"Sick Day"

I got up bright and early so I could get a root canal.  Fun stuff.  I had decided that regardless of how I felt, I was going to take the day off from work.  I've been stressing over all the stuff that I need to get done, but I figured I could use a day to myself.

I've felt pretty good in general, which is nice, and I'm relieved that the endodontist just needed to go in there and clean everything out of the tooth.  In other words, there isn't a fracture.

So I laid around and watched TV, played video games, and took a nap.  I'll gladly give up days like this if a root canal is what I have to get to give myself one, but this was a nice pause before letting things go back to being crazy.  Plus, I'm feeling better physically, which makes a world of difference too.

Rediagnosed

So that sinus infection that I said came raging back?  Now I wonder if it was ever a sinus infection.

The swelling had gone down, but there was still an area that was blown up.  I began to suspect that this problem may be dental.  Of course, way back when this began in late summer 2010, I thought it might be, but the dentist and his assistant couldn't find anything to suggest that it was.  Like a dummy, I rolled with it and chalked it up to sinuses or allergies.  And didn't do anything about it.  Sometimes it was sorer than others, but it was never really bad.

At other regular cleanings nothing was spotted, so when I went to the doctor back in December, I mentioned that I thought I had a sinus infection.  He applied pressure where the sinus is, it definitely hurt, and he prescribed an antibiotic and nasal spray.  Problem solved, or so I thought until last week.

I've been dutifully using the nasal spray and taking the different antibiotic prescribed last week to beat the infection, but the last couple of days I began to wonder if perhaps this problem was dental-related after all.  Something didn't seem right--the swollen gum, namely--and when I finally took a peek at it, what I saw sure fit the description of an abscess, as previously explained to me by the dentist.

In a panic--I had mistaken the meaning of an abscess for a fracture--I called the dentist's office and secured an appointment for that afternoon.  About an hour later I felt the abscess deflate.  I was really worked out.  Mistaking an abscess for a fracture, I thought this meant I was going to lose the tooth.  (The abscess was near where I've had a root canal.)

What did the dentist have to say?  Yep, that was an abscess and had nothing to do with my sinuses. (Did it ever?  Who knows?)  He determined that I need to have a root canal.  On a tooth that already had a root canal.  Several years ago I had root canals on two adjacent teeth.  After tomorrow morning both will have had second root canals.  (The other one had a nerve left behind, which could have happened if I had an extra one and the endodontist didn't look for it.)

So my reaction to all this is somewhere in the middle.  I'm relieved that, at least for now, there isn't any suspicion of a fracture and the need for an extraction.  I'm aggravated that I'll be paying again to have a root canal on a tooth already treated in such a manner.  I can't say I'm looking forward to the procedure tomorrow morning, but I'm relatively at peace with it and glad/hopeful it isn't more serious.

As for the other medical thing that's caused some discomfort, I ended up getting in at the specialist on the day of the referral.  He didn't find anything and thinks it may be referred pain.  So that's a win in the interim.  But could this year ease up on the health/medical concerns, pretty please?

 

Ouch

Checking in to say I haven't fallen off the edge of the planet.

I haven't felt like writing here due to how I've been feeling.  It's not anything serious--not that I know--but I've had a bit of a painful start to the year.  There's something that has caused some distressing pain, although it hasn't been persistent.  I did go to the doctor after worrying about it a couple weeks.  I followed his advice for the past week, but the issue still hasn't gone away entirely.  Looks like I ought to call the referred specialist next week.

To top it off, a sinus infection that I was treating and seemed like it was mostly cleared up came raging back out of nowhere a couple days ago.  It's more painful than it ever was before and has kept me up for the better part of the last two nights.  I did get a prescription for another antibiotic phoned in, which will hopefully start taking care of business soon.  Half of my face is swollen, and yes, it hurts, sometimes a lot.  I do think I have that under control with some extra strength ibuprofen left over from a recent prescription.  Or so I hope.

I'm usually in pretty good health, which makes me more stressed about all this, not to mention feeling the actual discomfort.  Here's hoping this sinusitis calms down this weekend and I can get the other thing checked out in the next week.

The agony of da feet

This entry is going to make me sound like an old man and a product endorser.

One result of the miles I've walked this summer is feet that hurt. I haven't given much thought to it and just pushed through the pain, even though some mornings I feel like I'm a bit gimpy at first. Recently a shared post that popped up in my Google Reader recommended the Foot Rubz Massage Ball. As my arches continued to hurt, I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to give this thing a shot.

