Want to read something outrageous? The No Fault insurer contacted ALL the surgical facilities in my area in advance to tell them that they would deny any claim for surgery performed on me, saying the surgery is 'not medically necessary.'
Of course I had the surgery anyway.
So what happens next is the claims will be submitted to the no fault insurer, and when they deny the claim it will go into arbitration, and they will have to pay anyway. All they've done is delay payment, and cost themselves more in fighting it. This is one of the many unjust reasons your insurance premiums are so high, not entirely because of bad drivers, but because insurance companies and the firms they hire to perform bogus 'independent' exams are allowed to spend great amounts of money to deny and arbitrate claims that they know they are supposed to pay. They know! And yet this is standard practice, which is costing you money and injured people in many cases their physical abilities or even livelihoods.
Naturally you ask yourself, why would they bother doing this when they know that the surgery is medically necessary and they will have to pay for it? The fact is, most of the time when an insurance company throws up obstacle after obstacle in front of an injured person, even though the injured person is right they will give up. For example, imagine if I, like most people, didn't have my own Disability insurance, I couldn't work, and I wasn't receiving even the inadequate amount of money that the insurer is obligated to pay for lost income (about $2,000/month)--which they haven't paid a dime of yet. Obviously I could not afford the time off work and therefore the surgery, and eventually I would maybe get a couple of thousand dollars out of them for pain and suffering, but no treatment. Further, if I didn't have my own property insurance, or know how to use it as I described in an earlier post, I wouldn't even have a bike to ride. In other words, I would have been disabled for life, and lost the ability to do something which is not only a normal activity for me, but dearly important to me as well.
That's what they do, to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people every year, who have been injured.
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OK, so now that we have that out of the way, a bit about this latest surgery and how it went.
The first surgery, on my left knee was done at Surgicare in Manhattan. The right knee surgery--which was the same surgery--was done at Manhattan Eye Ear and Throat (MEET), also in Manhattan. Both facilities are excellent, but I can do a little comparing for those of you who might be in the position of choosing one or the other.
Since this was my second time in less than six months having knee surgery, I went prepared. I brought a book, my iPod with a movie rental download, my glasses, mobile phone fully charged, and various other little comfort items which I was or would have been allowed to use while at Surgicare for the first surgery. This preparation was almost completely useless at MEET.
I arrived early, at about 5:45am, was done with the paperwork in a flash, then taken to a locker room to change into my surgery clothes. I was not allowed to take anything with me while I waited for surgery to begin, so the iPod and all were not worth bringing for pre-op. However, at Surgicare I had a lot of paperwork to do and quite a long wait compared to MEET where I only had to sign a few things (after reading them of course) and hardly waited at all. Even if I was allowed to bring my things, I wouldn't have had time to use them.
Honestly, I'm not sure which of the two experiences I liked better. Both were rather decent; MEET is a bit fancier of a hospital, but who really cares when you're not even awake most of the time. MEET has tiny TVs with streaming news, but without being allowed to bring my glasses to the waiting area I couldn't see them and the volume wasn't high enough to hear anyway. At Surgicare, I had a good amount of time before and after to mentally even out, lots of people came to talk to me, and though I had to fill out a lot of paper work it really wasn't bad at all. For the surgeons, I'm sure MEET is better, but for the patient it's a toss up.
By this time, my surgeons knew me, so when they came over to talk before the surgery it was more like were shooting the breeze. They said they never saw anyone with such huge, muscular legs as me. I told them it was really due to cycling all my life. I told them I had done a fresh cycling leg shave a couple of days before, so one less thing to do, and that I would be taking my new knees up Mount Fuji next year--which I genuinely plan to do.
OK, so all rather boring, and that's what I really want you to know. There is nothing to be scared of or nervous about. By the time you're getting prepped for surgery, you've been checked in every possible way to make sure you actually need the surgery and that you're healthy enough for it. All you have to do is relax. Your big job is going to be physical rehabilitation afterwards.
The anesthesiologist came, put a tube in my arm and the next thing I remember I was sitting up in the recovery room being asked if I wanted coffee or juice.
Then they asked me if I had any pain. I said I had a little so they gave me a Percocet. This was a mistake. A little while later I threw up. I had an empty stomach--hadn't eaten in over fourteen hours--so what was this yellowish stuff I asked. It was bile--which according to Wikipedia is "(ater (85%), bile salts (10%), mucus and pigments (3%), fats (1%), inorganic salts (0.7%) and cholesterin (0.3%)) which is produced by the liver." That "ater" part is basically cholesterol as I understand it.
My brother arrived around 1:30pm--a little later than the planned 1pm. At Surgicare they told us 1pm, that's when they woke me up, and my brother was sitting right next to me. At MEET they woke me up right after surgery at about 11:30am, and the expectation was that I had some poor soul waiting in the lobby since before dawn--so Surgicare wins on that point. MEET is a lot busier facility.
We went out front, flagged down a taxi, rode it home, deposited me on the sofa, chatted awhile before sending my brother off to the one pharmacy in my area that takes No Fault for prescriptions without me having to wait for them to get paid first, he came back, I gave him a bottle of Michael Collins whiskey--from the last independent whiskey maker in Ireland by the way--as a thank you, and he went home.
For the rest of the day, I attempted to eat and threw up absolutely anything that went down my throat, except for some homemade bread my landlord had made for my wife and me, with a bit of Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter. The next day I asked the doctor if it would be OK to take Pepto Bismol along with my medicine and he said OK--so long as it wasn't anything with other medicine in it. The Pepto Bismol saved me from throwing up after taking Percocet from then on.
And that's my story for now.
