Four Tiny Incisions

[kaasirpent]

  by  scjody 

This entry is part 8 in an ongoing series of semi-irregular posts detailing my frustration with Workers Compensation and the wonderful world of rotator cuff surgery. In case you haven't been keeping up: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 (YOU ARE HERE) | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11

Note: I apologize for the length of this entry. I used an <lj-cut> for a good portion of it, for those browsing your friends list.

Disclaimer: That picture is not of my shoulder, but it's the closest one I could find on Flickr with Creative Commons licensing. It's remarkable how little external evidence there is of the amount of disruption below the skin. :)

So, after the last entry, which was posted on March 13, 2014, I was waiting for Some Woman at Some Company to get back to me about the results of the MRI, which my doctor recommended be surgery.

I'm not where I can get at my copious records at the moment, but it was around the 26th of March when I received a letter from Some Company. A nurse practitioner I have never met had reviewed my case and determined that the surgery was, indeed, medically necessary. I'm leaving out all the phone calls it took to get Some Woman and Some Company talking to my doctor.

The letter said I had 60 days to get the surgery. I looked at the dates given as the window, and it was 3/17 to 5/17. Wait. It was the 26th. I checked the letter. It had been sent on the 25th. Which was after the 17th. I don't get why — at all — they back-dated the beginning of the sixty days. And I don't really much care, at this point.

I called the doctor and gave them the date range and we looked for a time within that range that suited not only both me and the doctor, but the hospital. My choices were 4/4 and 4/18. Since my boss and my team lead were both out on spring break vacation during the week of 4/4, I opted for 4/18. The time of the surgery was 1:00 pm.

I called Some Woman at Some Company and actually got her on the phone. I informed her of the date of the surgery and how long I intended to stay away from the office. She said, "Since you refused to give me your salary when we initially spoke" — I have to inject, here, that I didn't refuse so much as not have the information available at the time she asked — "I have no idea what level of compensation we can provide." I gave her my company's HR number and contact, and also asked HR to fax her the information. This was two weeks before the surgery.

I had to also call my company's insurance company — who covers short-term disability, among other things — and they agreed to cover me for FMLA.

I was set! I scheduled the time off, and was kind of amused by the little wrinkles that appeared around my boss's eyes when he realized I was going to be out at the same time as another guy, and we are the only two people who can cover one particular product. But I had a deadline, and I wanted this over with.

I had to go by the hospital a week before the surgery to get a pre-exam by the anesthesia department to determine what level of anesthesia I would need for the surgery. Before I left, they gave me a form to have my HR department fill out and fax to them. It conveniently had the fax number right there on the form. It was all about workers comp, and asked for things like my case number, my case representative, and that sort of thing. So they'd know who to bill.

I got to work the next day and gave that form to my HR rep, and she said she would fax it right away.

You can probably guess what's coming next. I wrote about it on Facebook while it was happening. Below/behind the cut (for those browsing on LJ) is what I wrote. Warning: Very foul language. I was upset. I don't apologize. I do not think I have ever in my life been as angry as I was on this day.

My shoulder surgery is tomorrow at 13:00. Last week on the 9th, I went to the hospital for a pre-surgical check-up. For billing purposes, they asked me to fill out a form with all the information on it for workers comp. I filled out the stuff I know and gave it to my HR department to fill out the rest and fax it.

They faxed the form to the number on the form.

Flash forward to just now.

I got a call from the hospital's billing department.

His opening question: "So, you don't have insurance?"

"Uh . . . yes, I have insurance, but this is a workers comp claim, so that doesn't apply."

"Oh. Well, we have no information on insurance at all."

After a brief panic and a lot of cursing which I'm sure the people in the surrounding three cubes enjoyed immensely, I checked with HR. They did, indeed, fax the information. But Mr. [NAME WITHHELD] didn't receive it. Apparently, no one did.

So I called the 'customer service' number on the form which was next to the fax number to see if I could find out where the fax actually went.

Now, I wasn't exactly calm, nor was I exactly yelling, but it was definitely something in between those two things. They have no record of the fax, and she checked the system.

The number of times she repeated things that I had just told her was right out of a comedy routine.

Me: My HR department faxed my billing information to you last week, and I just need to check to see what the status of that is. I got a call that it had not been received.

Her: Well, it does take a certain amount of time for those to be processed. Let me look you up . . .

[Several minutes of verifying who I am.]

Her: I see that we have no billing information for you. Oh, you refused to provide it at the time of the examination.

Me: No, I didn't have the information. That's what the form was for. For my HR department to get the information to you.