It arrived in the mail today. While stepping on this thing probably feels not much different than planting one's foot atop a rounded Lego--yes, it can hurt momentarily if applying a lot of pressure--it's produced results. My feet feel a lot better.

Having just now done some web searches, it occurs to me that perhaps I ought to get some arch supports in my shoes. Well, that and the possibility that my dad has passed on his susceptibility to plantar fasciitis to me.

This and that

With some luck and better hydration, this is the last update I'll be providing about my kidneys. I received the analysis of the lab results, which found that the kidney stones were the most common type. I need to drink more water, but that's it as far as diet is concerned in relation to these painful little pebbles.

In search of something to write about today I came across a story about a Canadian seminar helping students reconsider their assumptions about gender. The pertinent part, as far as this blog is concerned:

In Grade 6, students try to decipher what kind of person owns a variety of bags, which their teacher has filled with, say, sports equipment and knitting materials. Teachers help students question their assumptions. Is the owner of the sports bag male? Could it belong to a girl? And couldn't the knitting belong to a boy?

Yes, yes it could.

ER blues

I appreciate the commenters assuring me that I wasn't stuck with this outrageous emergency room bill, but I'm sorry to report that it is indeed the case that I owe a couple thousand dollars. That's my deductible and thems the breaks.

In a nutshell, it's down to my choice of picking a plan that banks on not using health insurance (thus a high deductible and a Health Savings Account). I had to switch at the end of last year, and this option seemed best to me since I've not used health care. (Even in those rare instances when I've needed it I've had to pay for everything out of pocket.) Essentially I gambled and lost, which doesn't erase the fact that the costs are obscene and doesn't make it right that people have to gamble on their health. You'd think there would be a better way.

I've been told that I can and should negotiate/grovel with the hospital when I receive a bill for the amount the insurance company isn't covering. Apparently that's how the game is played. Seriously, though, this is the best we can do?

Sorry for the black clouds. Back to knitting talk or bitching and moaning about something petty tomorrow...

I'm on fire

I have deliberately put some time between when I opened a piece of mail today and when I'm writing about what I found inside. Blogging while angry is not a good idea.

I'm still furious (and completely shocked), but I feel like I've let off the worst of my reaction. Nevertheless, you might want to put on the fireproof suit lest you get scorched by what follows.

So you may remember that I recently paid a trip to the emergency room to find out that I had kidney stones. And I thought the pain and misery was over. Today I received a statement of services that they sent to my insurance company. The total cost for my time there comes to almost six thousand dollars.

WTF?!

The CT scan, which confirmed what the doctor suspected, ran almost four grand. The physician care was nearly $1700. Are you kidding?

Now I should mention that I am incredibly dense when it comes to the workings of health insurance, so perhaps everything will work out OK. I don't expect it to, though. More than likely I'm on the hook for two to three thousand dollars, an outrageous sum considering what I had done. God knows what the follow-up doctor's visit is going to cost.

This only confirms my worst fears about going to the doctor even when having insurance. Until last week's follow-up appointment, I had not gone to a regular medical examination of any kind in at least fifteen years, probably more, and didn't have a primary physician. I've felt fine, more or less, and I haven't wanted to pay the exorbitant fees that I've imagined.

But this situation takes the prize. I figured I'd come out owing a couple hundred dollars, a few hundred at most, not something in the thousands. I'm well aware that health care is prohibitively expensive here and that the current system doesn't work for a lot of people. I never dreamed it was this bad.

Obviously my mistake was checking to see what the problem was. I don't really know what the alternative would have been, but the pain from the eventual insurance company bill is going to last a lot longer than the four-day ordeal I went through.

There's not anything else to say except that I'm livid and beaten down because of this.

What's happening

All right, so I spoke too soon about passing all the kidney stones, but I've been feeling much better since about ten hours ago and think/hope that the worst is over. I have the sizable evidence, so at least there's less rattling around in me than there was. But enough about my kidneys and urine, both of which I've been more preoccupied with in recent days than I care to be...

I'd like to get back to writing about knitting. You know, the whole reason I started this blog... I've been taking it easy today and almost picked up the needles, but with as much system flushing that I'm doing, knitting something that requires keeping track of the stitches didn't seem like a good idea.

I can attest to spotting knitting in a new film. I ducked out for a brief bit to see The Happening, which has a couple shots of old women wearing gas masks and knitting. (The film is about an event in which something airborne is causing those who come into contact with it to kill themselves.) I've been pretty fond of most of the director's work and held out hope that the beating he was taking for this film was a matter of people having the knives out for him.

