ajax18 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 01, 2024 7:09 pm
I will never be able to run again. Ever. Because a private health insurance company put profits over care. My story is far from unique in America. The year of my surgery, my healthcare costs were probably close to $28K, because some stuff was out of network, and some stuff I did without waiting for the re-review process because they denied care in their rubber-stamp money-making denial process. $28K spent, and never able to run again. This is American healthcare.
I feel for you on not being able to run again. I'm very close to being in the same boat. I'm going to try MACI surgery again but the prognosis is not good.
But would I even have the option to try anything with a 50% success rate under a single payer health care system? I doubt it. I wonder sometimes if I'll just perpetually get fatter because my knee stops me from exercising as I used to.
God bless you and comfort you and heal you. I will pray for you.
A few years ago, I fell down the stairs with a lot of alcohol and Xanax in my system. More like I cartwheeled down one and a half flights of stairs. In time I would feel vey lucky as there were no spine or disc injuries. I don't remember the first doctor's appointment when my sister drove me to the local clinic that day but I drove the second day and they called the paramedics and sent me to the hospital because the withdrawals/shaking were so bad. I thought I was fine. I could rotate my left arm with no pain.
Only the first day did they do X-rays and said they would call me if they noticed something. I did a follow-up four weeks later and the PA looking at my X-ray told me I had four breaks /snaps in my left collar bone. I couldn't feel a thing except when I would push up off the bathtub with my left arm which brought about ten minutes of uncomfortable press. I suggested an orthopedic surgeon that was treating my dad. The PA said "is he in our network", first time I heard that they were getting together and forming a network and making a referral to someone "in network" which got him a nice fee. In a way it's socialized medicine, but I'm a collective bargaining Baby-boomer baby. Marines who fought in Korea, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa survived and were back home and at work and politically were at times very liberal; negotiators at the Police Protective League and made sure when my mom told my dad it was time to go to the hospital, I was in one of the best hospitals in Los Angeles with the best doctors.
When I saw the orthopedic surgeon six weeks after my tumble, he told me if I had come in the following day they would have immediately done surgery. Now since it was six week and no pain they were going to let it heal on his own. They did X-rays a few days ago. One of my floating broken bones completely disappeared. There was tissue and cartilage forming to connect the others. I felt fine. The doctor took pictures of the x-ray on his phone. He wanted to put it in a medical journal.
I will pray for you and wish you the best. Leap at something that comes to mind that might help. I wish you well. I'm 62 and having knee problems but gained a lot of weight recently. I think that's a contributor to my knee problems. When I get up off the floor it's sort of a bear crawl at the beginning.
“One of the important things for anybody in power is to distinguish between what you have the right to do and what is right to do." Potter Stewart, associate justice of the Supreme Court - 1958 to 1981.