Doctors & Patients

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Friday Randomosity: Fall and Follow Ups

HOW is it October already? And am I destined to repeat some form of that query every month, every season, every year, with increasing levels of incredulity until my skeleton is staring vacantly at the sky? Probably asking, “HOW have I decomposed already? Feels like only yesterday I was fully fleshed and today I am nothing but bones!”

I am feeling a surge of randomosity today. 

  • After having felt Very Down for a couple weeks solid, I finally feel like my mood is on the upswing. I attribute this shift partly to the fact that I am on a strict media diet, and have forced myself to stop looking at updates on the Gabby Petito case and to stop reading about the many, many other missing people in this country. But the main source of the improvement is a date night with my husband. We have been on – checks notes – ONE date since 2019, and that date was a quick lunch while our daughter was at a birthday party. Turns out that some time alone with my person – outside our house and away from our normal habits and responsibilities – is a real mood lifter. Last night’s date wasn’t even anything FANCY; we went out for fast food burgers, which we ate on a bench outside the restaurant. Then we got milkshakes and drank them while walking around, looking in shop windows and chatting about nothing. Then we went to our all-time favorite date night destination, Barnes & Noble, where we tried to pin down our next audiobook by handing one another books that we have on our individual To Be Read lists. I lean heavily toward Mystery and Thriller and my husband is more of a contemporary literary fiction kind of guy, and there is a very narrow overlap in our interests. A friend of mine said very bluntly, “Man, you two are boring,” but I really enjoyed our time together! We both love books, so why not spend an evening together among the stacks?
  • Because I can and will talk about books all day, I will tell you our top three audiobook contenders: The Rib King by Ladee Hubbard, Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. We had a gift subscription to Audible that expires this month, so we are looking for a new book to “buy” with our last credit. Unfortunately, neither of us loved the reading style of the Rib King narrator, the Moshfegh got some reviews that turned my husband off to listening to it, and we somehow already owned the Tartt. So we are back to square one. If you have an audiobook to recommend, please let me know!

  • Every time I think about or talk about The Secret History, a modified version of the little Ted Lasso ditty starts playing in my brain. Donna Tartt, doo do, doo doo dodo, Donna Tartt doo do, doo doo dodoo, Donna Tartt.
  • Speaking of Ted Lasso: I rewatched the entire first season as part of my recent efforts at self-care and it was just as lovely as it was the first time around… but – perhaps because of my mood, perhaps because of what I have seen of the second season – it felt a bit more melancholy this go round. I still love the series with my whole heart, though. 
  • In quick updates about distressing things: 1. My root canal has been set for November. My husband had a light day, and was able to reschedule his patients (sorry patients!!!!) so he could be with me for my appointment. Nitrous oxide does nothing for me, and my husband said he would want to be sedated for a root canal no matter how “not a big deal” it is, so I am doing the conscious sedation and my husband will be there with me. HUGE RELIEF. Except for the part where I have to get a root canal. 2. My mother-in-law got the final results of her pathology back. Her cancer is at stage 1A, which means they caught it very very early and the prognosis is good. But the type of cancer is extremely aggressive. So, even though we initially thought she would only need radiation, she will be undergoing both radiation and chemotherapy to hopefully zap any tiny fragments of the cancer that escaped the surgery. Her doctors are very positive but of course the news is upsetting and stressful. 
  • Her doctor said that only radiation is necessary. He is an expert in her type of cancer, and he has conducted research on post-surgical adjuvant therapies, and has found that doing radiation vs. radiation and chemotherapy makes no difference in the short- and long-term recurrence rate. So his recommendation would be only radiation. However. He presented her case to a Cancer Board at the hospital, and the other experts who were on the board all pushed for chemo as well. AND he said that in his experience, the stress of not feeling like you are doing “all you can” can be worse than the chemo. Hence my mother-in-law’s decision to do both. My husband says, based on the research, he would only do the radiation, if it were him. But I just don’t know. I don’t think you DO know until you are the person in the situation. I kind of think I would do everything, too, just so I wouldn’t sit around thinking, “Dammit, if only…” should there be a recurrence. Which of course is a form of magical thinking. But it’s so hard when it’s your life at stake. 
  • CHANGING SUBJECTS DRAMATICALLY: I have made my first candy corn purchase of the year. Man, I love candy corn. 
  • Usually, I don’t put out fall décor until quite late in October. But this year, I’m getting the Halloween itch a little earlier than usual. If I didn’t have Real Things to do today, I might dedicate some time to putting out the ghosts and maybe buying some mums. 
  • Here is where I call on your plant knowledge. My summer planters did not turn out the way I wanted them to. I wanted them to be full and to have these tiny white flowers and yellow petunia-style flowers spilling down the sides, with these big spiky plants in back for some texture and height. And some little hot pink flowers in there for added color. Perhaps part of my problem is that I have no idea which flowers I planted, nor how they tend to grow; I typically walk through the garden center and grab things that look pretty together and do a quick check to see if they are deer resistant (although our local deer laugh in the face of deer resistant flora) and then stuff them in a planter and hope for the best. Anyway, I am ready, now, to move on from my summer failure into fall florals. Who are we if we cannot draw strength, if not knowledge, from our errors and stride forward with renewed purpose. What remain of the white flowers will have to go. But I don’t know what to do with the tall spiky plants. From an aesthetic standpoint, they are different heights and girths which bothers me; I want symmetry on my front stoop! But they, unlike the white flowers, are thriving. So I don’t necessarily want to euthanize them in their prime. Plus, they might look nice with some bright yellow or orange mums in the foreground? Can I… DO that? Remove some of the things in the planters but not all? And add new plants without disrupting those that are already growing? What do I do here?
  • Don’t even get me started on the planters in the back.
  • Carla has decided to be a witch this year. We ordered her costume – which she picked out; she had a lot of specifications for the ideal costume, including “sparkles” and “big sleeves.” It arrived yesterday and it is amazing. Except that the glitter gets EVERYWHERE. My entire kitchen floor sparkles. My husband washed my face with a wet paper towel – yes, like I was a toddler – before our date because I somehow had glitter all over me.  She told me that she is a witch of glitter and sparkles and I think that summarizes her personality and her effect on people pretty accurately. 
image from amazon.com. Carla not pictured.
  • The Christmas Fret has set in pretty hard, especially since a friend expressed Extreme Shock that I hadn’t yet started my holiday shopping. I know, I know – supply chain issues, postal service delays, etc. etc. This weekend, I plan to badger my husband into picking out some things for Carla, just so we have SOMETHING. But I absolutely cannot think about what to get my husband. His birthday is next week and I had to scrape the darkest corners of my brain to figure out what to get him for THAT, so I am completely tapped out for Christmas. 
  • What are you having for dinner tonight? I am making taco pizza. I have been looking forward to it since Wednesday, when I finally got my act together enough to plan meals for the remainder of the week. Not the weekend, though. So who knows what will happen tomorrow or Sunday, food wise. Not I.

