I am in hold music hell trying to deal with medical coverage fuck ups. Send help.

They disconnected me after 20 minutes on hold!

Rat bastards!

Sophia, I'm so glad that I have helped inspire you in some way! I hope your grad school journey turns out to be what you hope—or more! And best wishes for the inspection. I can't wait for it to be behind you.

Laura, I'm so sorry for your loss. That's so much to deal with at once. Lots of love to your family.

Still waiting on the central line and the biopsy. But the urologist came by this morning and said they want to do the kidney stone extraction procedure tomorrow so that my kidney function is at a hundred percent when I start chemo. I totally get the logic, but all I could think was motherFORKER! Let's just do it all!

I made them give me the direct number before they transferred me this time, but I'm on hold again.

We've got about $8000 worth of medical bills staring at us right now (and we met our 5K in-network deductible early in the year).

$2500 is for a BLOOD TEST to see the level of Christopher's medication in his body. Only one lab does this test. We were told that we'd eventually only owe about $75.00. So far, the insurance has written off $250.

We then have an explanation of benefits related to anesthesia for my son's surgery. They're rejecting because it was out-of-network. I don't know if the in-network hospital used an out-of-network anesthesiologist or what.

We used an in-network surgeon at an in-network hospital.

We're waiting 'til the bill comes in to see what's what. I keep trying to put it in the backroom of my mind, but it sneaks out every couple of days.

We will not be paying that bill, even if it comes down to: "Remember how y'all almost killed my kid by giving him way too much blood thinner for two days straight? Yeah. You should probably find a way to make this bill disappear."

The health care situation in this country is so enraging. Complete insanity.

It really, really is.

My last day at my company is tomorrow! Seven years, five of which were great, two of which sucked beyond all telling. I will miss my team so much, but I am ready for the change.

I want a few months sabbatical but also want to strike while the iron is hot, so am flying to NY next week for a job interview...

Interview~ma, javachik. May you get a great offer with a start date far enough off to enjoy some time to relax before jumping into the fray again.

Oh wow, java! That's big! Would the job be in NY, or remote? I hope you get to enjoy a few months of sabbatical. I'm back at work, but still getting my accesses and stuff fixed, I expect to find a lot of issues in the next few weeks. Am back on an old project, but hopefully not a bad one (I mean, it wasn't, at the time, but it's been through a few different hands now, so who knows....)

Cindy, that's horrible. Such BS, especially the out of network anesthesiologist (I was worried, when I had my surgery, that something like that would happen, but I had no ability at the time to figure that shit out or ask questions or god forbid change hospitals to try to avoid it or something--and my impression is that usually they can't/won't tell you ahead of time, anyway! Insurance in this country is so incredibly fucked up)