I just spent five days in the hospital, and I feel no better now than I did before I went in. But before I go into that, I should probably go into my health insurance dealings since I left Steel Johnson. I'm gonna have a hell of a time trying to recall all the details.
In February, people were telling me about how expensive COBRA coverage was. I had COBRA back in 2009, and I remembered it being somewhat reasonable. I got a bad case of sticker shock when I enrolled in COBRA over the phone: $570 for medical, dental, and vision! Medical alone was like $523 or something. I then remembered that President Obama subsidized COBRA in 2009, making it more affordable. This alone is why Obama haters can eat my ass. I tried applying for ACA coverage outside the enrollment period, but was overwhelmed by the questions, especially since they involved trying to estimate income when I didn't know how much I was going to make. But I had doctor appointments in March, so I went ahead and signed up for COBRA. COBRA didn't even take effect until mid-March, so I had to pay some out-of-pocket for the first half of the month, then when it was active, it became retroactive from March 1st. Steel Johnson's open enrollment period was in March, and coverage went up from $570 for medical, vision, and dental, to $570 for medical ALONE! I should've started working no later than the beginning of April, but I didn't start until the beginning of May. So, I had no money to pay for COBRA by May, and my coverage lapsed. Matters were made worse when the job I was working that was supposed to be a four to six week assignment only ended up lasting two weeks due to lower than expected volume. I got insurance through my temp agency, the overall insurance thing being called The American Worker. It seemed pretty decent for the most part, except they don't have actual prescription coverage, just some kind of prescription discount program. I would've had to pay out the ass for Xigduo, but I got a card that helped me pay nothing for a 90-day supply. I'd also have to pay out the ass for Trintellix. I've had no luck getting real help from the manufacturer for paying for it, so I've been relying on the generosity of my psychiatrist's office and a friend who works at a doctor's office to provide me with samples.
If I got to do it all over again, I would've quit Steel Johnson around the time of the ACA's Open Enrollment, which just happens to coincide with Steel Johnson's Holiday Peak Season, so that could've saved me from beating my head against a wall over insurance and dealing with the fucking nightmare that is Peak.
Back on June 8th, I had something odd happen. I had to urinate frequently, almost as if my diabetes meds failed me. I was also tired as fuck that night. I couldn't sleep that night because I had to go to the restroom so frequently, and because my brother was sleeping in the guest room, so I didn't have a fan to provide white noise for me. I seemed to be closer to normal by the end of that weekend. I don't know if it had anything to do with my current health debacle or not.
Okay, now for the main story. On the morning of June 27th, I was feeling really down, probably because of my roommate's continued unemployment, and wondering what the fuck I was working for. Even though I took an Adderall that morning, I couldn't concentrate to save my life. I usually wait until lunch time to take my second Adderall, but I took it on my first break instead, and I instantly felt better by the time my break ended. I got to leave work early, and went to a coffee shop, where I had a Frozen Cappuccino. I got home around 5:00, and as soon as I opened my apartment door, I felt chills. I went to bed as soon as I could. I think the chills only lasted a couple of hours, but I still felt awful. The only symptoms I remember as of now were low appetite, and my head feeling like a balloon. I got up at some point to try to eat something with my night time meds, and forced myself to eat a protein bar. I spent most of the next two days trying to sleep it off, but I tried to get out and get something to eat the next day. The only food I ordered at Arby's was a half pound roast beef sandwich, which I usually have no problem devouring, but I couldn't finish it! I stopped by Walmart to check my blood pressure, and it was sky high, 149/91. On the 29th, I went to an emergency room. My symptoms were so all over the place that I'm sure I just confused everyone working there. It probably didn't help that I have a harder time communicating than normal when I'm not feeling well, due to my Central Auditory Processing Disorder. My blood pressure seemed to be normalizing by the time I got to the hospital, but I still had a horrendous headache. That could've possibly been caffeine withdrawal. They treated me for dehydration, and then sent me on my way. I noticed something in my after-care papers about Leukocytosis, which implies an infection, but I guess they didn't think it was a big deal. I wish I had gone to the ER as soon as I had gotten the chills that Wednesday, but oh well. I thought that the adderall and Frozen Cappuccino must have played a part in my illness, but as it turns out, this wasn't over, and I'm not so sure that they played any part in it.
