IN flux...
Medicare won't cover me much for anything in the hospital or ER any more. They fight you on every single aspect of getting care. My surgeons "can't do any thing until the abscess gets big" Well it gets big then pops it's own fistula and makes me violently ill through the whole process, and drains but not all of the way. So in a month i am right back to violently ill.
Then they tell me that the only way to fix this is to put me on humera. Also not covered by medicare. I am supposed to have to call around to try to get covered on it. When? I am so ill i hardly function and lay in bed for months.
The last time i was kicked out of the hospital right after a surgery it was with me in so much pain i couldn't even talk..cry nothing. just sat there shaking in terror with everything feeling like it was trying to shut down. I was unable to eat, unable to drink unable to go to the bathroom because the pain was so bad my bladder couldn't release. My docs all shrugged and said " so eat" as i wasted away dropping over 45-50 lbs in a month and praying to anyone that would listen to just put a pillow over my head, shoot me something!
My friends were then on watch. They would come daily to check on me terrified they would be the ones to find i was gone. i was so weak i couldn't walk on my own any more. Yet the hospital didn't see this as reason to put me back in or even let me be re-hydrated via ER. They just tell me to go see my doctors.. who in turn would do nothing.. nothing but say you aren't going to do any better until you eat and drink. It's like being stuck in some horrible horror film.. they know you are wasting away in agony but just smirk and say "so what? yeah it's a bitch isn't it glad i am not you!"
I know there were laws passed some time ago saying that doctors aren't really allowed to tell YOU that they refuse to do something because of your INSURANCE not covering it.. but it's gotten to the point i really don't want to be in the states anymore. i can't stand being in the hands of my insurance or doctors.
The only relief i have gotten is years of fighting to be on enough pain meds to function at all.. for me this means eating every now and then and being able to keep hydrated and use the bathroom.That in its self is fraught with it's own horrors.
You are then treated like a hardcore drug addict. Humiliated by your doctors, having to sign "narcotics contracts" that allow them to piss test you any time they see fit( i don't care because i have done nothing but find it humiliating they even go there).. every time i go in it's some new law or procedure to cover a doctors ass at the very big cost of decency to the patient. I have had to bring my pill bottles in so that they can count them to make sure i am not taking more then prescribed then lectured on how i can't remain on pain meds for ever. I have to fight every single month for my pain meds because they refuse to do anything else. they won't do surgery, i can't be in the hospital to get care when i am so weak i can't even shower any more and get horrible sores on my scalp from my hair being dirty.. from sweating day and night from fevers, yet i sit here like that alone. they have tried shoving me off to a pain clinic.. but medicare doesn't cover that either.I fought for years for THIS?Insurance that makes the state insurance look like it was heaven... it was 12 yrs ago but now is a joke. but medicare is ten to twenty times worse!
Every single time i go in they have made it even more impossible for a person who is really in pain and hurting to get their pain meds. It doesn't effect the abusers. they will get them regardless of what hurdles the government sets up... while i can't physically get in a car to get my meds.. means i get to have NO pain meds.
My natural meds doc happens to be an actual doctor so he told me he would write my meds when i told him what they do to a patient with absolutely no history of pain med or illegal drugs use what so ever.. AT ALL EVER...non!
he has struggled to get this abscess with it's own fistula that comes and goes to go away. it almost does then blows open again. Why? not one of my fistulas or abscesses ever go away when drained they have to be cut out. But in all my fights to get docs to heal this so i DON"T HAVE TO BE ON THE BLOODY PAIN MEDS..they treat me like scum.
Right now i am on an upward swing. he tried a different combo of meds and they are starting to work well. I am not getting my hopes up because i can feel like this thing is healed and it pops right back there in a couple months. We will see...
