... On the Other Side

This morning I had a doctor’s appointment. It was scheduled for 8:00 with this dermatologist that I’ve seen a couple of times before. I initially saw him to try to figure out what was wrong with a rather vital organ that had recently broken out with somewhat painful, rather itchy sores. First inclination – VD, right? Luckily for me, all the tests came back negative … and we tested for everything – communicable diseases were ruled out. The doc said it appeared to be an allergic reaction.

But what was I allergic too? Was it possibly one of the condoms that I had purchased when I was back in Greece? Although the packages were sealed, the condoms were well over a year old. My dermatologist seemed convinced that it was these condoms when I mentioned them … unfortunately that doesn’t explain the reoccurrence of the symptoms months later when the use of any condoms had been abandoned. I ended up getting treated for psoriasis although I soon discovered that the best treatment for my condition was abstinence. The pills and creams that were prescribed for me did nothing compared to just not having sex. That’s just my luck though … I finally find myself a girlfriend and, lo and behold, I’m allergic to her.

I cancelled the appointment this morning. Something tells me that my issue won’t be returning anytime soon. You see yesterday was a big day. It was our (Nini and me) five month anniversary from when we started “officially” dating. It also ended up being the last day that we were “officially” dating. So I guess the question of how long someone can put up with my crap has finally been answered – five months…

Not that this was much of a surprise to me – hell, I’ve seen this train coming for a while now – to be completely honest, it’s actually a bit of a relief. Now let’s not take that last statement the wrong way – Nini really is pretty much the nicest person I’ve ever met and I have absolutely no disparaging remarks to make about her. We were just unable to discover a way to mesh no matter how hard we tried. Add to that the allergic reactions I was having and aforementioned technique required for solace and you’ve got a classic “crash and burn” in the making…

So I guess as of today I am, once again, back to my old self. I reluctantly return to that lone soul trudging through life looking for a purpose. It’s familiar territory so the learning curve should be a breeze… Remember, Cori – “The grass is ALWAYS greener…”

bis später,

Coriolis

He Who Wears the Crown

About a month ago I received a letter from my former dental care provider. I figured it would be a statement showing finalized payment for the crown that I had recently obtained – you know … a statement showing that my insurance had paid what they covered and, taking into account the five hundred bucks that I had already paid on the day of the procedure, that my account was now paid in full and clean. But it wasn’t.

What it actually ended up being was a bill. Not only that, but it was a bill demanding full payment – by me – for the remainder of the cost after my initial $500 was subtracted. It was stating that I owed them $475. It clearly stated that the amount covered by insurance was nothing and that no money was expected from my insurance as well. This got me to thinking…

I clearly remembered inquiring with the dental office on whether or not my insurance (United Health Care) would cover this procedure and remember their response. They said that 50% would be covered by my insurance and that I would be responsible for the remaining $500. This was back when I had the procedure done and, although I was a bit shocked to discover that a covered procedure would still be costing me $500, I wrote them a check for this amount. I then got the crown and proceeded on with my life thinking that this unexpectedly costly procedure was complete. A month ago, I got this bill clearly stating otherwise.

For completeness on this story, this actually was not the first correspondence with regards to this same procedure – the crown. For some reason that I still don’t understand, just a few weeks after the crown had been obtained; UHC sent me a letter requesting more information on the necessity of said procedure. It was the standard documentation about what they considered “fair and usual” charges versus what my health professional was charging complete with extremely unclear explanations – written in authentic legalese – for anything they decided they wouldn’t be paying for. The crown was one such item. For some reason they sent “me” the document requesting further proof of need for said crown – they wanted further documentation and X-rays.

Since I had neither any further documentation nor X-rays to send them, I decided to give my dentist’s office a call and see if they might be of some assistance. Hell, they were the ones that filed the insurance claim. Turned out that this was “news to them” and they requested I FAX over the document. This I did.

