Hi my friends,
I'm happy that yesterday is over and the dilation procedure is passe. I'm sore, my throat hurts, and I feel like someone used a garden hose to fill me with gas, but I woke up, and that's a good thing. My friend, Mike's, favorite saying is: Any day on this side of the grass is a good one. I agree.
When they do an EGD, they fill you with air to lift your organs so the camera can see, and as I told my good friend, Karen Cote, I could probably inflate all the balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. :) Despite having two EGDs last month, the doc at Vanderbilt says the opening to my stomach was so constricted the camera (which is tiny) didn't fit through. He dilated the opening to 16 centimeters and injected steroids at the site to keep the scar tissue from reforming. If this doesn't work, then I have to consider a surgical procedure that would insert a stint in my stomach that would force the silastic ring that's been there for twenty years to fall out. He's never done the surgery himself but says a doctor in Texas has written many papers on his success with it. Who would guess so many people have this problem. In case you don't know what caused all this brouhaha...I forget who I've told what... I had my stomach stapled twenty years ago and this is the end result. Being fat AND miserable. *lol*
Thank you all so much for you prayers and good wishes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can stop doing up close inspections of the inside of my toilet bowl. *lol* Now I just have to wait for all the doctor, hospital and other medical bills to pour in. 20% of one isn't a lot, but as many as I've incurred...if I was better looking and younger I might have to consider hooking.
Yes...even with medicare, the co-pays are killing me...especially when you amass so many from the tag-team doctors play. For instance...during my first hospital stay I was admitted by the ER doc, who contacted the on call doctor for my doctor. So now I'm being billed by those two. The on-call doctor, handed off to my doctor the next day, so add in another bill. My doctor called the Gastro guy who came to tell me he wasn't on call and his partner would do the procedure. (He carried in my chart and sat next to my bed, so he gets paid). The on-call partner did the procedure which included the gas guy and his assistant (two more) but questioned why I was on warfarin...he called in a cardio guy (another bill) who referred me to a special cardio guy (yet another bill) who had me sent a heart monitor ( I'm expecting a whopping bill for this) which I'm currently wearing for 21 days. Add in the people who monitor the monitor, and I'm going to kill myself. *lol* Oh yes, let's not forget all the hospital charges...blue footies, Kleenex, and every time I asked for a pill or they gave me one. I slept on the same sheets for five days because I was afraid of the charge incurred if I ask for clean ones. Yep... good health is important for more reasons than I can count.
Sorry to hear so much is going on with you. yes, those doctor bills and hospital bills are killers, even at 20%.
ReplyDeleteBeen there, done that, as the saying goes. And the hand-offs are a ridiculous bill.
Aww Ginger I sympathise with all you have had to go through and hope this is all over soon. Remind me never to get sick in the US - at least in the UK you don't have to worry about the finances - only apathetic medical staff!
ReplyDeleteMaybe it can be useful to try to use untraditional kind of medicine?
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