so glad you are still alive and kicking bitflipper! thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for the thousands of insights and ideas you have contributed over the years also. I've learnt a hell of a lot from you

Bit,
 
Good to know you found a perk in the ordeal and are on the mend.
 
The part about the bill just makes me sick.
 
Over a long time in the health field, I got used to death and disease and all kinds of hopeless situations. You can't lose compassion but can't get personally involved for survival. The one thing I never got numb to was the economic outrage. From behind the lines, you see all the dirt and how the system looks at you. The docs and nurses if they haven't hit terminal burnout are there for you and carry some level of an ideal. White collar level up only cares about the dollar and doesn't give a damn if a week stay in the ICU will bankrupt you.
 
Some may remember awhile back there was a televised debate, couple big wig govt reps from Canada and the US debating the merits of our respective healthcare systems. US claimed the best state of the art that money can buy and potential long waits Canadians may be subject to. Canada replied, what about those who can't afford the care. Our idiot reply was that this was not the issue. The issue was that if you did have the money, you could buy a better product. As a Yank, I watched as our asses were stomped without a wipe.
 
Most hospitals have to do some percentage of "charity" work which helps their image with the public. Means they have financial assistance plans for those who meet criteria. Follow this up with discharge planning to get you headed in the right direction if you haven't already done this. You might get them to foot part of or all of the bill.
 
Another option at least used to be to send in 25 or so dollars a month on the bill and think of it as your insurance premium because you can always go back as the total goes astronomical. After a couple years minimal payments some organizations just write off the balance as a loss. Blood out of a turnip thing.
 
Best of luck on the financial battle.
 
John
 
 
 
 

Starise
Growing old sucks big time. 

"Old age ain't no place for sissies"
- Bette Davis
 
I've got lots of gripes about our healthcare system, but every time I've left a hospital stay I came away thinking "nurses rock!". Not many people could deal with human misery every single day - up close and (sometimes extremely) personal - and still give you a smile and laugh at your lame jokes. Respect.

I have to say, apart from the cost, the quality of the hospitals in the US is second to none. I'm speaking as someone with experience of the NHS in Britain, anyway. My experiences in New York hospitals were real eye openers. As for waiting times....well, when I found out I'd be paying thousands for my melanoma surgery, I made inquiries back home about how long I'd expect to wait on the NHS and was told that wait times of 10-12 weeks were possible, even though I'd been told by the specialist that unless I had it removed within 6 weeks it could spread to my lymph system. So I thought screw that, went to NYU hospital, had a meeting with the surgeon and asked him how soon I could have it done. He said "when are you next free?" 
 
I would have thought nothing of spending twice that money on a car, and I bet there are people who would have thought nothing of spending it on a widescreen TV. Saving my life was a pretty good purchase IMO. They were pretty good about the fee too, offering me all kinds of slow payment plans. I told them I'd rather just pay upfront in cash (I had no insurance at the time) and the surgeon very generously slashed his fee in half when he heard this. Great bloke. 

bitflipper

Starise
Growing old sucks big time. 

"Old age ain't no place for sissies"
- Bette Davis
 
I've got lots of gripes about our healthcare system, but every time I've left a hospital stay I came away thinking "nurses rock!". Not many people could deal with human misery every single day - up close and (sometimes extremely) personal - and still give you a smile and laugh at your lame jokes. Respect.

My cousin Brenda is a nurse. She posted something on Facebook a few days ago (yeah, I'm on FB), something like "during the 23 hours and 55 minutes the doctor is not in your room, it's nurses who take care of you". So true.

I feel for you, Dave. Been there. Done that. Got no t-shirt.
 
I developed Crohn's in the Army. A couple of years later, still in the hospital, my intestine perforated and started pumping waste into places it wasn't supposed to go. Good thing I was already in the hospital when it happened. That cost me 45 cm of ileum, the ileocecal valve, the cecum, and 3 cm of colon. Happy to have lived through that.
 
And then this...thanks to an ex-wife who didn't know how to deal with a vasovagal syncopy seizure. The witch (previous word censored by forum bot) called 911. All she had to do was lay me flat. If you could read my mind in the picture, you'd know her days were numbered.
 
And let's not forget the bleeding-like-a-stuck-pig thing when the IV needle thingy started by the EMTs in the Bambulance didn't mate with the IVs used in the ER.
 
I just remembered the one upside. The cardiologist who ran my stress test the next day told me to get off the machine, that I was boring. I was already in the top 3% and didn't feel like I was working at all. I was wondering when the actual test was going to start. So that was good news!
 

 

Quite the ordeal!

I'm glad to hear you've come through it all ok. Amazing how far we can stretch ourselves when need be.

I hope you heal quickly and the colonoscopy comes and goes fast and well!

Hopefully you'll find everything is fine, and all that drama around the colonoscopy was for nothing   

don't forget when you give you the oscopy .. they film it.. ask for the dvd.. ;-)
if only I had known!!
 
my mum had an op , and they used it /her for a training dvd.. which was a good thing, as they couldn't "muck up"
 
I actually fought the people trying to put me under, I was told later... and took ages to wake up.
I do remember the fasting and having to only it boring rubbish to clear out my system a week before.
dunno if you have the "barium" thing there, or they still do it.. thats err not great either.
 
I know someone on the radio had stents etc and they were saying you have to be alert for such things and they stop your heart etc. for some procedures very briefly.
 
I've had one friend who is mid 40's.. maybe 5-6 years ago , he wouldn't be here due to the advances in things.
 
with time I forgot my op, pretty much.. but the fasting bit, being a diabetic now is a bit trickier.. I didn't take my tablet for a blood test one morning.. I was like a drunk walking up to the place, until I got my food / tablet.
 
there has been a series on iplayer called "surgeons" and some of the stuff they do is "wow" these days.
 

Somebody once turned on their smartphone's audio recorder and left it recording during his colonoscopy. He was shocked by the banter that went on while medical professionals stuck things up his bum. I considered trying that, but there were no pockets on the hospital gown they gave me.
 
Speaking of diabetes, 12 years ago I was diabetic, too. Insulin injections 4 times a day, bland food, poking my fingers, sudden crashes. I still have little sensation in the soles of my feet, from neuropathy caused by the diabetes. The good news is that I am no longer diabetic, haven't been for 12 years. The key was weight loss, nearly 100 pounds.
 
That weight loss didn't come easy. It entailed many months of suffering, and it was far from a linear progression. But today I am only 20 lb. away from what the charts say is my ideal weight, still dropping and haven't gained any of it back in more than a year.
 
Turns out, the key is not calorie restriction as we've been told our whole lives. I proved that by managing to somehow still gain weight on a 1,000 calorie per day diet. The real key is insulin control. Insulin makes you fat, not calories. And what do they give Type II diabetics to deal with their disease? Insulin.
 
BTW, my bible is this book.