Her: I show that you just called a Mr. [NAME WITHHELD] in billing. You could have given the information to him. [Her tone of voice changed at this point, as though she suspected I was an idiot. Guess who the idiot is?]

Me: He called me. I don't have the information.

Her: Well, maybe you could give it to me, now, and I'll enter —

Me: I. DON'T. HAVE. THE. INFORMATION. That's why HR faxed it to you, last week. I just am trying to track down what happened.

[She gives me the same fax number that Mr. [NAME WITHHELD] gave me, and then proceeds to tell me all the information I need to give Mr. [NAME WITHHELD], and I'm looking at it as I write it down, and it's literally every blank on the form, in order, from top to bottom.]

Me: So . . . this is just everything that's on the form, right? I'm looking at the form.

Her: Yes, but I just want to make sure that you get us all the information. [That little tone is back. And she continues to read off all the blanks on the form.]

What all this bullshit boils down to is this: I was given a form by the billing department at the hospital for HR to fill out and fax. On the form is a fax number. But it's not the fax number that goes to the people where I'm having the surgery, but to a completely different branch of the same hospital.

Bitch (yes, it applies): Hm, the address we have for the procedure is [ADDRESS] on Meridian Mark . . . That must be your doctor's office. You should probably call him and get this straightened out.

I will note that the address on Meridian Mark is the same fucking hospital at which I'm having the surgery. It's literally a half mile up the street from where this fucking cunt is sitting! This tells me that they can't get their shit together enough to recognize the own goddamned addresses!

Can you tell I'm a tad fucking pissed off? Good.

So could she. She sounded hurt that I was now basically yelling. And I apologized (while still yelling) and said, "The surgery is tomorrow. That's why I am so goddamned upset. Now, I'm sorry if that upsets you, but why am I having to deal with this?"

I could almost hear her thinking, "Well, you should have given us the information when you were here last week," and I'm glad she didn't say it because I would be in jail by tonight for first-degree murder. And possibly torture.

Why on earth am I doomed to deal with people whose heads are so far up their own asses that they can see the light coming in through their mouth-hole when they flap their fucking gums? You literally cannot trust anyone to do their fucking job.

This entire goddamned thing has been a fucking nightmare. Why can't I get one competent person??????

There. See? They made me use multiple question marks. That's the level of apoplectic rage I'm in right now.

And now . . . I'm leaving the office for a while before I say something to someone that gets me reprimanded or worse. HR is bending over backwards to help me. I have nothing but good to say about them.

HR faxed another copy of the form. But I didn't verify Jack because I was too pissed off and didn't want to have to talk reasonably to anyone. I simply worked out the day and left. I went to the hospital the next day at the appointed time, and no one said anything, so I assume it was all straightened out.

It took the nurses five tries to get an IV into my arm, so that was fun. Once they did, I got a dose of Versed. The amnesia drug. They rolled me out of the pre-surgical exam room into the hallway and through a set of double doors . . . and that's where my memory stops. :)

I woke up some time later with an epic sore throat. I immediately started sucking down liquids. The nurses helped me get dressed with my arm heavily bandaged and in a sling. I got two prescriptions for the good pain medication (oxycodone, in two different doses for different levels of pain).

On day two, around 4:30 pm, while I was trying to keep my arm immobile as much as possible and doing not much other than sitting in my chair listening to podcasts, I got a call from . . . can you guess? Some Woman! "We never received any information about your salary, so we haven't been able to set up compensation."

Un. Be. Liev. A. Ble. I made her wait for fifteen minutes while I got my work laptop out and went through the laborious process of gaining access to the work system from home, all so I could access my pay records to give her my hourly pay rate, so she could calculate my compensation level. I don't know who dropped that particular ball. I sent email to HR explaining the situation, and then I logged out, and that's the last I've talked to anyone from work.

The rest of the story is kind of boring. I removed the outer bandages after two days (as instructed) because of the incessant, insanity-inducing itching. Quit using the sling on day four, because it was rubbing my hand raw. Removed the strips of tape covering the actual incisions after about six days, again because of the itching. There are four, tiny incisions on my shoulder, each about 3/16th of an inch long, and each closed with a single suture. Two of them are still red, but one has almost completely healed. The last one is in between.

And I've been improving daily. I'm finally able to wear real shoes and pants (getting the belt on is the hurdle).

I have my follow-up visit with the doctor who performed the surgery on the 6th, and at that point, he'll give me some direction as far as what I'm allowed to do (drive?) or not, and how much and how far I can push the usage of the joint. So stay tuned for part 9, hopefully without copious cursing and apoplectic rage. I could use a lot less of that in my life. And getting to the point where I never have to deal with Some Woman and Some Company again will go a long way toward making that a reality.