Time for an Update

 

I'm getting better! I think I'll go for a walk!

Welp, It's a little hard to describe what my recovery has been like. I am doing better. I can walk, usually without the assistance of a cane or a walker, but I'm pretty unsteady on my feet and weak on my right side. I've been doing physical therapy exercises, but it will be weeks/months before I get my strength back. Oh well!

Meanwhile, I'm having dental work done that will go into next year -- and cost me more out of pocket than hospitalization. This is kind of criminal of our health care System and I know it affects a lot of people and causes a lot of misery. We have dental insurance, too. As do many people. But the out of pocket costs for dental care with insurance can often be astronomical.

I checked the bill for the rehab hospital stay (10 days) and was surprised. It was over $92,000. All of it was paid by insurance. Wow. The initial hospitalization (13 days) was about $52,000 of which I owe about $1,500. Not too bad. There will be some follow up bills, maybe another $1,000 for ambulances and so on. But the dental work -- with what is considered "good" insurance -- will cost me almost $8,000 out of pocket. I can just about handle that, but what of people who can't? It's crazy.

Overall, I think I'm lucky in many ways and a fool in many ways. I neglect my health and dental care all the time, and yet so far I've been able to get through -- with a lot of help, including that of my wife for whom there is no comparison. It's a learning experience, an opportunity, here in my dottage, to still come to realization, "enlightenment" and greater compassion for those not so lucky -- or foolish as the case may be. 

Yes, I am getting better. But oh my goodness, this has been the toughest one yet. 

The Hospital 2

Just got home from three weeks+ in two hospitals being treated for osteomyelitis and discitis. I know there is a lot of chatter on the internet that heath care in the United States, especially since the advent of Covid 19, is a tragic joke. For some people, I know it is. I have seen or experienced some of the worst aspects of the industry -- shameful, tragic, and I'd go so far as to suggest evil. Something you can hardly imagine if you weren't witness.

And yet... welp, here I am after three weeks plus in two different hospitals being treated for serious bone infection and disc ruin in my lower spine, pain running wild, bedridden so long I could barely stand or walk when I was transferred to rehab, and truly I cannot thank the doctors and staffs at the ER and both hospitals enough for their kind and generous care, their quick admission to astonishingly nice room at the first hospital (quiet, too 😴) and extraordinary care at the second rehab hospital that got me back on my feet and able to get around, pain controlled, and set up to go home where antibiotic treatment continues with the lovely and talented Ms. Ché will be doing IV push daily. There's a lot more to the story, but I'm still processing it all. This experience is a counter to almost every single hospital experience I've had as a patient or advocate my whole life long. And counter, too, to so many horrid experiences we hear about so often. How? 

Astonishing.

Ah But That's Not The End of the Story

After lavishing praise on the staff at the ER, I got home only to wake up the next day with symptoms of Covid. I'd been exposed, I knew, to at least four people who announced they were positive. But there may have been more. 

Symptom # 1 was that very nasty taste in my mouth. It isn't a loss of taste, it's a constant taste of -- inside of litter box?, ashes soaked in bleach?, burnt straw?, Oh I don't know. Whatever it is, it's terrible, and it's constant. 

The next day, I started having other symptoms. Fever, cough, runny nose, dizzy, pains, sore throat. Huh. I got out one of the home tests and screwed it up. I did another one. Positive. Then I started calling about what to do. Not easy to find out, despite the fact that I'd been told months ago to call right away to get immediate treatment if  I tested positive. It was after hours so none of the nurses and such I talked to knew what to do or who I should get in touch with to get treatment, and one steered me in a completely wrong direction. Finally, though, one recognized that there was probably an on-call physician in rheumatology who could help. Why didn't I try. So I did, and behold, within an hour, I had a prescription for Paxlovid, the anti-viral treatment of choice. Picked it up an hour later. Took it for five days, and it cleared most of the symptoms. But... Ms Che got it, and we went through the whole routine again with her provider.

Ten days on, I tested negative, she still has vague positive tests, and her provider says she may have them for months. As long as she has no new symptoms she's good to go.

Of course this happened because I went to the Urgent Care and ER where I was exposed, as was everyone else, including staff. It's insane. Or rather deliberate.

It's why I tried to stay out of the hospital for as long as possible. 

But the time came and there you are. It eventually will get everyone.