Caught Red Handed

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night with a throbbing pain in my left hand. I call this malady “cane hand.” Even though the cane handle is padded, there has to be some trauma to my hand due to repetitive use. My guess is this is a pretty common problem. My palm hurts, and my fingers are a bit stiff.

Although my right hip is worse than my left, I sometimes switch the cane to my right hand. Might as well get used to that since at some point I’ll have the left hip done. I am left handed, so I am decidedly more comfortable using the cane with my left hand. Need more practice with the right.

I had an interesting meeting at work yesterday morning. I walked into the conference room where a co-worker and a vendor representative were already meeting. The first thing the vendor representative said was, “you have a cane already!”

“Already?” What did he mean? This man had never met me before in his life. Was it too early in the day for a cane? (“No canes before 11:00 AM!”) Was it too early in the year for a cane? (“No white canes before Memorial Day!”) I am not savvy about the cane timing rules. Perhaps it had something to do with Daylight Savings Time.

Better Living Through Chemistry

Molly, me and Larry -- the photo is relevant because I know Larry will get a kick out of this post, and I love the pic!

A very well-meaning volunteer at a competition I recently judged thought he was doing me a favor when he suggested that I should contact his friend, a chiropractor who has "studied physics," who could fix my hip problem by changing the energy fields and the chemistry in my body. He approached me at a time when I had just lugged my bags several miles (or so it seemed) across a smoky Las Vegas casino, and I was tired and crabby and not really in the mood for advice, so I'll admit I wasn’t the most tactful in my replies. But really … give it up, already:

He: You should really contact ****, he can fix you right up. He has this amazing energy field program, which can correct almost anything that is wrong with you. The website is ...
Me: (with a tired smile) Surgery is the only thing that can correct my problem, but thank you for your recommendation.
He: Oh no, you don’t need surgery, you really need the energy in your body re-balanced. It’s physics …
Me: Look, I know you’re trying to help, but do you even know what’s wrong with me?
He: Well ...
Me: I have hip dysplasia. Do you know what that is?
He: Yes!
(And I’m thinking to myself no, you don’t, but you’re so convinced that your friend can help me that you don’t even care to find out what it is.)
Me: I have a structural imbalance – a mechanical problem. No amount of chemical changes to my body will correct it.
He: (interrupting) But the chemical changes will get rid of your pain!
Me: No, they won’t. You are wrong. I’ve done months and months of research. This problem is not caused by a chemical imbalance.
He: (Shaking his head at my stupidity) Well, if you change your mind, let me know and I’ll give you the contact information …
Me: (Frostily) Thank you.

He didn’t make eye contact with me for the rest of the competition. Clearly he thought he was right and that I was a fool, because how could I ignore the obvious scientific evidence? Now I’m all for alternative medicine, and I don’t want to have surgery if I can help it. But I know there is no alternative. I am getting tired of helpful people who think they know what's best for me.

This includes the person who told me that her hip problem "went away" after awhile and she was sure mine would too. (What are people thinking? That nobody has a real medical problem, and all problems can disappear if you simply have a positive attitude? Not on my planet, honey.)

This also includes the person who implied, without even knowing the nature of my problem, that if I got in better shape I wouldn't need to take the elevator instead of the stairs. Right, if only I worked out more, I wouldn't need this darn cane! What do I look like, an idiot? And hey, I'm still in pretty good shape compared to the general populace.

Ah, then there was my return trip. There I was, minding my own business in the airport security line, when the TSA agent grabbed me and said I had to go into the "Express Lane." Now that was all well and fine with me since it saved me about 10 minutes of standing in line, but it was what she said next that got to me: "You'll just hold up the line and slow everyone down." Let's be real here. Not even OJ is running through airports any more. The line was crawling. I was keeping up just fine, and I wasn't carrying very much. There is no way that I was going to slow everyone down. Being an opportunist though, I suffered the insult and jumped to the front of the line. There has to be some benefit to being disabled.

Finally, as I was waiting to get off the plane at home, I noticed that the man in front of me had taken my cane down from the overhead compartment and was offering it to the sweet little old lady in front of him. She stared at him, obviously wondering why he was brandishing this cane at her. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, "can I have that please?" He looked at me with a frown, because I was obviously trying to interrupt his good deed for the day, and turned back to her. I tapped again. "That's mine," I said, pointing. This just did not compute for him. "The cane ... it's mine." Finally, with a sheepish look on his face, he handed it over to me. And away I went.

