out of hospital and insurance problems

[Guest guest]

Thanks so much to a, and Joan for your responses to my

vent regarding my insurance, and for your helpful suggestions.

The good news is that my HR dept did manage to get it straightened

out Thursday morning, just in time for my hospital visit. I'll have

to go back to the pharmacy to get refunds on the scrips I had to pay

cash for, but the pharmacy said that would be no problem.

I still don't have an insurance card, and have been told not to

expect one for at least two more weeks (that's the " normal " time

they'll get around to sending them out)! That still baffles me. I

can't have been the only one having these kinds of crises in the

interim.

My hospital stay went fine, although there were parts of it that

were quite miserable. They did a " double " on me while I was there -

an upper GI endoscopy and a colonoscopy at the same time. I

recommend doing them both at once to anyone who needs them - I

really wouldn't have wanted to go through all that twice!

And they knocked me out completely with anaesthesia instead of

the " waking sedation " of Versed since I'm on narcotics. That was

great too. The anaesthesiologist told me as he was prepping me that

he's a coward and for his own colonoscopies he always gets an

anaesthesiologist friend to give him the complete knockout too,

instead of going the Versed route. So it sounds like you can

request that of your docs if you're ever concerned about the Versed

not working because of narcotics.

The results of the tests were not helpful. I don't have an ulcer or

even any sign of gastritis!!! So they don't know what's causing the

terrible pain and nausea I've been going through. But that explains

why all the ulcer drugs they've had me on didn't work.

They did take out polyps, and they biopsied something in my stomach

that didn't look right - I have a strong family history of both

stomach and colon cancer, thus the extreme carefulness on their

parts. I won't know those results for a while. I still have to go

through the gallbladder " hydascan " radionuclied test in a couple of

weeks. And if that doesn't show anything, they'll check for

gastropherises as a result of my nerve damage.

So meanwhile, I get to go on for a few more weeks not being able to

eat hardly anything and feeling like I'm going to toss my cookies at

any moment. I almost wish they had found something concrete,

because at least then we could start to treat it!

Anyway, thanks to everyone for their support and concern. This

weekend I'm staying down and taking it easy, but I hope to be back

up and running again next week, and back to posting again.

Take care, everyone.

Cheryl in AZ