Ouch!

So, in living a life of luxury I am dismayed to discover that sitting on my fat duffer reading novels and eating bonbons is just as bad for my back as is lifting big bags of, er, ah, soil additives for a living. Who knew?

A month ago I was in agony. When the pain started creeping back, I tried exercising - owie and then I tried resting - still owie. So, it was off to Urgent Care with me this morning. They were awesome!

The wait wasn't that long, everyone was nice and they (!) actually tried to help me. Dr. Daub took my discomfort seriously and offered some solutions. He sent me off with prescriptions for pain, muscle relaxers and anti-inflamatories. If it's not okay by Monday, there may be some physical therapy involved. I think that's probably a nice way of saying that they'll get me to exercise if I continue to be too lazy on my own.

So, here's where the story begins to pick up a bit. I go to get the prescriptions filled. After twiddling my thumbs for an hour and popping a few more Advil tablets, I return to pick up the delightful vials of happiness.

They would only fill 2 of the prescriptions & not the anti-inflamatory. Even though the Dr. wrote out the prescriptions and they filled the others, our insurance apparently requires him to call in on this particular med. I called the Urgent Care office and poor Dr. Daub will call in at some point when he gets a minute. I am sure that he's ever so grateful to Harvard Pilgrim for this extra protection (whatever).

I was so irate that I asked the pharmacist to give me a call when it's filled and just came home to wait. I was about to take one of the pain killers and then read that I should not drive on it. So, that means that I am to wait on a prescription that might go through who-knows-when? Screw that - I took the pain killer.

Curt, as usual, was my saviour. He called our provider to inquire about how we should proceed. The poor gal that they have answering had to inform him that it's policy (even though you'd have thought the hold-up might be the muscle relaxers rather than the anti-inflamatory?).

Not only that, but it's also the providers' policy to take a couple of days processing after the Dr. actually does call in. When he asked who he could speak with about such a crap policy (of course he said it much nicer), she offered to find out and call us back. So, now we can wait and hope that someone else will call us back.

My back hurts and I actually went to the doctor for it (usually of the grin and bear it attitude). The doctor actually spent time with me figuring out what was going on and doing tests to rule out other, more serious possibilities. You would think that it would all be straight forward enough. I must say, if I were a physician in this position I'd be mightily offended by the ins. company questioning my suggested treatment.

Of course, my situation is not really that big of a deal. It's not like I am suffering from a stroke or cancer or anything. I wonder if the ins. companies are so bold towards those people who are that unwell?
One of the main incentives for Curt to work full time (and thus forfeit so much of his own happiness and health) is to cover our health insurance so that if we are unwell, we don't have to suffer bankruptcy, losing our home, etc. Of course, if the 'provider' doesn't provide or doesn't provide everything one understands that they will, then what's the point?

There are other countries that have government run health care programs. We are hearing the pros and cons of that all the time. Recently we watched an episode of Frontline 'Sick Around the World' with T.R. Reid. While there were many faults to be found in most of the other systems, there was one thing that really stuck with me. In each place he asked if they knew of anyone going bankrupt because of health care costs. No one had heard of anything like that.