General Politics Discussion (IX) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1492

did they yank it through your belly button?

 

Goddamn my insurance must suck. In October I had a 2 day hospital stay where I just had to get IV antibiotics for facial cellulitis and I ended up paying around $4500 out of pocket. Around the same mom paid out of pocket when she had a heart attack and had to get a stint put in.

 

Not sure, but I imagine so. That looks to be the incision that bled the most.

 

you probably have a very high deductible

 

yeah I had 3 incision and then 1 in my belly button. I was almost 100% after a week or so. Hopefully it doesn’t fuck up what you can eat.

 

Wouldn't it be nice if we all had zero medical bills

 

sorry it’s not possible, there just isn’t enough money out there sorry.

 

Yeah I hope so. I was also worried whether I made the right decision cause a lot of my symptoms weren’t “typical” for gallbladder problems (like fatty foods didn’t necessarily make things worse, my pain was actually more random than correlated to food in general). I didn’t get to talk to the surgeon after but she called my mom after since that’s who was picking me up and basically told her it wasn’t in good shape, so that made me feel better about it.

 

I had to get my gallbladder removed shortly after getting Lyme disease. I've heard something similar from other people. Seems like infections can just make your gallbladder go nuts.

 

Around 10 years ago my friend’s boyfriend had to get emergency gallbladder removal after a short period of intense stomach pain. At his worse, his eyes started to turn yellow (jaundice?) and she urged him to go to the ER. Turned out his gallbladder was filling up with bile. According to her, his diet was basically meat and potatoes, didn’t eat enough vegetables and fiber. He’s fine now but definitely made me realize how important the food you eat can turn on you.

 

My wife just had an ovarian cyst removed yesterday. They were like ok it's $3500 and we said sorry we can't pay that. Then they said how about 500 and we couldn't pay that either. We applied for financial assistance and when they saw how much was in our accounts they approved us and waived the whole thing

Fkin love my American healthcare

 

Always always always apply for charity care. At the worst you’ll get nothing at the best they’ll cover everything.

 

No. Nothing motivates me like potentially losing my savings in a freak accident. #riseandgrind

 

A few years ago I had emergency surgery to have my gallbladder removed. Went to the ER at 3AM, was in surgery by 7AM. For over six months, I was having intense pain in my abdomen and lower back but thought it was just my IBS. My gallbladder so inflamed it was three times the size and attached to my liver with part of it starting to decay.

I was not warned of the dietary and life changes needed after surgery.

 

I’ve been having massive episodes of pain where the gallbladder is located for years and for a while they got really really bad and very frequent but I never went and got it checked out because my insurance is trash and I wouldn’t be able to afford just a visit to figure it out let alone the surgery. The pain is absolutely unbearable though I wouldn’t wish it on anyway it actually lead me to relapse on fentanyl last fall because it was so bad for days on end I didn’t know any other way to deal. And now that I think about it that was also part of the catalyst of my relapse two years ago that lead to all the huge issues and near death experiences I had throughout 2020 and 2021 since it was early pandemic and I had no clue where to even begin getting it taken care of under the circumstances so yeah. As of late it hasn’t been as bad but I still get the pain from time to time, it just clears up faster than it uses and to. I know eventually it’s gonna come back with a vengeance though and instead of trying to use it as an excuse to get high again I need to just drag my sorry ass to the ER.

 

How did they figure out it needed to be removed?

 

Please get this checked out for real. If your gallbladder ruptures you're looking at a very serious infection.

There is a test called a HIDA scan that checks how well your gallbladder functions. It's usually around 800-1000 without insurance. I think even with crappy insurance it would be a lot cheaper.

 

I was having abdominal pain in the upper right quadrant and some other things that made them suspect it so I had a HIDA scan which is a test that basically shows how well it is functioning and measures something called an ejection fraction. Mine came out at 12% when normal is between 35-65%.

 

At the very least you should get an ultrasound cause maybe you have gallstones, the intense pain sounds like it could be a gallbladder attack. I never had that, mine was always more mild but almost constantly bothersome. I don’t think ultrasounds are too expensive without insurance. And if that showed nothing then get the HIDA scan like SmashRipsaw said. It is expensive though so hopefully your insurance would at least cover some of it.

 

Yeah I had a gallstone stuck in my duct and if it had gotten out things would have been really bad.