Community Chat

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After suffering from excruciating back pain in both lobes since Sunday, I had to go to the nearest emergency room and after four hours (most of which they had difficult getting an IV port in and could not find a spot to draw blood--they finally had to get someone from the anesthesiology department to come and do it) they told me I had pnuemonia. Second time in 22 months.

This hospital told me I would have to stay in the hospital 4-5 days, because I needed antibiotics by IV and that is why I could not go home. For reasons I won't get into here, I wanted to go to a different hospital about ten minutes away. We will have to pay for that ambulance call--$1,000-$1,500. Got there about 7:15 p.m. last night and was immediately and continually given care, seen by three doctors, and was dismissed this afternoon at 2:30. Not there even 24 hours! I am so upset. If I knew I would have been in the hospital for one day, I would have stayed at the first hospital, but not for four to five days. The "city" hospital was surprised that I made such good progress.

Just wanted to vent and share my last few days. Now, on to doctor appointments which will probably include a brochiascope (??????) where they have to lightly sedate you and put a scope down your bronchial tube to find out what's going on.

I asked if this could be done since I was already at the hospital. Guess what? Insurance won't pay for a procedure to be done in the hospital that can be done on an outpatient basis. In fact, the resident who talked to me about this said that they could get in trouble for doing that, it would be reported, and the insurance would not pay. Crazy, mixed up health care rules. So, I'll go back to the "city" hospital in a short time to have the procedure done.