My Surface Hippy Adventure

An Unusual Day

Yesterday I was unable to write, so I am going to update now! I woke up yesterday morning and after breakfast the nurse told me that Joan, the lady who's room is two doors down from ours, would like to see me. I went in and she told me that she was doing terribly. She had 'explosive' diarrhea and a fever and could not keep food down. Mentally she also felt vulnerable, as though she were "in hell," dying and her mind was agitated so she could not sleep. It was discovered that many others here also had diarrhea that day, (5 rooms in our wing i believe), so it was obviously the food. Everyone else was ok though, and her reaction was probably because her body was so stressed from the surgery and all of the medication that it couldn't deal with another problem. She is usually healthy and tours 3rd world countries frequently though, so it is still weird that she had such a strong reaction. This has caused some concern over the quality of the hospitals food. The manager of the food services came in to speak with my dad about the food and assured us that they do all that they can to keep the food safe and they follow the procedures etc., so it makes them very sad when patients get sick from it. He also mentioned that they will "pray to god for them". Apparently a nurse also said something along those lines to Joan. This is something that everyone wants to hear, and is usually comforting.. but not when it comes from people who you are relying on to take care of you medically. It is a different culture (even though apparently many of these nurses are Christians). I felt terrible for Joan and did what I did to help her .. but I really had no idea what to do other than suggest she sleep. Later dad and I visited her after his PT (and first shower). She wanted solace from dad as well and for him to help talk her back into reality a bit. He talked about problems he's had with his hip and the last one and tried to comfort her. She took a valium right before our visit to help her rest. Later when I came back again she was doing much better. She had gotten some sleep and drank some lassi and was sitting up. Dad visited too and told her the entire story of our insurance issues -- exactly what she wanted to hear, I'm sure. haha... which brings me to.. our insurance issues. I am not going into detail or this one blog entry would take up this entire page... but as you probably know if you're reading this, dad has been going back and forth with insurance people since... the winter? ..or longer, i'm not sure. In February he got a call saying that this trip was approved 100 percent. Then a month or so before surgery, he was notified that it would only be covered 70 percent. He's been fighting for the 30 percent back since. I asked mohan to come into our room the other day because we had questions regarding the date of his discharge (we did not know), the deal with the immigration office and insurance. Mohan informed us (for the first time) that he had not received the official 'letter of guarantee' from the insurance company. Apparently this means that - none of the surgery / stay here is being covered. Mohan was emailing blue cross every day but got no responses. This means that when dad was due to be discharged from the hospital, he would have to pay the full amount with his credit card upon departure. While this was 99.9 percent the fault of the insurance parties.. it was frustrating that Mohan had not mentioned this until now. If he did, he did not take the time to explain what this letter meant and what the problem at hand was. Since it was Saturday night here, we assumed that there would no longer be any way of calling and reaching dad's insurance guy until after he is discharged monday morning (nighttime in the US). So we preceded to use our hospital phone (which you can barely hear anything on the other side from and we had to have the operator connect us each time) to call worldwide assistance and tried to get connected to any case manager who could try to help us even though it wasn't their case. Apparently, the hospital disconnects you automatically after spending 10 minutes using the phone so this did not work very well as we needed to wait to be connected each time we called and lines were busy on their end. Eventually we found out the hospitals # and left it with whoever had been answering so that when it disconnected us she could call back. We were connected after awhile and some dinner to a case manager - dad quickly told his story and then handed me the phone again because he couldn't hear. The lady said that she was a case manager who works near andrew (dads guy) and would give him our message when he gets to work in 6 hours. She also said that he stays for 8 hours and quickly reviewed our case and hypothesized why Andrew may not have sent the guarantee (a fault of the pre-certification office only covering two nights stay) or something. A nurse woke dad up at 2 am and then Andrew called him. Dad now thinks he has full coverage because thats what he was told - I do not know the details. Mohan is not here today (Sunday) so hopefully tomorrow morning when dad is discharged he will have the letter of guarantee for 100 percent, or at least 70 percent.. (or at least something.. haha ) coverage for the surgery/stay in his email. phew. sorry you had to read about all that - i probably explained most of the insurance stuff wrong anyways - i didn't even mention the initial issue with semi-private rooms vs. private rooms and in-network vs. out-of-network doctors.. but since you really don't care, I won't go there.. and I'll just let you know how it turns out. Dad told me not to say that he went crazy about insurance in the blog tehehe - so I didn't ;) Anyways, the rest of yesterday is a blur. I also video-taped dad for a bit walking with his crutches -- he showed off and tried walking a few steps without them (bad patient, bad!). But he could do it. Another thing that happened yesterday (sorry about the order of all of this... whoops) is that Orlando, (who lives in Florida, but nope, not in Orlando..) a man whom we met on our first day here, came to visit us. He had just returned from the resort (his surgery was earlier so he is ahead of dad in the recovery process of course). He enjoyed it there and had decided to stay there for the whole time. He told us that we should do some touring while we are there. He was very happy with the experience and said his hip had never felt that good since before his accident 25 (?) years ago. He was here for his final check-up and I believe he was flying home that evening. He and dad talked for awhile again about running, different medicine, etc. It was nice that he came to visit and dad wants to keep in touch with him. It is a shame we weren't at the resort at the same time, dad could use some "male company". Out of the surprises, his visit was the one positive one of the day.

posted by Gary Klein @ 4:57 AM