But now.. now i go to get my pain meds filled. As you probably know your own pharmacy works with your insurance they have their own ridiculous strict and getting stricter pain med rules..You can't get a partial fill while waiting for your insurance to pull their head out of their asses long enough to cover you. I am on morphine and oxycodone. After many many years of having to be on pain meds off and on i have a very high tolerance for them they flat out don/t work in small doses and ONE kind no longer works. I have to use both.. one for long term pain control all day one for break through pain. Well medicare not only will not cover my surgery, my hospital stays now they refuse to cover my long acting pain meds. as a matter of fact they now as of last month will only cover HALF of what my DOCTOR prescribes!
that is right they are now fighting me on PAIN MEDS too.. what the HELL am i supposed to do? Pretend i am doing better? is that their logic? If they take away any avenue of care i am supposed to just change my mind and be healthy?More like they don't' see me as worth saving and figure people like me should just die.. it would make them have a better bottom line.They refused to cover MY DOCTOR PRESCRIBED meds now.. since when is the insurance company above my doctor? i have had to ride out horrible horrible withdrawals and pain every single month to the point of my heart feeling like it's giving out, worrying about organ failure, all kinds of things because THEY don't think it can be fatal to up and cut off pain meds to a person who has been on high doses. You CAN. it's a medical fact not an opinion!
My pain meds cannot be filled even a day or hour before they are due. My doctor writes them on that day. I have to, no matter how horribly ill i am go physically pick them up, while shaking and vomiting in a friends car because I can't drive half the time, to then sit there waiting a the pharmacy to see if my docs have either wrote them wrong or my insurance is going to fight it. This time my refil landed on a friday. My doctor had to go back and forth with my pharmacy to get all of this paperwork faxed in to override the insurance to cover me. Well i had all of ONE day of pain meds left as they will not fill them early not even by a day. So they leave you NO back up for things like this. I then get lectured by some asshat new pharmacist on how i should have fill them sooner then friday if i had wanted to get my insurance to cover them.. yeah this is a brand new policy for medicare. No warning.. they just do this. So 1. can't fill it early 2. can't have any extra meds for something like this 3. my doctor now has to fight them like hell to get me my meds.
I was left for two days shaking sweating with my legs flailing, jaw clenching.. no control on top of the worst panic attacks, heart palpitations 24/7 while the bureaucrats try to figure out yet another way to kick someone like me to the curb. While i laid there sobbing in pain and agony scared to death wondering how long i would be left like this.. the only solution left was my friend shelling out 150 bucks for my meds so that he didn't have to watch me like this.My disability payments are so low i cant survive off of them at all about 90% of my payment goes to rent alone. I can't pay even 10 bucks extra a month and medicare not covering things is making me more and more in debt with every hospital or doc i see. yeah that makes you reallly popular when you go in.
I can't imagine there isn't people dying left and right from all of this. This gets more and more ridiculous. i want to get BETTER, i don't want to even be on pain meds i hate them. i don't get any high from them, they make my gut upset, my memory terrible and i am chained to them with pain and agony they refuse to help me get better.
When i sit there like this and see someone who is in the hospital being treated for od-ing on drugs again, my friend's cousin who has full disability from taking so many of some illeagal drug he burned holes in his guts.. he is doing great.. he gets far more help then i do. I want to sell every thing i own.. head on out to the white house.. leave them a note telling them what these drug laws and ridiculous cuts to medicare does to chronically ill patients WHO WANT to be better and had no choice in getting these diseases, then jump off a tall building or walk in front of a bus and finally get to take matters into my own hands rather then someone else who passes these laws and hasn't been sick a day in their life. ya know the bastards who think that treating people like scum for being chronically ill will make them stop wasting money on all those unnecessary hospital and doctor visits.
I wish i knew who to talk to about this. i wish to god i could make a change, someone would listen to someone like me. I really would like to make some difference. to go through this knowing that if i did something that someone else would never ever have to go through this again. Only that would make this worth it to me. That and the fact i think it's horrible that if someone left some cute furry animal in this condition we prosecute and would put the animal out of it's suffering but because i am not some furry critter i don't deserve not to suffer years upon decades like this. If we are born again as something else.. i am coming back as a pet. That way i will get put down rather then suffer years of horrors we chronically sick patients have to endure!
On that note if you were me who would you talk to or write to to start making a change? I am fed up! My natural med doc sits there in horror wondering HOW we have fallen so far in just caring about the sick, covering them so they can heal... and it also angers him beyond belief that anyone is treated like this.. that doctors who are supposed to be healers only go to school for the big $$$$$$$$$ and not care about their own patients! It's a sick sick world we live in.