Postscript:

I did a little bit of surfing through the energy field websites today. Clearly I had a lot to learn. Now that I'm more educated, I can cancel my surgery (bold and italics added by me):

"1st The Base or Root Chakra – Colour is Red: It is created at conception and located at the base of the spine. It represents activity in general, such as movement, energy and survival as well as grounding. It connects with the base of the spine and also connects the liver and is associated with most illness. Red is also associated with pain, swelling and inflammation and all heat sensations. When this Chakra is working correctly, we have physical vitality and strength. We feel connected to nature with a deep understanding of nature’s rhythms and patterns.

When disturbed it affects the liver and all adrenal problems. Most major middle and upper back, hip and stability problems are caused by disturbances of the Base Chakra. Long term disturbances can cause chronic back and hip problems."

Glad I know this. I feel better already.

Lost in PDX

Here are the highlights of my trip to Lake Placid:

~The rubber tip of my cane fell off on the first leg of my flight, and by the time I figured it out it was too late to go back and get it as I was "running" (those of you pre-PAO know that "running" is the euphemism for "hobbling a bit faster than usual") through the Atlanta airport, trying to make my next flight. Atlanta - now that's one big airport, especially if one is hobbling.
~Traveler's "Tip": Always carry a spare tip. Wooden cane without rubber tip on marble floor does not make for a stable walking aid! In fact, it's rather useless and just served to get caught in my coat and backpack.
~When I arrive in Lake Placid I have to explain to everyone who hasn't seen me yet what the cane's all about. Helpful yet annoying acquaintence tells me my upcoming hip surgery will be a piece of cake. "A friend of mine had both of hers done at once and was back in action a couple of weeks later." A few repetitions of, "I'm not having them replaced" did not get through ... I finally resorted to the tried and true, "they are breaking my pelvis in 3 places" ... Blank look ensued. I smiled and went to get some hot chocolate.
~I am told by everyone that the hotel is a "short walk" from the rink. This "short walk" is downhill on snow and ice and I have a cane that is broken. The able-bodied judges, some twice my age, walk to the rink while I wait for the shuttle. Alone. Pathetic. Feeling sorry for myself.
~Shuttle passes the others, who look mighty cold out there. I smile smugly from the warm heated shuttle seat. Perhaps there is a silver lining after all.
~My husband calls from home to tell me that my handicapped parking papers have arrived in the mail. Yee haw, I will be able to go to the mall before the holidays!
~On Sunday I am scheduled to leave on the 5:15 AM shuttle for the two hour ride from Lake Placid to Albany to catch my 12:45 flight out. Um, OK, I guess sleep is overrated after all. The later shuttles all appear to be full so I half-heartedly set my alarm for 4:15 AM.
~I'm on the shuttle on time. It's one of those big tour buses. Thankfully there is a bathroom. However, the heater appears to be broken. I attempt sleep in a half frozen state and eventually give up and listen to the guy behind me snore. The scenery in the Adirondacks is beautiful, but this early in the morning it's too dark to see much.
~I am in first class on my flight and finally able to sleep after a couple of Baileys!
~I arrive in Portland to the rare winter storm which has shut down the city. After traveling all day, all the way across the continent, I am halted within 20 miles of my home and have to spend the night in an airport hotel room. The lesson learned - always pack an extra pair of underwear just in case you are stranded for an additional night. Thankfully I learned this lesson on a previous trip and I was well prepared.
~Screaming children run up and down the hotel hallways into the wee hours. The people in the room above me appear to weigh a lot and walk around the room dragging tree trunks or dead bodies, and/or jump on and off the bed, until midnight. Is this my destiny? Do these loud hotel people follow me around every time I travel somewhere? I swear I am not making this up.
~The next day dawns bright and early. My office is closed due to weather, which means I can spend most of the day getting from the airport to my house. I take the hotel shuttle to the airport, take the parking shuttle to my car, drive my car downtown and park it at work, wait for the bus for an hour and a half (temperature = 18 degrees, but note that it's really zero degrees with wind chill). I know my car won't make it up the ice covered hill to my house without chains, and the last time I left a car at the bottom of the hill and walked up, someone smashed into it. Thus I am leaving the car in the lot downtown. I would rather bus it and walk than deal with that hassle again.
~Buses are on "snow routes," which means they come sometimes, maybe, on occasion. I ride bus 51 which shares a stop with bus 15. Within 10 minutes, four (FOUR) #15 buses come and go. None carries more than a few people. Where is the 51? Can't someone simply reverse the damn digits and give me a 51 bus? I'm freakin' freezing out here! And hey, I have to pee, but I am not going to do that because if I do I know the bus will come while I'm in there.
~The 51 finally comes (I've been standing outside waiting for over an hour and oh by the way, I walked 10 blocks to the bus stop) (and 10 blocks may not sound like much to those of you with normal hips but for me it is about 9 too many), and today the bus is on "alternate route" status which means it goes everywhere it would on a normal day, except near my house, and so I realize it is going to drop me half a mile from my house vs. a few blocks away. I get on the damn bus anyway because what else am I going to do?
~I realize that I am not supposed to walk, much less on ice in subzero temperatures, for half a mile. Oops. Oh yeah, I'm disabled. Forgot about that. And did I mention I never had time to get the cane fixed? It's going to be pretty useless.
~Bus drops me off, I walk the half mile (very slowly) ... the standing in the cold waiting for the bus made my hips hurt, but the walking on ice is making them REALLY hurt. I am almost home, but then ...
~I live on a narrow winding steep two-way road which is only about one car width wide. We call it the Goat Trail. I realize I may have to slide on my butt down the iced over goat trail to get home. Luckily I am able to remain vertical, but it takes a very long time to negotiate the icy slope.
~I arrive home to a roaring fire and needless to say, run for the bathroom. It takes about 2 hours to thaw out.
~Next trip: Cleveland in January, oh joy. Another icy cold adventure awaits, but at least I know I'm up to the challenge.
~There's no place like home!

