Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Saturday, March 31, 2007
the wee hours
Medical Marijuana
Okay, I’ve done it. I’ve sent away for my Medical Marijuana packet from the Nevada Department of Agriculture. I’ve already discussed it with my doctor and he’s fine with me using it if I have my MM card. I’ve explained that marijuana relieves certain pain that other medications don’t. For instance, when my Carpal Tunnel gets really bad, I get a horrible aching in my upper arm. Nothing has ever been able to get rid of it, other than marijuana. Not Advil, not Hydrocodone, not Oxycodone, regardless of the dosage. Marijuana is the only thing that has ever worked. However, I want to do this completely legally. My pain management doctor does drug testing, and I don’t want to be worrying about what’s in my system. I’m tired of the expense (it’s the end of March and I’ve already exhausted my insurance prescription coverage) and the side effects of pharmaceuticals. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that they exist, and I would still need to have meds around (right now, you’d have to pry my Enablex from my cold dead hands), but pot doesn’t have ANY side effects, except for sleepiness. None. Not urinary retention, not constipation, not dry mouth (maybe bad breath), and with a vaporizer, it isn’t even hard on your lungs. No one has ever died from using pot. No one. Water is more dangerous. I agree that driving after smoking/ingesting pot is dangerous, as is driving after drinking. I wouldn’t do either. I’m perfectly happy to not break any laws or endanger any lives in my quest to be pain-free.
Thanks to the tip from Nancy regarding a new study showing that cannabis is less harmful than substances that are sold at your local 7-Eleven. “Alcohol Worse Than Ecstasy, According To Proposed ‘Matrix Of Harm’ For Drugs” Science Daily — A new study published in the Lancet proposes that drugs should be classified by the amount of harm that they do, rather than the sharp A, B, and C divisions in the UK Misuse of Drugs Act. The new ranking places alcohol and tobacco in the upper half of the league table. These socially accepted drugs were judged more harmful than cannabis, and substantially more dangerous than the Class A drugs LSD, 4-methylthioamphetamine and ecstasy.
(bolding mine)
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
terribly early in the morning
Idiot of the Day - Woman from my Doctor’s Office
This morning we got a message on the machine. The woman was calling from my back surgeon’s office because the surgeon referred me to a urologist because the bladder issues don’t seem to be related to my herniated disc. Or, at least they weren’t particularly helped by the surgery for it. So, when I was there two weeks ago, he told me to go to the most renowned urologist in the city. It’s a doctor I’ve seen before, but not in more than five years, and his office has moved since then. Anyway, the woman from the doctor’s office was leaving a message for me to call her back with this doctor’s phone number. Uh hello, they don’t have a phone book where they are? Because that’s what I’m going to have to do to find his phone number. It’s not like I have it tattooed on my inner forearm. Not to mention, my doctor called him “Shelly”, and his full name is “Sheldon”, so I would imagine that they know each other. If they know each other, wouldn’t it just be possible that his phone number was somewhere in their office??? I can’t even decide if it’s worth calling back. Surely she’s smart enough to look the number up if I don’t call, right? Right???
It was a special medical day of idiots. Valley Hospital called me AGAIN about my bill. I set up payment arrangements in AUGUST. Since then, I’ve had a variety of phone calls and threatening letters regarding this bill. When I set up the payment arrangements, my bill was at $960.01. I immediately paid $160.01, and then they were supposed to debit my bank account $100 a month until the bill was paid. The threatening letter I received came on the same day as a semi-threatening letter. One letter said I owed $700, the other said I owed $600. Any person with a half a brain in their head would figure out that a payment was made between those two letters, even though they came on the same day. Today, I was told that I owed $500, and could I pay it today? I finally got tired of being nice. I told them that I was sick of the calls and the letters, and that I set up payment arrangements in August for them to debit my bank account for $100/month. If the payment wasn’t made today, it had NOTHING to do with ME. They kept saying that they don’t normally make those arrangements. I told them to check the damned account. If payment arrangements hadn’t been made, how was the account being paid off that wacky sum of $100 at a time? Geez. ‘effin ridiculous. So, Valley Hospital in Las Vegas, if you search for what people say about you, I want you to know this - your billing department SUCKS! They are completely incompetent and if I get one more call or one more threatening letter, I’m going to refuse to pay any more of the bill. In fact, I’m going to ask that you pay ME for the inconvenience of having to call you and tell your employees how to do their jobs. The last woman I spoke to said that she’d take care of it, no problem, and that it wouldn’t happen again. I asked if she was sure. She said that she was. Clearly, SHE WAS NOT. I could tell that the woman today wanted to call me a liar, but considering that the bill was being paid off $100/month, just like I’d said, she had a little trouble doing so. I’m sure my credit report is going to be a mess at the end of this whole sordid herniated disc situation, but it appears that I can’t do a thing about it, since no one ever believes me, even when I pay the damned bills.
I have a non-idiot-of-the-day comment about my back surgeon’s office. I was getting a weird bill from them, which I wanted to take care of at my next appointment (which was two weeks ago), so I didn’t call them about it. When I was paying for that visit, I asked them about the amount due. The girl said that there wasn’t anything due, because if it was due, she’d have another piece of paper with my checkout stuff. She asked what it was that I’d gotten in the mail, then she went back to check with the financial person. She came back and said that it had been written off, because after my co-pays are gone, each time I have to pay them cash, the amount gets lowered. So, she said to forget about that letter, I didn’t owe anything from my past visits. And you know what, I haven’t gotten any threatening letters, nor have I gotten a single phone call. In general, I love them. Their office has been one of the most cooperative doctors’ offices I’ve been to in Las Vegas. I’m happy with my surgery. I was happy with my surgeon’s bill. I’m happy with their office staff. If I had any money right now, I’d send a gift to their office for being fabulous. I might also send a specific person there a phone book though.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
the wee hours
Herniated Disc - Surgery or Not?
