man, what a horrible/then wonderful friday!
geez, i couldn't have asked for a day that started out worse, continued to get worse and then all of a sudden got better. what an emotionally exhausting day! got up yesterday and got ready for work, looking forward to my last day of work before surgery. was ready to walk out the door when i sneezed and pulled my back out. i was feeling pretty horrible but had to go to work to tie up all the last minute loose ends before all my time off. i was already pretty stressed out from my clients acting out the past two weeks (i do mental health case management.) then got a voice mail in the afternoon from the financial department at the hosptial. get this! i need to pay the rest of my out of pocket, which they said was $1626, before my surgery on tuesday or i could NOT have surgery. four days notice.... then the lady said she'd be out the rest of the afternoon... ok so drop a bomb on me and then leave me with no one to talk to about it???!! so i'm thinking, this is friday, and i have four days to come up with this money, two of them being saturday and sunday. i went out and told my two good friends at work, and they were like, "how can they expect anyone to come up with that kind of money on such short notice?" trust me, i was feeling the same way. not only had i pre-registered three weeks ago, but one week ago i was at the hospital providing a copy of my insurance card and doing my history and physical and no one ever mentioned that this had to be pre-paid. so i called the financial department and as soon as they heard i was upset (and i was being polite) they said "i can't help you here" and transferred me before i could even reply or find out who they were transferring me to. it ended up being the psychologist who is over the program and is also off on fridays. i hung up and called my surgeon's office. he was out, but their nurse was very upset to hear what was going on and told me to call them back and tell them that the surgeon's office feels it was too short of notice and they should make an allowance because of that and let me pay it off afterwards. i called them back, then got her voice mail of course. i was just crying hysterically because i have worked so hard since january to make this happen and now it was all fallling apart because of the financial department dropping a last minute bomb on me. i called my mom and talked to her. she was so upset that i felt badly for even telling her. i got off the phone and was trying to concentrate on some paperwork between crying and feeling sick to my stomach. my friend at work offered to lend me the money, but i just felt it was too much to ask of her. i thought, after all this, i won't even be able to have my surgery. well,,,,,,,my mom called back and told me she'd called mastercard and had her credit limit raised so i could pay them in advance. of course i burst into tears (of joy this time) and was so grateful. i let my friends know and everyone hugged me (yet again) and then i was so relieved i just felt like a 50 lb weight was taken off my shoulders. my friends at work had planned a celebration dinner for me, so we went out and had a good time. my eyes were red and sore, but i enjoyed the evening anyway. thank goodness for waterproof mascara!! i was exhausted from all the emotions by the end of the night. what a day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sorry to go on so long, but had to share this and let all these left over emotions go. thanks for listening!!!!!!!!!!!!
tracy, soon to be a loser
OMG they did the same thing to me! I think I had a few more days to deal with that but man oh man did it freak me out! My mom did the same thing and I'm in the process of reimbursing her. Thank goodness for good mom's huh?!
I'm really happy that everything worked out for you! I've got to go study neuro and kines now ... talk to you soon you almost-loser!
Cath
-56
that must be their thing. well the lady who dropped the bomb on me friday called me saturday to apologize. she said it was her fault and i fell between the cracks and should have been called a lot sooner. i let her know how it made me feel and that i had cried all afternoon. she really did seem to feel badly and said she was going to talk to her supervisor monday and see if they could arrange payments. if i can afford what they arrange at this last minute, i'll do that, but if not, then i'll still use mom's card. yes, moms are wonderful!!!!! i'm lucky to have her. i hate to hear that it happened more than once. i'm sure that we weren't the only ones. hopefully they will do something about it so others don't have to freak out too. talk to ya soon!
trace
Oh my goodness! I am so glad it worked out for you! I had a similar situation: I am on Medicaid and was referred to my surgeon from another Medicaid patient who had gotten surgery through him. I made my appointment with him and told the person making the appointment that I was a Medicaid patient. On the day of the consult, my mother drove me over 2 hours to his office and then after waiting for what seemed like forever we finally get directed to an exam room and a few minutes later the business manager arrives and asked how i would be paying for the surgery because the doctor is out of network now. Of course, it would have been nice if they had mentioned that over the phone! Well, I became almost hysterical, because I am very low income and there is no way I could come up with the several thousand dollars required to insure the surgery would be performed. Well, my angelic mother called my step dad on the phone and they decided to pay it for me. It comes out of my inheritance. So it all worked out in the end thanks to Super Mom!!!
Thank God for Mothers like mine (and yours).
Good luck.
Joy
sorry to hear you went through that too, especially after a two hour drive. i think some people are not very organized or seem to think money grows on trees. not many of us have that kind of cash laying around. if we did, we'd probably already have had the surgery......glad it worked out for you. how are you doing????
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