Sunday 2-14-10

I actually got to drive my car for the first time in a week or so yesterday. I first went to the hospital to get my infusion. The sad thing about going to the ER on a weekend is that everyone is either part time, or covering someone else shift. When you walk in, they don't know what your doing, or what you want. I tried to explain that I was there for an infusion of antibiotics, but she didn't know what the hell I was talking about. I started walking down the hall towards the infusion area and she had a hissy fit. She said you have to check in here first, I said my name is Tom etc. and kept walking. She finally got out of her seat and had to go through another office to get into the hall. By that time I was at the other reception area giving my name to that receptionist. When the first lady showed up, the lady that I was speaking to looked at her and said, "Can I help you?". The first receptionist just looked at both of us and said, "Well, I guess I not needed here".



I was then checked in and escorted to an infusion room. No more than ten minutes later they were infusion me. It only took about 30 minutes once they got started. That's a lot faster than the 2 hours I was told it would probably take each day.



Today I had the same nurse that I had the first day of my treatments. I haven't gone into that experience yet but it was also quite a cluster f+++. It seems I was released from the hospital because all they were really doing for me medically was giving me infusions of medicine. Now we already know how exciting it would be to have our Government, no matter who would be in charge, run our health care program. Get this, if I stayed in the hospital and let them feed me and have nurses assist me and every f+++++ doctor that even thought he might be able to charge me walked into my room to say, "HOW YOU FEELING". Medicare would be happy to pay the bill. Now if I didn't want to stay in the hospital, but just wanted the infusion for thirty minutes a day, they were not going to pay.



When I heard that from the BOSS of the ER department, I went nuts. I told the nurse to get her BOSS in here, and now. She then tried to explain why she didn't think this would be covered by medicare. After twenty minutes of arguing with me she left in a huff. The nurse came back in and said her boss was very upset and crying. I said I really felt bad that I made her cry, but that she didn't understand how absurd the circumstances were as to why they would not pay. I said, is your bosses, BOSS here?, she just so happened to be in the building. When she walked in to my room she was very nice and explained to me that they had found a provision in the Medicare information that indeed did cover this situation.



So when I came in today the nurse that had seen all this was the nurse on call. She then hooked me up and had my medication ready as I sat down. We chatted for a minute because she had an intern with here and was showing her what she had just done. She asked if I had any questions and left the room. When the infusion was over she came back in and unhooked me and cleared my port and I was getting ready to leave when she said, Mr McLaughlin, may I ask you what you did for a living? I just laughed and said why? She said I figured you had to be a college professor or so sort of high powered business man. I've never seen in all my years anyone intimidate either of the two ladies that you dealt with on Thursday. How did you know to do that. Most people would have just told them to bill them for the treatments. I said, "young lady, you don't get to be where I am if you don't ask a lot of questions." Besides I would rather die than pay for something I didn't have to.

I then gave her a 25% off coupon to the Essen House and told her if her BOSS wanted to come in I would give her one also. Her boss never showed up, but I told here the offer was still open.

I went to Sam's Today for the Essen House and now I'm home and plan to spend most of the rest of the day following the Olympics.

More Tomorrow