You know what, I’ll give you a big reason to choose surgery! Because I was suffering for seven months and I was only getting worse. The pain was getting worse, the numbness was spreading (the pain was spreading from just my left leg to my right leg, also) and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t go grocery shopping because ambling for five minutes was horrible. I’m very very very happy with the results of my surgery and if I had to do it all over again (please, no!), I’d still choose surgery.
About 250,000 Americans have disk surgery for sciatica each year, while another quarter-million instead choose physical therapy, painkillers or rest until they feel better. The surgery costs about $6,000, Weinstein said. $6000? In what universe? My surgery was about $26,000+ when the surgeon, physician’s assistant, and anesthesiologist’s bills were added to the hospital bill. Also, my injections to stave off surgery were approximately $35,000. So, did AP get magical numbers or did I get totally ripped off?
Thursday, October 26, 2006
evening
Six Month Surgery Anniversary Update
Like always, those of you who already know this stuff (or don’t care), feel free to skip this one. This is for the people searching for the results of an L4-5 microdiscectomy. And, surprisingly, there are a lot of them. I’ve heard from people all over the world with herniated discs - the worst stories are the people without any insurance. I don’t know how anyone can continue to live anything resembling a normal life with herniated disc pain. It gets bad. For me, the nerve root block injections were completely useless, and cost me (and luckily, mostly, the insurance company) the price of a mid-sized very nice SUV. Approximately $35,000 - so if you’re getting sent to get those injections, make sure you ask them beforehand how much they’ll cost you. I very naively thought they’d be maybe $500 each. Oh, hahahahaha! Joke’s on me. I’m still being hassled for bills. I think they keep sending bills with different amounts to confuse people, so they, oops, accidentally get more money. The surgery center started with a bill of $21k, then $14k, then $7k, then a threatening one for $3k. I wrote a nasty letter back - how on earth is anyone supposed to know what to pay when the amount changes constantly? Also, they charged an outrageous amount for what they did, plus it didn’t work, except for slightly after the first injection. There’s no way they should’ve even scheduled me for the second, much less the third when there was NO improvement after the second. It’s all such a scummy game between the insurance companies and the doctors, with the patients caught in the middle.
Okay, that wasn’t really what I’d planned to write about. The microdiscectomy was a success. I was skeptical the first couple of months, even though my surgeon said I was 75% better. I didn’t feel 75% better. The excruciating pain down my legs was lessened, but I didn’t feel great. Six months later, I still don’t feel great, but I feel A LOT better. I thought I’d feel better than I did, faster than I did, in the first couple of months. But, everything has calmed down. I still have some pain across my left inner thigh and across both hips, probably every day. I still take pain meds, but if they were cut off tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t jump off a building. Unfortunately, I have lots of general all over pain - I’m going to try to get a referral to Leigh-Ann’s pain management doctor because I have all the symptoms of fibromyalgia. Every single trigger point is super painful. So, if I was a normal person, I’d probably be completely healed from my surgery about now. So, don’t consider my case completely normal. At least I no longer have the numbness in my left calf, nor any pain (usually) in my right leg at all, and my sciatica is a lot better. My bladder is still iffy, but I just don’t have a clue what to do to fix that. It’s so off & on and is triggered by such odd things (taking a shower, sitting, caffeine, etc.) and can be eased by standing, laying down, and Ativan. Yeah, weird, huh? Maybe the pain management doctor would have some ideas. It’s really the most frustrating thing about this herniated disc (I’m pretty sure it’s nerve related) because the pain can be managed by meds, but there aren’t any bladder fixes.
The number one thing that has helped my back and leg pain, other than surgery, is my Earth Shoes tennis shoes - the negative heel has been amazing for me. Until I bought the shoes, I was still having lots of pain after walking in the grocery store. Ambling is really hard on me physically. The shoes have been a life-saver. They’re pricey ($112), but they’ve been so great. Unfortunately, except for their tennis shoes, their other negative heel shoes are kinda ugly. Some are okay, but only the tennis shoes look like everyone else’s shoes. You know, if you care about those things. But hey, they’re better looking and cheaper than Z-Coil shoes.
I love these, and I cannot say it enough. Leigh-Ann bought a pair too, and they’ve helped her, and she didn’t even have a herniated disc. So, if you’ve gotten here by doing a search for “negative heel” or “Earth Shoes” or “shoes that help back pain”, get some of these puppies. Oh, and they have other colors too, I just like the pink.
late morning
Prelude To A Six Month Microdiscectomy Anniversary Post
I now know why the surgeon forbade me from vacuuming after my surgery. Apparently, he removed the vacuuming common sense part of my brain. Today, I started doing a tiny bit of vacuuming just to clean up one of the fans we keep on the bathroom counter because the master bedroom gets so damn hot, unlike the rest of the house, which has cross-ventilation. Anyway, I did a lovely job cleaning the fan, then thought I’d vacuum the counter and get some dust & dog treat crumbs sucked up. What did I do? Sucked up a tube of Phoenix’s expensive eye meds. It’s not in the canister, it’s not in the hose, it’s trapped someone in the middle of the vacuum, to be heard, not seen. And this, this is why post-surgical patients should never vacuum again.
I’ll update more later about the success of my surgery and how I’m feeling so much better than before the surgery...and quite a bit after too. Uh, right after I pick up my refill of pain meds at the pharmacy. Yes, while I’m much much better, I still have some bad mornings and evenings.