Well, I have run out of randomosity steam. Hoping your day is going well so far, and that your weekend is relaxing and enjoyable.

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Misery! Of the Optical Sort

Do you know the difference between these two bottles?

Eyes.JPG

The righthand bottle is plain old saline solution. It’s for rinsing and storing your contact lenses. The lefthand bottle is a special enzyme-cleaning solution for your contacts. You put it in a special case with your contacts and the case contains a neutralizing material that does the crucial neutralizing over many (six, I think) hours. You can see right up on the top of the bottle in big, bold letters that you should NOT put it in your eyes. If you are a contact-lenses wearer, you probably already know that. I have been wearing contacts since fourth grade so I DEFINITELY know that.

And yet, the other day, I removed my contacts from the case, put one lens on the tip of my finger, and instead of filling the lens with normal saline as I have EVERY DAY OF MY ADULT LIFE AND MUCH OF MY CHILDHOOD, I filled it with the enzyme cleaner instead. And, not noticing my HEINOUS ERROR, I put the enzyme-solution-filled lens in my eye. And then I died.

No, I didn’t die. But I was felled by immediate, searing pain. I literally collapsed to my knees, on my bathroom floor, in a very dramatic fashion.

I like to think this act of unfathomable stupidity was a test of my emergency-handling skills. Okay, I will admit that my immediate reaction was to crumple to the floor and screech loudly and wonder who in the hell was going to call 911 for me (I was alone in the house), which doesn’t bode well for fires or murderers.

But then my logical brain took over, and I started flushing my eye with lots of cold water. My eye refused to open because the last time it did, I tried to murder it. So I soaked a washcloth in water and pushed that up against my eye until it finally did let me open it a crack. Then more flushing until I was finally able to pry to contact out of my eye. More flushing still. Then I was able to google what a person was to do if she was so ridiculous as to put enzyme solution directly in her eye. Flush with water, is the answer. Contact your eye doctor if the pain and irritation remains after several hours.

PHEW.

Let us now look at a soothing hibiscus bush.

Hibiscus.JPG

Yesterday, there was a single blossom… today, many! Just like popcorn, where you wait and wait and wait, and then all of a sudden your bush is full! But of hibiscus, not popcorn! Which I don’t put on shrubbery anyway! This metaphor has gone awry!

Before and since the Solution Incident of ’18, my eyes have been bothering me for a different reason. I am going to guess “allergies,” given the fact that I also sneeze a lot.

