10/06/2010

My New Disease Stumble Upon Digg It! Add to Delicious Add to Technorati

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The last few years, for the most part, been crap.  At least medically.  I'm not even going to link back to the numerous post about Doctors, MRI's, deadly migraines and exploding ovaries...so, let's just all agree that over all I've spent more time with Doctors than I have with my best friend.  And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that she fell is love and got married and is still in that blissful first year of marriage where pee on the toilet seat is cute.

I'm sure we'll start hanging out again in about a year.

Anyway, I'm a firm believer in being my own advocate.  And even though I saw a slew of doctors - the truth was - none of them REALLY knew why my brain was exploding.  So, I continued to see different doctors until the pain stopped - or until on of them could give me a logical reason as to why it was happening.  Funny thing happens when you see a lot of doctors.

1.  You get a lot of different drugs.
2.  You get a lot of bills for said drugs.  And apparently the health insurance company gets those bills too.

I will start off by saying I AM grateful I have health insurance. Very grateful.  Even if I am baffled by the fact that they won't pay for 'alternative treatments' (acupuncture or massage therapy) but they will pay for me to have Botox injected into my neck.  But all things being equal - I'm grateful that they are paying a portion of the medical bills.

At least until I started getting what I can only describe as Health Insurance Junk Mail.  Apparently they have taken all of my claims for the last TWO years and diagnosed me.  With Fibromyalgia.   And because they were so smart and diagnosed me all on their own - they put it on my ever so official Health Insurance Chart. This patient has Fibromyalgia.

Health Insurance Nurse:  "Hey! I have a great idea! Let's put her on EVERY SINGLE MAILING LIST there is for people with Fibromyalgia.  Even though she has no idea what that even is...or even how to pronounce it correctly"

Health Insurance Nurse 2:  "Hell Yea!"

Then began six months of going to mail box and going "What the shit is this?" and throwing it away.  My health insurance company is partly to blame for the lack of oxygen because of all the paper in my mailbox. I finally caught on to what was going on and called them.

Me:  Hi Insurance People.  Do you think I have Fibromyalgia?
Insurance:  Yes. Yes we do.  We pieced it together from all of these claims.  We are very smart.
Me:  I don't have Fibromyalgia.  Has an actual DOCTOR said that I have this?
Insurance:  No. Not at all. Like we said. We are very smart.  We figured it out ourselves.
Me:  Well, I actually find all of this kind of condescending. I don't have Fibromyalgia. And you sending me pamphlets of how better to manage my disease just pisses me off.  So stop.  Unless you can diagnose the feeling of my brain trying to push it's way through my eye ball.  Feel free to send me literature on that.

I did manage to ask before I got off the phone if massage therapy is covered yet.  It isn't.