P.S. - I would like to write about my ongoing adventures with that marvel of modern machinery, the automatically flushing toilet, which is available in fine airports all across America, but that will have to wait for another day. It's a topic I've wanted to write about for a long, long time, so stay tuned. It's bound to be a very special post, and just in time for the holidays.

It's official ...

I'm depressed.

I met with a counselor from my employer’s EAP on Monday. She told me that I am “grieving,” that my response is normal, and that it is going to take a long time to come to terms with things, accept them, and transition to my new life circumstances. I have been going through all the classic phases of grief – anger, denial, bargaining, depression, bitchiness, crankiness, sarcasm, uncontrolled swearing, and whininess. OK, see, I still have my sense of humor. Kind of.

It was good to have a professional validate my feelings. It’s OK for me to feel crappy. If anyone tells me that “it will be all right” or “other people have it much worse than I do,” I have a right to slap them silly and walk away. I know other people have it much worse than I do. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have a right to feel pissed off about my own rather crappy situation.

Throwing fuel on the fire, I’ve been in contact with my surgeon’s office trying to understand WHY Aetna doesn’t cover PAO. They have not given me a very good reason and I need to understand so I can take action. In typical condescending doctor’s office speak, they told me to butt out and let them handle it. They also told me, in exactly these words, that I am “not the only patient feeling the financial pressures.” Duh. My response was that I am operating on the concept of "you have to look out for yourself and your own health care because nobody else will." It’s not that I don’t want to help all of the other people feeling the financial pressures out there, but right now I can only fight for myself. It's called the survival instinct.

So who out there is curious about why Aetna denies PAOs? It’s not what you think. No, it's not that they can't spell "dysplasia." It’s not that they don’t like people who walk funny. It’s not even that there haven’t been enough research studies done. No, according to what I’m hearing, it’s because there is no procedure code for this operation. Doctors bill it using the code 27299, which means “unlisted procedure.” And, seeing that it’s "unlisted," Aetna promptly denies it.

What? Are you kidding me? This has to be the most asinine thing I have ever heard. Does this mean they don’t even read the file to find out what was done? They see that something “unlisted” was done and they just say NO? Please, give me a break. Based on all of the hip women I know, quite a few of these procedures are being done. Can’t the insurers and doctors, ahem, let’s see, I need to think really hard about this because I’m not as smart as they are… can’t they just CREATE A CODE????

WAIT, I know, maybe it’s a computer programming issue. Maybe the computers need the codes to be 5 digits, and all of the digits between 00000 and 99999 have already been assigned. That must be it. We’re out of codes! There are no more! So, medical scientists, you might as well stop doing any research or coming up with new operations and procedures, because when it comes to coding them you are SOL.

Of course I don’t really think that’s the issue, but I can’t comprehend what the issue might actually be. Someone help me out here. How fucking difficult can it be to create a 5-digit number?

The doctor’s office also told me that they won’t schedule any more surgeries until they either have authorization in hand from the insurance company OR the patient signs an agreement up front promising to pay cash for the surgery (at the bargain cash price of $70,000 for each hip). I told them to keep my July date and that yes, I’d pay cash if I had to. Send me the agreement and I'll sign it.

