The final installment (see below for the first two)

Ok, so Wednesday (yesterday) I had an appointment for a CT scan at 7:15 and then an appointment with an OBGYN at 11:20. I get a call Tuesday night that they have to reschedule my CT. Now, the meds I am on make me irritable, to put it mildly. So I pretty much told this girl there was no way on earth she was going to reschedule on me. I mean, I had to spend the night at my mom's and my sister had to take James, and the OBGYN wanted the results of the test. She tells me the reason it has to be rescheduled is because they have not received authoriztion from my doctor. I don't see how that is possible since it is my doctor's nurse who made the appointment in the first place. She tells me to contact the doc's office. I do, and the nurse promises me that she faxed the info to Humana, our health insurance. I spend the next half hour on the phone with Humana in which they promise me that it will be processed before my 7:15 appointment (I am going to be honest, I don't know if it has been processed even now). I get back with the hospital and tell her this so she doesn't cancel my appointment. She warns me that I might have to pay for the CT if they don't get the authorization. Lovely. Now, Lakeview has this annoying policy that you have to pay for your portion of the bill before the test is performed (funny, that wasn't a problem when they did the CT, MRI and EEG when I was admitted into the ER). So, I am told that my portion is $940, and I should bring that to the test. WHAT?! Who has $940 sitting around to just bring with them to the hospital, and where did that number come from any way? How can they guess at how much my insurance is going to pay? I tell her no way. She says the best she can do then is if I make a $300 deposit, she can bill me $100 a month after that. Fine, whatever, hopefully by then my insurance company will be processing it and they will see that I shouldn't owe more than the $300 any way (or possibly less). I call Humana and ask about all of this. They say that if it is the hospitals practice to bill that way, there isn't anything they can do. I try to argue that surely we have met our deductible by now with two ERs, an EEG, a MRI, a CT and two specialists. He tells me I am $200 and something short. This is ridiculous!

Wednesday morning I get to wake up at 5:45 in the morning so that I can start drinking my radioactive milkshake that tastes like citrus flavored chalk. I comment to my mom that it seems silly that I am drinking the shake because I don't see how it will get to my ovary, but I don't think much of it. It was disgusting by the way.

We beat the tech who did the test to the hospital. He showed up with his running shoes in one hand. And by this point I am starting to feel violently ill. This continued throughout the day as I rid my body of the radioactive milkshake, turns out it isn't the halflife of the stuff I should have been worried about, but rather its expulsion. I get through the test, including the iodine through the IV, and I think all is well.

We go to the OBGYN where he informs us that they did the wrong test. WHAT?!!! I am having visions of going on a killing spree. I WILL NOT DO THAT AGAIN!! I mean, they still can't decide if they are going to pay for it, and now I get a second one! Someone is going to die for this! Any way, he does the exam and says the cyst, on my right side (which I am still really confused about because it is my back on the left that hurts, but that is a whole other post) is ugly and he is going to have to take it out and check stuff out while he is in there. He might have to take the ovary oh and I might have endometriosis too. Go schedule the surgery.

I am not going to lie, by this point I am almost in tears and spitting mad. The OBGYN's office is in the same building (right across from each other actually) from my primary care physician's office. My mom says she will schedule the surgery and I go directly to my doctor's receptionist. The conversation goes something like this:
"I need to see either Dr ____ or his nurse. NOW!!!!"
"They're both with patients right now."
"I DON'T CARE."
"Um, I can schedule you an appointment."
"LOOK, I was just given the wrong test and I want to know what is going on. GO AND GET ONE OF THEM, NOW."
Girl disappears for a while. She is gone a long time and I think I have scared her off.
My doctor's nurse appears at the door and leads me back. She turns the computer screen to me and points at the test. "This is what I ordered a CT of the pelvis and abdomen."
"I believe you, but they are saying only my abdomen was scanned."
Let me note here that I have the BEST primary care physician in the world. He is a really caring and great guy and I knew that it was not him or his nurse that were at fault, but I didn't know what to do.

This part gets really long, so I will try to condense. I have blood drawn while we wait for the doc to clear out his patients and he comes in and talks to us for like forever (again, he is a great guy, I wasn't even on his schedule). He does a brief exam on me. He tells me he is going to make Lakeview pay for the CT but that I really need to get the surgery scheduled.

I go out to schedule the surgery, and it is another nightmare. I can't seem to find a hospital that the OBGYN is connected to that takes my insurance. We finally get everything worked out and go home. I think we were there like three hours or something.

I get a call from my primary care's nurse. She tells me I am going to be getting a call from the director of radiology at the hospital and he will be scheduling a free CT of my pelvis for me. She has spent a half hour on the phone chewing them out. I don't want a free CT scan of my pelvis, and I tell her I don't see the point of it since I am just having surgery any way. She talks to the doc and he says he still wants it. I can't believe I am going to have to do it all again!

The director of radiology calls and says that they did my pelvis too. They just didn't fax the whole report the first time. They faxed it a second time when they realized it. Oh my gosh! The stupidity!!!! At least I don't have to have another CT scan. But I am not going to lie, I am quite worried about having surgery. Can this bad luck continue?

Do you remember the cartoons where there was a little black rain cloud hovering over just one of the characters? I feel like that right now.