I was concerned about that -- and with three days in the hospital, including an MRI, it would have been many thousands -- but I never got a bill. I don't know whether it was because my insurance was Medicare (which I'd heard will deny payment for AMA), or because the hospital was guilty of malpractice by not just recommending, but really twisting my arm to have a gall bladder removal when their tests showed I had no gall stones.Adama wrote: ↑December 29th, 2017, 6:02 pmI don't mean to pry, and feel free to ignore this question if you like. I've always heard that if you leave AMA that you have to pay the bill yourself, as the insurance company takes this as a loophole to escape reimbursement. Did they try to make you pay for leaving AMA?gsjackson wrote: ↑December 29th, 2017, 4:14 amI guess their drugs nearly killed me. Last year I had a partial knee replacement, and there apparently was nerve damage that would wake me up after an hour. So I got a prescription from the doctor for hydrocodone, and would take it after I woke up to get back to sleep. Four weeks later I'm in the hospital with acute pancreatitis, with what the emergency room nurse said were the highest readings she had ever seen for that sometimes fatal condition.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the drugs caused the condition, but not only wouldn't the doctors entertain that possibility, they twisted my arm to let them take out my gall bladder. They got off of that pretty quickly when a counselor type who came in found out I was a lawyer. Only after leaving the hospital "against medical advice" did I find out from my GP that their own tests showed I had no gallstones.
Scary stuff. Good thing to know, though, that I won't be getting addicted to opioids, since they nearly killed me in just a few weeks.
How is your nerve pain now?
Was the counselor one of those social workers?
I wonder, if when you tried to connect the condition with the pain killer, if they began their sentence with, "According to the scientific literature there are no cases like this..."
The dingbat female osteopath who was the case manager had actually showed me a photo on her phone of something circular with lots of dots in it and clearly implied that it was the ultrasound x-ray of my gall bladder, replete with multiple gall stones. She wouldn't release me when I felt fine because "we haven't figured out the cause yet." Well, I had. I had taken more prescription drugs in the previous six weeks because of the knee surgery than I had in the entire rest of my life.
The nerve pain went away shortly after that. There's sill some numbness in the knee, and the surgeon obviously damaged a nerve, but overall I'm very happy with the outcome. Switching out defective body parts is one thing western medicine does very well, and is a blessing. I had premature arthritis in the knee and a hip because of old sports injuries, and I would be living as a cripple today were it not for these procedures.
I guess the counselor type was some sort of social worker. Not sure.
If they didn't use those actual words about "the literature," and at least one doctor did, that was the clear implication of their responses to my hypothesis about the drugs being the cause. Referencing studies paid for by drug companies, no doubt. I suppose they have to build a rock solid liability fortress around these drugs, because think of the malpractice can of worms it would open if the profession started admitting to some of the side effects.