Whatever the case, my eye are constantly red and itchy and uncomfortable. I am constantly rubbing them and trying not to rub them and wiping them with washcloths. In the morning, they are encrusted by… well, crust. It’s really delightful.

I have been self-medicating with over-the-counter antihistamines and allergy eyedrops. They work a teensy bit. The great and all-knowing internet suggests that my best recourse is to stop wearing makeup and contacts. Blah. I like wearing makeup. My face looks naked without at least mascara. And I like wearing contacts. It’s almost a necessity, in summer, because I need to wear sunglasses to protect my eyes against the solar glare. And I don’t have prescription sunglasses, so I can’t wear them unless I am wearing contacts.

Well, I will give up both. If I have to. But the goal here is to have eyes that a) can see and b) can do so without redness, itching, or total nakedness.

Nothing I am doing on my own (eyedrops, antihistamines, rubbing) is working. I think I need either a) a diagnosis and an actual treatment plan or b) an updated glasses prescription so I can get some sunglasses with prescription lenses. In either case, I need to find a new eye doctor.

You may choose to skip this ranty/boring part:

The last time we discussed my eye doctor, I was frustrated by insurance issues. (Which we ended up paying; to make a long story still unfortunately long, my husband and I both got a bill from our eye doctor for the exact same service. Our insurance was covering part of my visit, but not part of my husband’s. Our insurance claimed that my eye doctor was no longer a preferred provider, so they wouldn’t be covering charges. Turns out he WAS a preferred provider, but only became one a month or so after my husband’s visit [and a few weeks before MY visit, which means the insurance company covered part of my visit out of the kindness of their hearts] [he’d just joined a new practice; previous to that he was a preferred provider according to our insurance].) Anyway, we thought we got the insurance issues sorted out. But recently, my husband made an appointment to see the eye doctor and once he was there, in the waiting room, for his appointment, they informed him that our eye doctor is no longer a preferred provider under our insurance plan. SIGH. So we paid in full for covered services for my husband two years in a row. And now we all need to find a new eye doctor anyway.

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I do not WANT to find a new eye doctor. I want my OLD eye doctor. And I want him to be covered by our insurance. Yes, yes, I know I am very fortunate to have eyes and a selection of eye doctors in the area AND insurance that covers eye stuff. I can still be grumpy about having to find an eye doctor.

You know what this means, right? Research, and then calls to the doctor to see if s/he is taking new patients. And then calls to my insurance provider to see if the doctor is covered. And then calls to the doctor to make an appointment. It sounds like only three calls, which I acknowledge is manageable if mentally TRYING, but let’s agree that it will actually require many, many more than three.

Let us now look at a charming and probably hypoallergenic baby deer that would totally be a preferred provider lookit his little spotties awwwwww.

Fawn 2

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Reasons to Leave Your Eye Doctor

You know those tasks that you do every day and some days you do it without a thought and other days you do it while grumbling quietly and other days you hate yourself and your life and you would prefer to abandon your spouse and children and live life in a yurt on a remote island than remove ONE MORE TIME the daily mass of hair from the shower drain? Well, I have reached the latter stage with changing the toilet paper rolls, which seem to ALL THREE need changing simultaneously, only by me, and at an alarming rate of turnover.

Of course, my irritation is on the level of hair strands burrowing in a drain, which is a near infinite distance from the level of My House Just Got Leveled By A Hurricane or My Backyard Is Burning And Has Been Since July or My Country May Or May Not Be In The Imminent Path of Nuclear Disaster. But rather than spend $1,000 on all the gas masks and emergency rations that are in my Amazon cart at the moment, I am turning my thoughts instead to the minutiae of life’s drain-hair-nest of irritations in hopes that it distracts me from The End Times for a while longer.

Something that is high on my list of unimportant-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things irritations lately is my eye doctor. Not him, per se. But his office and their apparent COMPLETE INCOMPETENCE with submitting charges to my insurance company. (Let’s acknowledge all the inherent privileges in this source of exasperation: access to health care, access to eye doctor, access to funds to pay for the services in case my insurance company denies the claims, house standing in a hurricane-free area, backyard absent of fire and smoke, etc.)

My eye doctor – whom I’ve seen for nearly a decade, and therefore do not want to leave, not so much out of loyalty as out of desire not to meet a new person – just joined a larger practice. He used to be part of the University Health System for which my husband also works. Now, he works for a practice called, confusingly, University Ophthalmologists. This is important to my plight.

After the eye doctor joined this new practice, my husband and I each went for our yearly eye exam. (I actually had several additional appointments, but that’s another story and I’d rather not fret about my steady march toward sightless doom at this time.) We got a bill several months later.

The bill says clearly, “If there is an asterisk next to the thing we are charging you for, we have submitted a claim to your insurance for that thing.”

The bill had zero asterisks, and it looked as though – unsurprisingly – none of the items had been covered at all by our insurance, despite the fact that our insurance covers yearly eye exams in full.

Since the bill said we had to pay by X date or face a collections agency, I called the number for the billing office.

The woman who answered – let’s call her Doris – said she could help me. I told her it didn’t look like our appointments had been submitted to insurance. She asked me what our insurance carrier was, and I told her. Recognizing the carrier, she asked, “Is your husband employed by University Health System?” and I confirmed that he is.

That’s when her brain shut down tight like a toddler throwing herself on the floor in prone, immovable refusal to wear the perfectly reasonable pants she already agreed to wear. Doris said, “Well, if you have the employee insurance, we don’t take it. We aren’t PART of the University Health System. We’re separate. Even though our name is University Ophthalmologists, we are NOT part of the University Health System. We are out of network to that insurance because we are not part of the University Health System.” She repeated this information several times and in a variety of ways, lest I misunderstand what she was saying.

When she finally ran through all possible variations on “we are not part of the University Health System,” I brought out my trump card (which no longer sounds as pleasantly triumphant as it should) and told her that we had in fact emailed our insurance company prior to our appointments to make sure that our eye doctor was still an in-network provider. The insurance company had responded that he was indeed an in-network provider.

Doris was still on toddler tantrum mode and this information did not sink in.

At some point she paused long enough for me to finally ask the question I had been intending to ask from the beginning, which was, “Did you actually even TRY to submit the claim to our insurance company? Because the bill says you did not. No asterisks.”

That got through somehow – her brain toddler must have spotted a soothing My Little Pony or something – and she said, no, it didn’t look like they had submitted the claim. So she would do that. BUT MARK HER WORDS, she said, it wouldn’t make any difference because they were out-of-network for my insurance company, not part of University Health, yada yada, the sound of my blood pressure drowned out her words at that point.

Internet, we have since received at least a dozen bills. Some of the claims have been submitted to our insurance. Some have been PARTIALLY COVERED.

One bill showed that part of my routine annual exam was covered… but my husband’s was not. Same exact service. Same exact insurance. So I had to call again. And Doris answered again. And we went through the SAME EXACT RIGAMOROLE.

Perhaps you are well aware how maddening it is to tell someone a fact and have them completely ignore that fact as they steamroll right over you with their own agenda. She was so completely caught up in this “we are not part of the University Health System” thing that she could not see that my insurance WAS IN FACT COVERING THINGS. Nor could she take a breath and look at the identical appointments my husband and I had, and note that there was no earthly reason for our insurance to make a payment on MINE and not on HIS.

The call ended with me asking, again, for her to re-submit the claim (which, again, had NO ASTERISK on their own form which said clearly that an asterisk means it has been submitted and ipso facto LACK OF ASTERISK means it has NOT been submitted). And again, we got a bill with incomplete asteriskage and mismatched claims information. Exhausting.

I am seriously considering leaving my eye doctor because of this! It is not worth going through this every couple of weeks! I never want to speak to Doris again!

And listen, I can empathize with Doris. I can. She probably has to talk to a billion people a day, many of whom are probably confused/enraged by the fact that University Ophthalmologists is not part of the University Health System and therefore doesn’t accept their insurance. That would be confusing and enraging! And so she probably has to shut off the part of her brain that listens so she won’t be bombarded by insults and profanity from angry, frustrated clients. And probably there is a limited number of variations on how insurance companies respond to claims so she likely thinks she’s seen it all. And maybe she’s worked there for fifty years and HAS seen most things and has a good grasp of her job and what can and cannot be done. She’s probably a very efficient, hard-working woman who maybe has too many things on her plate and might be a wee bit exasperated by all these patients the new doctor is bringing into the practice with their associated ignorance about what the word “University” means when it’s part of a practice name. Maybe she hates her job and goes home each night and cries. I try to think of all these things every time I speak to her, with limited effect on my blood pressure.

When the most recent bill arrived, I waited as long as I could. Then I gritted my teeth and geared up to deal with Doris. But! Lovely, reasonable, fresh-voiced Heather answered the phone! Heather, who trotted out the same “we are not in-network for University Health System insurance” line, but then listened as I pointed out that a) our insurance told us our eye doctor is in-network and b) our insurance had been covering some of the claims. And then she agreed that it was odd! And that she would look into it!

I have no doubt that I will be back on the phone with Doris in a couple of weeks, because insurance matters take YEARS to untangle. (Surely I’ve complained here in the past about the insurance company that had “University of City, Name Memorial Hospital” on their list of in-network providers, but the hospital itself put simply “Name Memorial Hospital” on the claims it submitted, so the insurance denied them all? That was a fun one to deal with.) (No.) But maybe, knowing Heather is around, I won’t have to leave my eye doctor altogether?