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I Had a Stroke at 33

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Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#81

Post by dredmorbius »

omegaworks wrote: post #78
ohquu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we are in the US. Her situation was unique in many respects. She was on her father's health insurance plan (Blue Cross and Blue Shield) and also had secondary health insurance from being a student athlete at our university. (The first of the three strokes occurred during a meet! The other two occurred within a day after being transported to the hospital.) Everything would have cost well over $100,000 had she not…

>Had he not paid attention to the way things were being billed (i.e., between primary and secondary insurance), some costs may have been pushed onto her family. How does one pay attention to this in a time of crisis? Is there a good guide to navigating it somewhere? Last summer I woke up with a monster headache and suddenly stopped being able to put words to thoughts. Tried calling a taxi, couldn't say where I wanted…

There are services which offer medical bill review for patients, usually via nurses or others with clinical and medical billing knowledge.

I know of these largely through news coverage, and cannot speak to how effective they are (or what the costs are).

The stories I've heard, though, of the absolute complete and total nightmare that is the US healthcare scam, are heartbreaking.

I'm looking for online references but cannot find any at the moment, maybe others here have more information.

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#82

Post by zaroth »

refurb wrote: post #72
pcl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many health insurance plans have a yearly cap on how much you pay out of pocket. So you might pay 20% up to a few thousand dollars, and then get 100% coverage after that.

Actually, with the passage of the ACA, the limit is a requirement for all health insurance plans (a few were grandfathered in, but they will disappear over the next few years). It goes up each year (adjusted for inflation), but as an individual, your maximum out of pocket (includes everything: deductible, co-pays, co-insurance, etc) is ~$6,750.

See: https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#83

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

silencio wrote: post #79
ZeroCoin wrote: post #68

>I wandered outside the boundaries of telemetry. They lost my heartbeat. When I returned, they scolded me. The audacity of health care industry workers (those who should know what a certain disease entails) who place blame on their patients for acting normally is infuriating. I had kidney stones once at a young age. I remember barely walking into the emergency room one night after they became too painful. As soon as…

> ...was scolded like I was some drug addict just looking for a fix... It's tough dealing with drugs and potential abuse. You know if you're really in need or not, but they deal with people wanting them for any reason just because, and so the skepticism starts to show. There's the default assumption at hospitals/pharmacies of just locking everything down so the healthcare providers themselves can't abuse them too. My…

I am not allowed to have a prescription that has refills (I assume due to law? Maybe office policy though). So when I need a refill I have to call and leave a voicemail message. It takes up to 72 business hours then I get a phonecall my prescription is ready. I have to physically go there and sign two forms saying I picked it up AND get my ID photocopied. Then I have to go to the pharmacy and show my ID AGAIN. I hate being treated like I'm a criminal!!

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#84

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

sergiotapia wrote: post #8
bshimmin wrote: post #7

I wish Buzzfeed only had articles like this.

Why, people enjoy the other types of articles - why should they not cater to them as well?

BuzzFeed is a content farm that steals other people's work and reposts it without permission or credit. At least that's what I've heard. Here's a random example - http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/culturebox/2013/09/...

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#85

Post by imaginenore »

weddpros wrote: post #57

I was 32 when I had a stroke (March 4th, 2003). It was a different kind of stroke, affecting a different part of my brain, essentially related to vision. I was half blind, but I only realized something was "strange" when I saw myself in the mirror: I had only one eye. My brain knew I should have two: I was half blind. The first diagnosis was migraine with aura (blindness in my case). But the aura should have lasted n…

Wow, your doctors suck.

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#86

Post by glxc »

This is an amazing article and incredible blog

Among many interesting and inspiring themes, of interest to the HN community may be the disassociation of vision and objects. All of the deep learning models succeeding in classification emulate one side of the brain, while perspectives like this present life outside the constraint of rational thinking.

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#87

Post by glxc »

This is an amazing article and incredible blog

Among many interesting and inspiring themes, of interest to the HN community may be the disassociation of vision and objects. All of the deep learning models succeeding in classification emulate one side of the brain, while perspectives like this present life outside the constraint of rational thinking.