A couple weeks go by and I get another document from UHC – same thing as before with a request for some new information that I most definitely did not have access to. This one I decided to ignore. The way I figured it was that it really wasn’t my responsibility to get payment to my dentist from my dental insurance company. The dental office filed the claim and they can jump through the required hoops to get UHC to pay. After all, they’re the ones trying to get paid for services rendered. I already gave them my $500…

As I pointed out at the beginning of this article, I was mistaken. I called my dentist’s office (my former dentist’s office that is…) in an effort to discover why they believed I owed them another $475 and was basically informed that no payment had been received from UHC; and that therefore I was responsible for the outstanding balance. I then informed the nice lady I was speaking with that I disagreed. I explained how I distinctly remembered inquiring about the coverage of this crown prior to paying my initial $500. I also mentioned that I distinctly remembered being told that it would be covered. It was then when I informed this kind woman, if they were mistaken in their affirmation of insurance coverage, that it really wasn’t my problem. I basically wished them good luck at getting UHC to pay and informed her that no more money would be coming directly from me for this crown. She then suggested that I contact UHC and attempt to convince them to make this payment.

Maybe this is just a “pet peeve” of mine, but wasting my time and energy to basically go after an insurance company for not providing the services they are selling seems silly. I covered my ass by inquiring with the dental office about coverage prior to receiving service. I would have asked for it in writing but that seemed a bit excessive at the time. The verbal acknowledgement was enough for me. After that, the problem belonged to my dentist. Or so I thought…

You see that’s just the way health care is in this country (the USA if you were wondering). A large number of people can’t even get health insurance which – due to the outrageous prices for any medical procedure – means that they can’t get any health care. That’s just the way this game’s played these days. For those that are fortunate enough to have health insurance, the game changes a bit; however it’s still a game. Sure, you can get the health procedures done but, if your health insurance company decides you didn’t need it; you are going to be forced to pay the bill yourself. And don’t kid yourself into believing that your health insurance company cares – in any way whatsoever – about your well being; they’re only in this game for the money.

But I digress … I didn’t come here to point out the lamentable state of health care in this country. Michael Moore did an excellent job of that in his “Sicko” film. I came here to explain to you, the reader, why my former dentist has decided that he will no longer stoop to providing dental care for me. That was the letter I received last week. It appears that the nice discussion I had with the kind lady at my dentist’s office about being asked to pay for what UHC was not paying was enough for my dentist to drop me as a patient. So I guess the bottom line in all this is that I’m the “bad guy”…

Funny thing is that I logged-in to the UHC website shortly after my call to the dentist’s office and discovered that the payment had already been sent. I guess it had not reached the office prior to their demanding of payment from me; however it was on its way. I was even nice enough to call them back and let them know this; spoke with the same lady whose feathers I had apparently ruffled earlier. I thought they would be glad to hear this – they were getting their money after all. Heck, UHC was paying the full $500 which meant that I was only responsible for $475 of the $500 I had paid earlier – they were ahead by $25!

The denial of service letter that I received also contained a check for $25. So, financially at least, we (my former dentist and I) are now even. I need to locate a new dentist for any future dental work, but at least the financial audit trail is clean. I’m just a bit confused as to how I’m being labeled as the “bad guy” in this situation. Perhaps I should send my ex-dentist a bill for $475 and see how he likes it…

bis später,

Coriolis

Solid as a Stone

You’d think that somebody who’s already endured the absolute pain and agony of a kidney stone would do anything they could to avoid re-visiting the torture … you’d think… I, myself, had a rather stubborn kidney stone a few years back that actually required extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (basically breaking up the stone via shock waves) and you can most definitely believe me when I tell you that I do not want to go through that again. Not so much the lithotripsy (that wasn’t too bad – some bruising and bloody piss for a while) but the stone itself – not fun at all.

I remember rather well how it all started. There was a period where I was getting rather unusual (well, to me at least) pains in my lower abdomen area. It wasn’t really anything too disconcerting; seemed to me like I just had some sort of gas-related issue – nothing that a nice fart wouldn’t take care of. But the discomfort seemed to be rather persistent. It would come in waves – usually at night – and my poorly hatched cure of “cutting the cheese” had less and less effect over time. This continued for a couple months. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and even had Matt (a guy I worked with at the time) pick up some ex-lax for me one morning when I started thinking that it might be constipation. Of course it wasn’t; but after several sleepless nights of tossing and turning in pain, I needed to try something.

