Thursday, July 1, 2010

Update on Harvey...

I'm reading a book called The Chamber by John Grisham. It's about a man on death row facing the gas chamber and I spoke with Harvey this morning. I'm not sure who's more scared, but probably Harvey, ten to one. Harvey's open heart surgery was postponed until further notice, as his situation turned out not to be as life threatening as others that popped up, but too severe to allow to discharge and have him drop dead while on the hospital's liability. His doctor explained that some more severe cardiac patients bumped him and he doesn't work weekends. Here's the tricky part. Harvey's health insurance is good until 6/30/10, yesterday and as of today, he's on Cigna. Different doctors and different hospitals. Should be interesting what happens when the dust clears.

I was covered, or should I say uncovered by Cigna, when I suffered my surgery. While I was eligible for intensive care, things were fine. As soon as I was qualified to go to a plain room, they wrestled me out of my bed in the middle of the night, literally at 2 AM and took me by ambulance to a hospital that was cheaper. How absurd! I begged them to wait until morning so my son wouldn't come to the hospital and see an empty bed and think I'd died, but Cigna had pulled the dollar plug on me.

Harvey seemed pleased to hear from me. He asked questions that doctors can't answer, like, Did it hurt? I told him the truth. I don't remember EVER being in pain. They kept me sedated to the point that I felt great and stoned all of the time. I, for one, knows that Harvey enjoys that feeling and has voluntarily put himself in that condition many times. That made him laugh! He was worried about not surviving the surgery, but his doctor told him there was only a 2% death rate on heart surgery these days. Hell, that's better than my chances of making it out of the dentist's office in about 30 minutes, OY!

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