“I volunteer to be the scribe.”
Thanks, Fishtalk. We’re cookin’ now!
How’s Mr. Fishtalk doing these days?
Glad you asked.
Mr Fishtalk is doing fine.
To those who didn’t know, husband recently had leg bypass surgery. It was supposed to be a routine type of thing, serious surgery, sure, but a week, maybe a week and a half in the hospital...six weeks to recover.
Only husband is odd, this man who almost died not long ago of a brain infection of all things. After the operation his stomach just refused to work. He was in the hospital a whole month.
they couldn’t just let him out without the ability to nourish hisself. Mostly that’s about it, the poor guy laid in a bed as milk of some kind flowed into his veins. Every oncit they’d take out his stomach tube. He’d then throw up, his body would blow up like a balloon, and they’d put it right back down.
He was in the ICU for almost three weeks.
Guess how much his hospital bill was? I am not making this up.
$224,000!!!!!
I divided that number by the 28 days he was in the hospital. It comes to $7,500 a night!
For that amount of money we could have rented an Embassy Suites and hired full time around the clock nursing care.
That does include the use of the hospital operating room, true, but it does NOT include the ICU doctors who looked in on him, the surgeon or his fee, the Anesthiologists or the Xray guy who looked at the xrays every couple of days as they struggled desperately to ascertain if there was a blockage.
Our insurance paid it all. I don’t know if they paid that much money. Insurances tend to negotiate these things. I ohnly know according to our statement we get from the insurance, they SAID they paid it all, after demanding an itemized bill.
For comparison, when husband had brain infection and was in ICU upstate for two weeks than another week in medical ward, hospital bill was $70,000. and THAT hospital was a great big, modern affair. Our little hospital here in the swamps....heh.
But husband is doing fine. Once his stomach started to work he came home and by that time his sutures were almost healed. He walks around fine and crossing fingers, life is good, peaceful.
Husband tells me under no circumstances will he ever go into a hospital again.
Pretty firm, perhaps unwise words. But the guy does seem to have some kind of weird thing with his body.
THIS after a lifetime of excellent health with, I’m not making this up, thirty years of perfect attendance.
Just another story from the swamps of Delaware.