#and you slip and fall and injure yourself really pointlessly and painfully | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

onionjuggler · 2 months ago

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Fun tidbit about the American medical system:

The night before my sister's brain surgery, she slipped on some ice and absolutely ate shit. From my end, it looked incredibly painful. But she didn't want her brain surgery pushed back, so we just showed up the next morning as planned to get this thing done.

Post brain surgery, you are in the ICU for at least 24 hours, and in the ICU they notice things like "hey, these fingers might be broken." She was repeatedly scheduled to get an Xray, and they had to repeatedly cancel the Xray.

Why?

Because the hospital where she underwent an eight-hour brain surgery with one of three neurosurgeons in the world capable of operating in the area containing her brain tumor without killing her was "out of network."

(In a stroke of wild luck, this guy happened to be at a hospital half an hour from her home-and like right around the corner from her work- and where I'd previously spent a ton of time caring for my grandmother, so it was incredibly convenient otherwise.)

The surgery got covered because nobody "in network" could do it, but at this hospital, they couldn't treat her for anything unrelated to her brain surgery whatsoever.

So my sister is in the ICU with fucking broken fingers that every nurse notices and orders xrays for, and my doped-up sister who had someone crack open her skull the day before has to keep explaining she can't afford to get xrays here, sometimes while being wheeled out of the room, and that she has to wait to be discharged so I can drive her half an hour to a much shittier hospital to get xrays.

So yeah. Just like another fun experience with the US healthcare system.

#she always corrects me when i say she slipped on ice #because technically what happened is she stepped off the sidewalk and onto the dirt #except if you live in snowy areas you are probably familiar that when the ground thaws a little with some snow melt #the dirt becomes the slickest mud in existence #so she stepped off the sidewalk onto that slick mud rolled her ankle and wham #it looked fucking awful #and it was late at night already and her son was home #like going to the emergency room right then was NOT an option #she had brain surgery in the morning we had a plan and a schedule #but you know when you have brain surgery scheduled for the morning for a brain tumor you only just discovered #and you slip and fall and injure yourself really pointlessly and painfully #and like the kind of mental state that puts you in/#we've all been there right #anyway it was bad #her fingers ended up being okay #I think the nurses spent a couple hours trying to figure out if they could bill it #because everyone was just like... we cannot leave her hand like that #and fair enough!!!!#but unless you're willing to pay for it yourself we gotta cancel that xray

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