My Motorcycle Injuries

I received another bill from the orthopedic hand surgeon that I recently visited. I went to him for help with my hand, but in the end he told me that there isn't anything that can be done to improve things for me. I thought that I was done with this, but now it continues with the billing process associated with the time that I spent with this surgeon. First visit: fifteen minutes, second visit: five minutes. I have health insurance, but the things that weren't covered by my insurance policy were billed to me. This physician's billing process is so convoluted that I was charged a copay for each visit, but the copays were applied to other charges. Consequently, I have just received a second bill for one charge that they have me paying in small increments as their computer program continues to spew out a balance. I've called a couple of times and it seems that this last bill will be, well, the last bill.  It doesn't help that this is the time of year when I have to go ...

Although I’m feeling relatively OK, the past few weeks have been a little less than ideal concerning the things related to my accident injuries. I’ve been sleepless and tired the past weeks, and some days I hit periods of time when it feels as though I’ve got nothing left to give. It’s not that I'm running out of gas, but rather that I feel as though the equipment has nothing left to give…as if the different parts are just too worn down. Then, a couple of weeks ago I had an appointment with a neurologist, having been referred to her by an orthopedic hand specialist a few weeks before. The neurologist said that she didn’t see anything significantly wrong with most of the nerves in my hand. Considering the degree of discomfort and pain that I experience daily with my hand, it was a little odd to hear that there’s not a lot wrong with it neurologically. The problem is that the orthopedic surgeon will be basing his ability to help me, in part, on her report. I have an appointment wit...

I wrote in my last blog entry (see here) that I was thinking of going to an orthopedic hand specialist some time in the future with an eye toward having some type of procedure done at the beginning of next summer. I wrote that I wasn't really certain as to whether or not I would actually pull the trigger on that game plan. Well, I've pretty much emptied the cartridge. I actually made an appointment with a local and reputable surgeon for this coming Monday. I filled out all of the online paperwork today and paid the deductible required for the visit. In a sense I can't believe that I've done this, but in another sense I find myself hoping that this guy can actually work his medical voodoo and make things better for me with a hand/wrist that has been a source of irritation for almost eight years now. It's just that I really hate going to doctors, and filling out all of the info on his questionnaire today was irritating enough without even stepping into his office.  I...

If you spend some time reading through this blog, you’ll find that I am very much against medical things. You know...like surgeons, hospitals, drugs, cotton swabs, whatever. I can’t stand any of it. Sitting in a waiting room is a drag, but making it into the examination room is even worse. Pain relief pills? Save them for an arts and crafts project. My absolute dislike of anything having to do with the medical profession is what makes the topic of this blog entry so odd. The thing is that I've been thinking of seeing a hand specialist a couple of months into the coming new year because my hand has been such a mess between the nerve damage and tendon problems. I had planned (tentatively and hesitantly) to go at the start of the year because any potential surgery would have to take place within an eight week window of time in the summer. I take care of my niece throughout the year but I get a break from my childcare duties in the summer. I figured that occupational therapy would foll...

My body continues to play tricks with me. For about a week and a half my hand was feeling some fairly intense sensations from all of the nerve damage. It varied from “pins and needles” type of stuff to some pretty uncomfortable pain. If that weren’t enough, I seem to be developing a trigger finger (stenosing tenosynovitis) with my index finger. Yeah, fun. I started to feel it about a month ago, but it’s gotten worse within the last two weeks. My original orthopedic surgeon had told me long ago that he did some work with a tendon (or tendons, I can’t remember which) during the original surgery in the hospital. Now it seems that something has gone wrong with a tendon in that same area of my hand. It doesn’t really hurt right now, but I know that it will get to a point where it's a hindrance to me. I know this because I had a trigger finger on the same hand's middle finger when I was younger and I wound up needing corrective surgery to get it fixed. At present time it isn’t worth ...

Can I just start this post by stating that I feel really beat up and tired? Thanks. Between taking care of my 8 month old niece for over 9 hours a day on weekdays, doing some necessary landscaping at my house (when your wife mentions it from time to time for a few years, it becomes necessary), and the general condition of my post-accident body…yeah, I’m tired. The thing is that I can never be certain that it’s just the accident injuries and the ensuing diabetes that’s killing me so slowly. The accident occurred just about a month shy of 6 years ago. I was fifty years old then. That’s somewhere between the middle age to early-bird-special age brackets, right? I’m now 56. I mean, that’s like 9 in dog years, know what I’m sayin’?   So…I’m left wondering if some of my problems are age related as opposed to accident injury related. I just know that my wrist, hand, knee, shin, and hip hurt more than the rest of my body. By coincidence, those are some of the areas hurt when my bike ate th...