Wife of a mediphobe
Himself doesn't like doctors. Never has. But last tuesday when I picked him up at work he said, "I'm having chest pains, you'd better take me to the hospital..." and then fell asleep in the seat. I took him to the hospital, but not the one our insurance likes because Himself's sister died because of medical mismanagement at that hospital. The hospital admitted him, did tests, and then started talking about insurance... and things insurance doesn't like to cover, like heart catheterization at the wrong hospital. Himself (under alot of stress as he is hooked to heart leads, with an IV in his arm, missing work when we are behind on bills, and being told that we are at the wrong hospital and will probably be charged 40% of a possibly $100,000 procedure if he needs angioplasty) pulled the leads off, yanked out his IV and walked out of the hospital because he refused to build up debt that he couldn't pay... After a week of run around including being scheduled for two doctors appointments accross town from each other both at 10:45 am on the same day... it comes down to a heart specialist saying, "I don't think we will find anything during the catheterization, but you still need it done and I can't do it till you've had a physical with your regular physician because you haven't seen him in a while and the insurance REQUIRES you to be referred by the physician... call me when you have the referral in your hand..." So he gets to see his regular physician on Thursday, they will back date the referral, and hopefully we will get this all in our hands by Friday so he can have the procedure done and get back to work on monday... And me? well, I am in the back of my heart hoping that they actually find a little something (fixable). why? because if they don't find anything, Himself will NEVER tell me again when he is having chest pains and may, someday, drop dead "without warning" because he doesn't trust doctors to really help anyone. Just doing expensive procedures to get money out of people who don't have any.
Needless to say, it has been an incredibly stresful week... sigh
Needless to say, it has been an incredibly stresful week... sigh
posted by Wynn @ 4:11 PM
2 Comments:
At 10:14 PM,
Mrs. Loquacious said…
Sorry to hear about your hubby's medical woes, Wynn! The one good thing about living in a semi-leftist country is that we do have great public medicare, which at least provides for the basics and emergencies like chest pains. When Hubbs had chest pains (from straining a pectoral muscle) we had no problems getting in to see a doc and getting tests done.
Good luck with your hubby's physical and subsequent specialist testing! I hope he is OK and everything turns out peachy-keen (he can't be *that* old and needs to live many more decades is my guess)!
At 2:06 PM,
Wynn said…
Well, he's 42... and I told him that he isn't ALLOWED to die before me, and since I plan on living to 120... he'd just better take care of himself. He is doing much better... and I still hope they find a *little* something so he doesn't go thinking it's all bogus! Meanwhile we switch from a bacon and butter diet, to chicken and veggies! (I've wanted to do that for years, but too much protesting from 5 separate quarters!)
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