Here's the deal: DH is scheduled for surgery on Wednesday. He was diagnosed with a specific condition about a year ago and, although we've gone through the motions of trying other treatment options first, surgery has pretty much been a foregone conclusion since day 1. Every doctor and specialist we spoke to said the same thing.
Without going into a lot of detail, what he has is a male-specific problem with no real known cause, it's not contagious, and it's not fatal. It has, however, been extremely uncomfortable for him. Naturally, it's also very rare. So rare, in fact, that there are very few doctors that will treat the problem and only a handful that can perform the surgery. Naturally, none of these doctors live in this area. As a result, with approval from our insurance company, we sought treatment in MN earlier this year and even returned a few months later for additional tests.
Everything was proceeding according to plan until about 3 weeks ago when our insurance company decided that they couldn't approve the surgery without additional documentation. This is really stupid since they approved previous tests, treatments, and so forth with minimal additional information (and based on the letters we received, someone over there had a pretty good handle on the situation).
The past 3 weeks have been a constant flurry of phone calls and faxes and other assorted whatever until finally yesterday morning they agreed that they had enough information to make their decision. Not that they've actually MADE their decision. Just that they now have enough information. Nothing like making us wait until the last possible second to be approved.
At the last phone call, we are supposed to hear first thing on Monday morning. Not exactly sure what they thought they could accomplish between 5 pm on Friday and 8 am on Monday but, well, more power to 'em.
Did I mention that we are supposed to be leaving to drive up there on Monday?
In some GOOD news, one bit of stress did get relieved: my final grades for the semester were posted on Friday so I was able to get all of my paperwork turned in well before the Monday deadline. One less thing to worry about!
3 comments:
((Rose)) I'm so sorry about all of this. All you guys need right now is all of this additional stress on top of the illness and the need for surgery in the first place. Ugh. ((Mr. Rose)) Hope he is better soon.
PS: Health insurance companies suck. I work on the property & casualty side, so I always feel compelled to say that a p&c insurer with integrity pays claims lest anyone think that I support some of the bad insurance practices out there - health insurance co's seem to make it a business to NOT play claims. It all sucks. I'm sorry. xo
Oh goodness! (((Rose))) (((Tom))) I am sending tons and tons and tons of good thoughts, and that's a lot since thoughts don't weigh very much.
What Marie said re: health insurance companies. I used to really enjoy suing them on behalf of people in Tom's situation. It's the one thing I miss about practicing law.
(Marie, I never once in my 18 years of practicing law sued a P&C insurer. You're right: they pay up when claims are meritorious.)
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