OK, so after this news, I decided it was time for the icing on the cake of my day … looking at my retirement funds and figuring out if I have enough money to pay for this. My retirement funds have taken a huge hit. I guess that should not be news to anyone reading this since I've recently discovered that "I am not the only one feeling the financial pressures." Could the timing for this be any worse? We're in the middle of the worst recession since perhaps the great depression and I need to sell investments?

All three of my retirement vehicles are down, way down, but the good news is that if I cash out right now, the funds I have accumulated as a result of the last 25 years of living frugally so that I can fully fund my retirement will be enough to pay for two surgeries, with a little left over to buy some new underwear. My life savings can get me my PAO. And, by July of next year, who knows, the market may go up!! Or, it may go down and I'll have to forego the underwear!! I have no idea!!

Just when I thought the day could not get any worse, I talked to H.R. at my employer about the logistics for taking a hardship withdrawal from my 401(k). I explained the situation. I told them that I was not pleased with our medical plan's policies. Here, verbatim for your amusement, is their reply.

“Terri:
I'm so sorry---it sounds like a difficult time. {EDITOR'S NOTE: NO KIDDING}
It's true medical plans do not cover all services. The good news is that according to our benchmark surveys, most employers have increased deductibles, premiums and co-pays this year. Our plans have none of these changes this year. While the plans won't cover everything, we're working hard to help you maintain the best coverage possible.”

What, medical plans do not cover all services? No Shit. It’s not like I’m asking them to pay for botox injections, for crying out loud. This is a real surgery, for a real condition, causing real pain and disability. It is not elective. It is not experimental. It is not optional for me.

But thanks guys, thanks for the great news! I’ll sleep so much better at night knowing that my deductibles, premiums and co-pays will not be increasing this year, even though the plan won’t cover everything … in fact, the plan won’t cover ANYTHING that I need, but at least it won't cost me more. And best of all, I GET THE BEST COVERAGE POSSIBLE. Yee haw! Party time! Pardon me while I PUKE and SCREAM and CRY and SWEAR.

It’s all part of that grieving process I’m going through.

The Big Betrayal

I sometimes feel betrayed by my body. All these years I’ve taken pretty good care of it. I’ve been lucky to have had very good health all my life. I don’t smoke, rarely drink, don’t overdo the caffeine even though I live in Starbucks Land, eat right, and exercise. I am the type of person my insurance company loves – no claims, just the yearly wellness stuff, and meanwhile I subsidize everyone else’s bad health habits. Until now, when we find out that hey, I’m all broken! I have to be taken apart and put back together again in order to work right!

I did pilates a couple of years ago to become more flexible. My back was pretty flexible and my upper body can do interesting things, but no matter how much stretching or strengthening I did, my bones wouldn’t change their shape, and so my lower body was as inflexible as a piece of wood. It was so totally frustrating. My pilates teacher, Angela, is a skater and I had private lessons with her. I stretched at home every night. She was patient and tried everything with me. I eventually just gave up in frustration.

I’ve started using the cane more and more, and will soon get crutches. Not that I really need crutches yet (although the cane has been helpful). But I want to learn how to use assistive devices now, while I’m still pretty mobile, and not in the hospital the morning after surgery when I’m wandering around in a drug-induced fog with my butt cheeks hanging out of my gown. It also may help to keep some pressure off the joints before I go under the knife.

I wrote an e-mail to my co-workers explaining what was going on so they wouldn’t be appalled to see me with a cane at work on a regular basis. I showed up at the rink with the cane for the first time just so everyone could stare at me without feeling badly about it and get used to the idea.

People ask questions once they get over the shock. I know they all mean well, but after a while I just want to wear a t-shirt or carry a sign, or maybe just hand everyone an FAQ sheet:

~No, I didn’t fall down and hurt myself. Boy, do I wish that’s all it was!
~No, I’m not “injured” – my body was put together wrong.
~What happened? Well, actually, nothing “happened,” I was born this way.
~Thank you for saying you hope I get better soon, but I won’t get better, I’ll only get worse until surgery fixes me.

Carrying things while using a cane is difficult. I have a purse which is really a backpack and I dug it out and it works great! I think crutches will be really, really super-specially fun. Being on them may cure me of my daily latte habit since I see no way to carry a hot cup of espresso in the backpack while on crutches. My husband, who is very handy, will probably rig something up to make this possible. Although I suppose I don’t really need the crutches to cross the street and get coffee. After all, I can still walk on my own for now.

I wrote this in an e-mail today to Angela:
"It has been an enlightening journey to find out just how badly put together my body is, but it explains so many things about my inabilities and physical challenges throughout my life. It's good to know it's not just that I'm lazy, or that my muscles are tight, or that it's all in my head. It's a relief to have a reason now."