Life has continued to be quiet and uneventful this month, except for Robert J's unfortunate cold that became pneumonia last week. We are pretty good at dealing with cardiac and vascular situations by now, but a simple cold was outside of my area of so-called expertise. After waiting the requisite week for it to go away, the cough just got worse, so finally a trip to his primary care doc and a chest x-ray explained the problem. Serious cough syrup and some antibiotics improved things within 24 hours, and our hero (and his other half) are happily sleeping through most of the night again, after too many hours lost to coughing in the last week.
In other news: At the risk of jinxing our delicate insurance situation, I will reveal that we are approaching a major milestone on Nov.1: that is when Medicare will become RJ's primary insurance, and his retiree insurance (what's left of it) will be secondary. This is huge, since our friendly financial rep from UCSF was quite certain that the primary insurance would not last until this date, after all the latest hospital bills from early summer. I spent several weeks in a pretty panicked state, looking for alternative coverage with little luck. Had the transplant happened this summer, the insurance would have run out for sure, so I have to look at all the delays as perhaps a good thing, in the big picture. Of course keeping him out of the hospital until the transplant will also be very helpful, and that is our daily goal. His insurance situation is one of the thousands that could and should be helped by health care reform, so national politics are especially personal for us! Fingers are crossed for all of us to see better options in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment