I can hardly urinate. My back hurts in a way I never “heard” before (thanks, Gabapentin!), and I board the US(S) Renal tomorrow morning at 7:00am sharp to discover just how aggressive Nephros Herne is, just how badly it is impacting normal processing, and hopefully, grant enough insight to convince even a profit-first insurance company that this thing needs to come out.
I believe today’s protocol is first lithotripsy, then surgery. But that’s for the doctor’s to tell me when I return for post-procedure followup. So, nothing after 10pm tonight but water and nothing tomorrow morning until just before leaving, when I am allowed to have 16oz of water.
The precision and specificity of the instructions trigger fear and anxiety. I’m sitting here, at home, alone, trying to breathe through a panic attack that showed up from nowhere and is giving me a proper ass kicking even as I type.
Is it telling that I’m more scared they won’t agree it needs treating than that it’s present?
This is not my best life. But it’s the one I have because I must endure the leisure of those who lose nothing if this clock runs out before they act.
Actually, no, I can just tell them “we’re doing this and I’ll make payments the rest of my life if I must.”
And I think I will do just that.
I’m tired of people who don’t care about me as a human and a person deciding my health outcomes. There clearly isn’t enough distance between ‘finance’ and ‘medicine’ to assure against corrupting the latter on behalf of the former. The insurance examiner and specialists review my files and results not to confirm I need help, but to confirm that it can no longer wait.
My current state is living proof; thirty years of it, thank you very much… waiting on this process, traditionally, habitually, and inevitably results in MORE problems and MORE cost. But apparently, if they can profit in the window between, that’s ok. Must be some tax write off thing I’m too math-stupid to understand. Generally Accepted Accounting Practices, right? I will but note that is not Ethical Accounting Practices and then, as usually, sit back and wait for tomorrow and hope it’s all so overt and clear that neither Fair Isaac nor GAAP can pretend otherwise.
Gosh, what do you know? The anxiety disappears as soon as the fear and anger are released.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Important takeaway: FICO, the people who decide your credit score, are also the people who provide the math to the business world that enables them to do the same. Quite literally, you are being assessed for lifetime value and they are trying to decide if giving you help in your medical treatment will net them more profit than not over time.
Frontline medical professionals struggle to deliver their life’s work because of the preceding paragraph.