Sandi's Surgery---Postponed

Sandi’s surgery scheduled Monday morning was postponed indefinitely late yesterday afternoon.  That was because the surgery center folks demanded more money than we could possibly pay upfront---even if we both had been working and earning full paychecks. Everyone involved believes Sandi has not met her deductible. She has. We can’t prove it because the insurance company has not processed the transactions she had the past four or five weeks. So, we can’t prove she has met her deductible and they can’t verify that fact.

If we had the kind of money the surgery center wanted, not only would we not be on food stamps, but life would be good. Really good.  You would not see a Chip In widget to your left that was based on the idea that we would have to come up with 300 or so for her surgery. That could have been done if we did not make the car payment.

Heck, if we had the mind of money they were talking about, we could have started making good on our goal of repaying folks for all their financial generosity the last six months since I started talking about how dire things are here. If it was just me, I would have gone homeless and not said a word. But with Sandi and the boys involved, I took the advice of a couple of good friends and started talking about how bad things were/are.

Sandi tried to explain things to the surgery center folks and got nowhere. Once it was clear that the very young lady working on our case for the surgery center didn’t understand our financial reality or have anything at all helpful to offer, the “insurance coordinator” at the doctor’s office agreed it was not possible and would look at other options. His main idea seems to be moving the operation to one of the local area hospitals and that would avoid the upfront costs that the surgery center believes are necessary.

He will start working on this Monday so at this point we have no idea when the surgery will happen. Quite frankly, I would feel better about her having it done at a hospital simply because of her medical history. One would hope that if something unexpected cropped up, having the full resources of any of our local hospitals would help tremendously and with her already on the premises that would speed up treatment. At this point, we spend another weekend with her hurting and waiting and no closer to the goal of getting well. We have no idea when this is now going to happen and she still can’t take her pain pills because of pending surgery.

I know the surgery will not be Friday because I have just been notified by the folks reviewing my social security case that I have been tasked to meet with a mental health therapist Friday around noon to be evaluated for “depression, stress, and anxiety.” Yep—got them all in spades. Who wouldn’t? Seems to me that somebody who did not have them would be a person who needed to meet with some sort of mental health professional.

Instead of sending me to somebody who can look at the physical stuff that is demonstrably wrong with me and might really be able to help, I guess they’re sending me to somebody to determine if it is all in my head.  It isn’t. I have my issues as we all do, but this is not one of them. So, cane in hand and barely able to walk, I will go see this person and cooperate knowing full well that everyone involved is wasting their time.

Wednesday marks the start of the 16^th month since this all happened to me. It has been a long ride and apparently the train is not stopping anytime soon……