Surgery Update

Well, I am happy to report that Ella is officially Central Line free!!! We arrived at Loma Linda hospital at 8:15 where they promptly tried to tell me that I had a 10% copay of $365 dollars. I told them that I had an HMO which was making me come to this hospital and therefore I shouldn't have any copay. If I wanted to pay 10% of the procedure, I would have used my PPO which requires me to pay 10% and I would have stayed with CHOC like I would have preferred. Of course she deferred to the billing office and sent us on our way with an envelope to send the payment in later. I called our insurance to figure out if we should be paying 10% and they said absolutely not!! But no one in registration was available to take the time to call them to clarify this so.......looks like it is up to me to get it straightened out. I guess that sometimes having good insurance that allows us to use either our HMO or PPO can be a bad thing because there can be confusion, but I hate it when people are too lazy to do THEIR job!! Anyway, so then the gal at registration gives me some paperwork and says to go to the 2nd floor to the 2800 unit. So we go upstairs and to a nurses station. After standing there waiting for a few employees to finish their own personal chats, someone finally asks me if they can help me. I said I was told to come to the 2800 unit. She says "This whole floor is the 2800 unit, where are you going" Uughh!! Just ask me what we are here for and direct me, don't play games!! Of course I was in the right place and they checked us in. Once we got back to the observation/recovery room, people finally seemed to start acting normal and nice, thank goodness!! Don't take that to mean that everything was fast and efficient though. Yesterday I mentioned that Ella has had an ongoing runny nose and we weren't sure if they would be willing to put her under anesthestic or not. So the nurse checks her out and then the nurse practicitioner who will be doing the procedure. Of course due to her crying whenever anyone touches her now (yes, she has finally had enough of medical people!!) she was quite full of nasal congestion and proceeding to throw in quite a few coughs in front of people. Anesthesiologists don't like coughing so I was really worried that they would cancel her. But on the advice of Heather, I just kept saying how we think she has allergies and she only coughs when her nose gets stuffy etc. etc. THREE AND A HALF HOURS after arriving there, the anesthesiologist finally looks at her and decides that they will proceed. Can you imagine how upset I would have been if we spent all that time there for NOTHING!! So finally after another hour passed, they took her in and did the procedure easily. She was tired the rest of the day but got back to herself fairly quickly. When I tried to feed her for the first time that evening, she threw it all back up but at bedtime I gave her just a small amount of formula and some water and she seemed to hold that all down and she isn't awake yet this morning so hopefully all will be well today. Thanks for all your prayers and support once again!!