Alas, it's not very good, even if I'm inclined to permit him a wider berth. If I'd seen this with an audience--I had the theater to myself this afternoon--I imagine they would have been doubled over with laughter at points. I don't think The Happening is terrible, just severely misconceived and directed. But hey, I was happy to have a couple pain-free hours out of the apartment.

Rite of passages

The wise choice would have been to stay home today, but I felt an obligation to the graduates to go to work if I was up to it at all. I wasn't, not really, but I thought that if I went out and grabbed a little something to eat that I might feel well enough to endure a few hours.

You see, I've had no appetite, so I've been avoiding taking anything to reduce the pain lest I end up wrapped around the toilet. I suffered through the graduation--I'm sure I looked miserable--but I wanted to be there to send off some students who have been very important to the program the last four years. Was it worth it? I'd like to think so. I work closely with the students, and this bunch meant a lot to me.

The good news is that at some point this afternoon I passed the stone that has been giving me all this grief. Since Friday I haven't been able to find a comfortable position for sitting, standing, or laying down--what else is there, suspension?--so you can imagine my relief to be rid of it. Overall I've been fortunate regarding my health. I can certainly appreciate that normal state of being a lot more now that I'm back in it (or so I assume).

Friday the 13th

I am not superstitious about Friday the 13th, but today has been nothing short of hellish. I sincerely hope that flipping the calendar to another day will change my fortune. I'll warn you now that today's entry may be tough reading.

I awoke at 5:30 a.m. with lower abdominal discomfort that spread to my back. I went to bed feeling fine, so I was perplexed as to what might be causing this fairly significant pain. My first thoughts were food poisoning or (sorry) constipation, but the solution to the latter didn't ease things. I laid around and paced for about an hour hoping that I would feel better, but if anything, I felt worse.

I called my insurance company's toll-free nurse line to get an opinion on the situation. The pain did let up some while I was on the phone, but I was hurting enough that I knew I couldn't let it pass. The nurse recommended going to the emergency room and directed me to the closest hospital, which is about a ten-minute drive my place.

By 7:00 I dragged myself to the car and hoped that I could make it to the hospital without any further complications. I cursed aloud every driver in front of me going under the speed limit and then staggered into my destination. There was no question that I needed to be in the emergency room. Fortunately I didn't have to wait and laid down on a bed as soon as possible.

The prognosis seemed pretty clear by now. I probably had a kidney stone. I had a very small one about ten years ago, but I don't remember it being this bad. (My dad has had issues with them, so I wasn't particularly surprised that this was the cause of my misery.) The nurse told me to change into a gown. This will tell you how rare it is that I'm in this bad of shape and how unclear my brain was. Thinking I'd provide easier access to the doctor, I put it on backwards. Modesty had gone out the window. Whatever was going to get me pumped full of painkillers the fastest was priority number one.

The nurse put another gown over me and eventually covered me with a sheet as I'd been writhing around. There was a period of probably ten minutes, which felt like hours, where the E.R. personnel were doing whatever they needed to do. Meanwhile I moaned in pain desperate for them to do something. It is the loneliest I've ever felt in my life.

The drugs didn't immediately take effect like I desired, but by the time the radiology tech was done with my scan, the pain seemed to be dulled pretty well. Waking up early had me tired. I hadn't eaten anything, although the IV was putting something in me. I was content to lay there and attempt to sleep in between the bedside visits.

Sure enough, I had a small kidney stone. The doctor said I ought to be able to pass it at home. They were going to release me about two hours after I'd arrived, but I had to drive myself back to my apartment, which simply wasn't doable with the Dilaudid and other drugs in my system. They let me rest for another hour. I didn't feel like I had my legs under me, so I read the newspaper and sipped water in the waiting room for another hour. Then I, umm, expelled it all and decided that I better wait a little longer.

Finally I thought my condition might be solid enough that I could drive to the grocery store to fill my prescription and get home. I made it unscathed, although there were probably smarter alternatives.

I've had no appetite, but I managed to eat some bland, inoffensive food so I had something on my stomach for taking a Percocet to work on the returning pain. The pain has been muted but present the rest of today. I've passed a few infinitesimal gravelly bits, so I'm hoping that the worst is over. I feel lousy and don't want to eat at all, so I've had to suck up the pain for the last couple hours. I may have to force myself to get something down so I can take another pill and get some sleep.

And to add insult to injury, when I was feeling a little better the power got knocked out just as I'd beaten one of the songs on Guitar Hero III in expert, keeping it from being saved. Maybe there's something to this curse of 13 after all. (Not really...but it makes a nice close.)