "It's okay. Take the kids home." and then give more of what little blood you had left to the nurse so they could hurry up and get a match for the transfusion that was ordered to be started immediately, you should take that time to think about whether or not your insurance company is going to say it is okay for you to be there and pay their portion of the bill instead of passing back out.
I don't EVEN want to see what will happen with the anesthesiologist bill. I need some more morphine just to deal with all this bullshit.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 17, 2002 at 03:01 PM