For those of you who missed the latest and greatest, I tested positive for the BRCA-1 gene mutation, which means my ovaries need to come out (next week), which means I had to go for my pre-admission testing this week, which means another round of blood work, an EKG and a chest x-ray.
Now before I rant, let me just say, my medical care to this point has been superb. There have been some stupid inconveniences along the way, but I really didn’t care, to distracted to think about them or worry – I had bigger fish to fry. But now that it appears I am going to be involved with this process for a good, long time, little, stupid inconveniences are starting to irritate me and in the last 24 hours, I’ve experienced a few. But let’s start with the chest x-ray.
How much do you think one costs? I don’t know because, luckily, I have decent insurance, and I have yet to see a bill (though a friend told me she just received a hospital bill for an ER visit from three years ago! That leaves me a bit afraid – three years from now, who wants to get billed for stuff happening now – there should be a statute of limitations on bills but I digress…). I ask because today they wanted me to have a chest x-ray as part of the standard pre-op tests. My problem with that is I had one in November (November 30th to be precise), so isn’t that one still good? Not to mention, between that x-ray, my mammo yesterday and my MRI tomorrow, how much of this stuff do I really want to be exposed to (can’t long-term exposure cause cancer? Ironic, no?).
So when we were filling out my paperwork (another little bugaboo from yesterday – but I’ll save that rant for another time), I asked the admitting person, Gina, if they could just use my x-ray from November. She said she didn’t know how long they were good for but would mention it to the nurse.
She didn’t.
But I did – I’m getting to the point now where I’m more coherent (not facing imminent battle with breast cancer and not pumped full of poisonous chemicals will do that for you), so I’m asking more questions. The tech said she thought they were good for a year and would check.
And you know what, they are good for a year. But here’s my point, if I hadn’t asked, they would have done another x-ray anyway. They have my records! There right there in the computer! Couldn’t (shouldn’t) they have just seen that? Needless to say, I didn’t have the x-ray – wonder how much that saved the hospital, insurance company and me?
Now, should I tell about the stupid urine sample???
Okay – all I’m saying on that is, if you know someone has to give a urine sample, maybe it would be good to tell them that ahead of time, especially when they’re fasting, so they don’t go before they leave the house. No what I mean?
Tune in tomorrow for the crappy (hmm….) prep I have to do before this surgery.