I realized by July 4th that I didn't have much more of an appetite than I did before I went to the ER, so I tried to start eating "bland" foods the day after. It also seemed to be affecting my ability to work, because I was absolutely miserable. On the night of July 5th, I noticed some tenderness on my right side, right below my rib cage. I finally made a call to my doctor's office on the morning of the 6th to try to make an ER followup appointment, but I think one of the doctors was going to be gone that week, and there were no openings for that following week. I left work early that day and went to an urgent care center. The nurse practitioner said that the spot where I was feeling tender was my gallbladder. She said she couldn't do any gallbladder testing, that only my doctor could order gallbladder testing. What was the point of going to Urgent Care then? The following Monday (July 9th), I called my doctor's office to make a an ER/Urgent Care followup appointment and hopefully gallbladder testing, and got an appointment for the following Monday morning (the 16th), so I had to suffer for another week, as long as things didn't get worse, in which case I would've went back to the ER. At the doctor's office, they just did some labs and some other stuff. I then went home. Then somebody from the office called to help me set up an appointment for an ultrasound, which was for the following morning. I had the ultrasound done, and that was that. I had to work ten hours on Wednesday (the 18th), and didn't get to take my last break until after 5:30pm. I had a voicemail from 3:00-something from my doctor's office telling me to call them back, but their office closed at 5:00, so I was going to have to wait until the morning. I called them back the next morning, and they said that they were ordering a CT scan, and scheduled it for the following Wednesday. By this point, I was super pissed because I had been dealing with this shit for over three weeks, when my appendicitis in 2001 was diagnosed and treated in a matter of days. But with the appendicitis, it probably helped that I only had one symptom, making it easier to diagnose. I had already been fasting that morning, and after some bitching and some phone calls, I was able to get in for a CT scan that morning. I decided not to go in to work that day because I still needed to recover from the previous day, and I didn't want to miss any calls from the doctor's office. I got a call from them by that afternoon. They said that they found a 4cm abscess on my right kidney that happened to include a non-obstructing stone, and it was urgent enough to make an appointment with a urologist for the next morning (the 20th). I called the urologist's office to ask about fasting, and they said it wouldn't be necessary.
All I had to eat on the morning of my urologist's appointment was a quarter of a Complete Cookie. While I was driving to the urologist, I thought to myself, "Damn it, I want a slice of pizza after I leave this place!" I was already hangry by 10:30 that morning, and the fact that the office had pizza catered for them that day just made it worse. I finally got to see the urologist, and he sounded like he wanted to operate that day, but didn't have a copy of the CT scan to go by. I was then told that I couldn't eat, or even drink much water, making my hangry even worse. I went back home and gathered some stuff, and waited for my roommate to come home from her appointment so she could take me to the hospital, because I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to drive whenever they discharged me. We got to the hospital sometime after 2:00pm. They still hadn't gotten a copy of the CT scan, but were working on getting it, so they couldn't do the surgery that day. I was eventually allowed to eat. I also got a pizza slice from the cafeteria after it reopened at 11:30 that night.
I was able to have the procedure to drain my abscess done the following morning (July 21st), but the stone was still in there. Most of the abscess got drained, but they kept a needle in my back with a tube to continue draining, which then went into a bag. I spent a few more days in the hospital. Trying to sleep was a bitch, because I had no white noise to drown out the sound of the IV pumping stuff every fifteen seconds. Earplugs barely even worked. Whenever I did sleep, I was periodically woke up to be poked and prodded. I ended up having another CT scan done one morning just to see where the drain was attached, I think. The next morning, I had x-rays done to see if the stone was "communicating" with the urinary tract or not. If it was, then I think they were just going to go through the urinary tract and break it up. But if not, then they were going to have to go through the "perf-hole" provided by my drain. I honestly can't remember, but I think it was concluded that the stone wasn't "communicating" with the urinary tract, so they were going to have to go through the "perf-hole" to get it. Unfortunately, this was not going to be done that day, and I was discharged with the goddamn drain still in my back, and my baggie strapped to my leg. This was on a Wednesday, and I wouldn't get to see the urologist again until the following Wednesday, August 1st! Before I forget, he said something about having a specialist from Indianapolis to do the surgery, so now I'm wondering, am I going to have to go all the way to Indianapolis to do the surgery, or is the specialist going to Louisville to do it? And when the fuck will it be done? Because I don't want to have to keep this shit attached to me any later than the end of next week. I feel bad for people who have to deal with this shit on a daily basis. I was able to get a lifting restriction from the doc for work, but my boss said that I couldn't return until all restrictions were lifted. So, who knows when I'll get paid again. Before I was discharged, I had a woman from the hospital's Financial Aid division tell me that my insurance wasn't going to pay for hardly any of my hospital visit, so she helped me apply for aid, but I still had to go home and print out a month's worth of pay stubs, as well as my 2017 Federal Tax Return, and mailed them off. But back to income, I have a "Hospital Income" policy through State Farm which should help for the time that I was in the hospital. I still need to see if I can get Short Term Disability through my employer. If not, then I guess I'll have to start a GoFundMe page.
After all this, I still have that "sick to my stomach" feeling, and I've gone back to a bland diet. I figure this won't change until after the stone is removed. And I didn't think to ask what the hell caused the abscess and stone in the first place?
To be continued.
