Yay! I have an appointment for an MRI next Tuesday! My insurance company finally approved it.
Cool. This means that it only takes two weeks to get an informed diagnosis of a catastrophically debilitating injury, before we can get around to actually treating it. Not looking forward to growing old in America.
And just think how that would go if one depended on Medicaid. Too much of America is empathy-starved.
Just to give you something to watch as you wait, here is Trevor Noah :
-Trump Dropping Bombs For Peace!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=d-FLVcgZzGs
Multiple world hypothesis; “We are in the ludicrous time line!”
Make sure you have hearing protection. Even if only your legs are in the MRI chamber, those things are loud.
Ive been complaining about pain in my right chest/lung for two and a half years. They finally scheduled me for a CT scan last august for this january. They found three lumps/growths in my lung. The doctor decided it probably wasnt cancer and they made me wait another six months to confirm. I had my last CT last month and the growths havent grown so probably not cancer. A couple of months isnt so bad all things considered. I know that knee pain is the worst and I hope its not a terrible thing awaiting you.
They’ll provide hearing protection. What they won’t do is make sure you’re properly hydrated before the procedure; that’s up to you, and it’s pretty darned important when examining musculoskeletal soft tissue and/or dealing with potential fluid-distribution issues like “pooling in a joint region.”
In the UK, the so-called “Labour” government just tried to throw a couple of hundred thousand sick or disabled people into poverty by tightening the qualifications for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which is paid to help people with the additional costs of being chronically sick or disabled. They were forced to back down by a revolt of Labour MPs big enough to threaten an actual defeat in the Commons, but anyone with an ounce more brain than a cuckoo clock knows they’ll bring the changes (or worse) back as soon as they think they can get away with it. A close relative gets PIP, and uses it to pay carers; this allows them to stay in their own home rather than move to an institution. They would not actually have been affected as they are past retirement age, when it’s automatically continued (at present), but I don’t think that provision is secure either.
Good luck with everything, PZ.
Pink Floyd – Welcome To The Machine
We are front loading as much of our medical care as possible, under the assumption that the medical system will just get worse.
Reminder to everyone around age 65, get your measles titer checked. Some of the vaccines we got when we were kids were weak. I did, and have no immunity against rubella or mumps, so need to get the MMR vax again.
Also, keep your COVID boosters up to date, for financial if not other reasons. Medicare doesn’t pay for Paxlovid ($500 out of pocket. What a crime.)
We have US style health insurance in this country. Not long after we were married my wife was admitted to hospital for emergency surgery. It went well and she was expected to recover in a few days. She didn’t and after a week in agony on morphine which basically kept her semi-conscious they discovered another problem requiring more surgery which the insurer did not approve. It seemed that several years after she took out the policy she had developed diabetes and the insurer decided this was a pre-existing condition they hadn’t been informed of and terminated the policy. The diabetes and her need for surgery were completely unrelated. Her broker was no help as the insurers medical adviser refused to discuss it with her. The medical adviser refused to even talk to the surgeon. After 2 weeks of hell the surgery was approved when her nephew rang up his insurance broker and reminded them that his company had several hundred employees covered by them and they’d better do something if they wanted that to continue. My heath insurer did the same to me after a short hospital stay. They “reviewed” my policy which due to some arcane tax law they could bundle with other policies and “paid out and re-issued all the policies except mine. They decided since I was over 70 they were no longer legally required to reinsure me. As a result I no longer have health insurance because all other companies impose this age barrier.
Good Luck!!
FWIW, I have an appointment with an EEG next week for the auto collision that knocked me unconscious and ended with my being carted away by ambulance. Timeliness! Not entirely clear as to what the point is of an EEG is at this point, given any that early intervention time has fled. The “golden hour” my ass.
Welcome, my son. Welcome… to the machine. {/Pink Floyd}
{d’oh, didn’t read the thread closely enough to realise that #8 beat me to the punch}
@#3 “Make sure you have hearing protection”
Last time I had one they put earphones on me and played music… and the music was so bad I was praying for the banging and clanging of the MRI to drown it out!
[MRI was originally named Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) but it got rebranded — people were wary of the Nuclear bit]
if it’s anything like Australia, you’ll wait another week (or 2) for the report.
Given current trends it seems that in the future relatively few people in the USA will get the chance to grow old .
John Morales@16–
Almost. It was called NMR at first but people objected because “we’re going to give you an NMR” sounded like “we’re going to give you an enema.” The name was changed to NMI, for Nuclear Magnetic Imaging. Then people started objecting to the “nuclear” in the title, which led to “MRI”.
Only two months PZ! That’s actually pretty slick. It took me six months to get a diagnosis for why I couldn’t walk anymore. Now it’s coming up on another 7 months to get treatment after that.
We are old.
Just remember: do NOT rage against this machine while you’re in it.
@PZ
Probably not critical, but not all MRI machines are equal. Hopefully “the Machine” imaging your knee is a 1.5T (Tesla) or higher and manufactured by a reputable name (GE or Siemens). Consider calling ahead to confirm this. Avera Marshall or Sanford (Sioux Falls or Worthington) should have this gear and maybe up to 3T (even better). The better machines appear to shine if you have a meniscal tear.