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#88

Post by TAM_cmlx »

Two years ago this October I was homeless. I would wander around all night for fear of attacks[1] and try to sleep during the day at the university while sitting on a bench or chair. In October the winter shelters had not yet opened here, and it was so cold I feared I would freeze to death. I wandered into ER on a pretext: there was a swelling in my leg, spider bite maybe?

I overheard the intake person talking with someone: "I'm worried about that guy in #68." Why? "He thinks he's got a spider bite, but he's got blood clot written all over him."

I felt pretty good about that; it meant I'd have a place to sleep for a whole night. Then I was suddenly surrounded by 5 or 6 people.

Symptoms, sir?

Sometimes slurred speech, tingling in the extremities, can't spell anymore, confused by the way people talk so _fast_, confused by simple things, excessively paranoid, feels like there's an Ace bandage wrapped around my chest.

You're a junkie. No. You're exclusively vegetarian. No. You're diabetic. No, I've been tested for that. Well, we'll take a blood draw.

I got an ultrasound over my legs -- and they discovered a DVT. Next thing I knew, they'd slapped me in hospital for eight days. I was put on no less than eight medications, the scariest of which was Coumadin (same as Warfarin, I think?) -- scary because they made me watch a video describing it, by which I mean "You follow these instructions to the letter or you gonna die, son." At least that's what it felt like. And I had to sign all kinds of waivers, or something. Two of the residents (very young women) told me that they had had DVT's themselves... possibly as a result of being exclusively vegetarian?

The diagnosis was: Pernicious Anemia. My understanding (which is not to be trusted) is that the myelin sheathing around my nerves has been dissolving for years. Apparently the communicating tissue between the axons in my brain had been going away for quite some time.

I liked this diagnosis because: it's easily treatable; it explains my increasingly weird behavior; I'm not dead from it.

The treatment is: Take B12 every day for the rest of my life.

The highly-abbreviated coda to the story is: My Doctor told I'd had this disease for at least ten years(!); hospital got me a case manager, who got me Disability, Homed, and a Laptop. But it took 2 years or so.

TLDR: Being exclusively vegetarian can cause DVT's

[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM6WrqLMJrQ

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#89

Post by justanother »

pcl wrote: post #59
ryanSrich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do have health insurance but it only covers around 47% of my medical costs (at least when I go for a primary care visit, I suspect they might even cover less for a more expensive procedure). I understand that my coverage is not all that common, although most providers do an 80/20 split. So for a procedure costing $100k (an ambulance ride and a few nights in the hospital would easily run this high) you'd have to pay…

Many health insurance plans have a yearly cap on how much you pay out of pocket. So you might pay 20% up to a few thousand dollars, and then get 100% coverage after that.

I'll never forget the year I had laproscopic surgery to remove my gallbladder, not because of the experience (although being asked for $3000, in cash, before they'd let me into the OR, was interesting, but welcome to America), but because I ended up hitting my $5000 or so out-of-pocket maximum, between that and co-pays for a few other visits. For the remaining 6 months of the year, I joked that I was living it up Canadian style, and actually visited the doctor to get regular exams and to get medicated for influenza, you know, the things everyone should do, but a large double-digit percentage of Americans can't. Ahh, the good life...

Re: I Had a Stroke at 33

#90

Post by strideratx »

xtinehlee wrote: post #65
ohquu wrote: post #6

What a beautiful article. My girlfriend had three strokes, in succession, two years ago (when she was 22). The night before these strokes occurred, she had a transient ischemic attack (TIA). She began speaking gibberish to her friends. She texted me later that night explaining what happened. Her friends had laughed about it because they thought she was just acting like a goofball. I had no idea these were signs of a…

I'm the writer of the story--thank you so much for reading. I'm glad to know that my experience helps people gain further understanding of strokes/brain injuries. I hope your girlfriend is in a better place, now.

Thank you for sharing your story. I enjoyed reading it. I had a stroke at 35 also caused by a PFO.
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