Then one day, and I remember this day very vividly, I headed down to Pink E’s for another DPT (Denver Poker Tour) tournament. The tournaments at Pink E’s were losing their popularity a bit and what was once a guaranteed three-table tournament with a substantial wait-list had become more of a hit-and-miss event. It was actually a good thing as it’s much easier to win a certificate in the smaller tournaments – a decrease in the number of fish willing to call your strategically sound bet and draw that miracle suck-out on the river is a good thing. The poker tables weren’t even delivered this evening and we were forced to play on a couple rickety folding tables with some sort of cheap felt-like cloth draped over them. Suffice it to say that the DPT no longer even hosts tournaments at Pink E’s – it’s become one of the many places that I “used” to play at regularly … but I’m getting off the point here a bit…

When I arrived that evening, I was dealing with yet another bout of discomfort. It didn’t seem like anything unusual as I had been experiencing this same thing, time and time again, for the last couple months. I figured it would go away with time – it always had before. I took my seat at Todd’s table and played a bit of poker – poorly… The pain continued to get worse. I was having a very hard time staying focused and rather quickly decided that I needed to get the hell out of there. No problem – getting knocked out of a poker tournament is not a difficult task – a couple suicidal plays later and I was in my car, in what was becoming excruciating pain, heading back to my house.

But where I ended up was not my house. My plans changed as I was driving home writhing in pain. I decided to make a B line straight to the Longmont United Hospital where, after freaking a few people out in the waiting room with a variety of pain induced grimaces, I was finally admitted (to the emergency room – not actually hospitalized) and tended to. They gave me some powerful pain killers, informed me that I most likely had a kidney stone and helped me setup an appointment with a urologist. They also took some kind of fancy X-rays that I would pick up and take to the urologist.

Luckily, I was still employed at Flextronics when all this went down. That meant that I was one of the privileged ones in this country that had medical insurance. Lord knows what that little trip would have cost me if all this happened a bit later when Flextronics Semiconductor was sold and I became responsible for picking up any health insurance I needed – which, for the last couple of years, has been none. And that wasn’t the only hospital bill related to my little calcium deposit nightmare. After visiting with the urologist and finding out that the problem was, in fact, a kidney stone – a rather stubborn stone that seemed to be content lodged near the top of my ureter – it was decided that lithotripsy would be needed in order to expedite the stone’s passage. That procedure was performed at the McKee Medical Center in Loveland shortly thereafter. I really don’t know what I would have done if I had been uninsured…

It was a rough couple of months – something that I most definitely do not want to go through again. Unfortunately I’ve got a bad habit of forgetting important rules that an experience such as this creates for me. One rule that I was supposed to be following was to pay closer attention to what I was putting in my body since the recurrence rate for people who get kidney stones is 70-80% and pretty much the only control you have over this is your diet. The recommendation is to drink a hell of a lot more water and cut back on foods with high oxalate levels (and this list of foods includes quite a few that I am rather fond of…). I was also informed that coffee is very bad when it comes to kidney stones and orange juice is also pretty bad. The apparent healthy diet for a kidney stone sufferer is very bland foods and lots and lots of water.

Now I’ve never been much of a water drinker – I’ve always thought that drinks should at least have taste. That being said, I’m rather sure that my water intake has been far less than sufficient. Although lately I have been drinking quite a few liquids – mainly coffee (I probably have five or six cups a day at work) and fruit juices (all of which contain large percentages of orange juice). This can’t be good. I do have a beer or two on a regular basis as well and – wouldn’t you know it? – beer is also listed as bad when it comes to stones. Now the problem with all this is that I’m beginning to think that I might have another stone…

I’ve been experiencing somewhat mild discomfort in my lower abdomen lately that seems to be pretty much identical to the discomforts I experienced at the beginning of this story. It’s been a few years since my last (and first) stone however my current discomfort is bringing back those memories rather vividly. Something tells me that taking this job with its included health insurance might have been a good thing. I better start researching the locations for some hospitals around here… This could become rather interesting … wish me luck.

bis später,

Coriolis