Another Day, Another Glitch

OK, apparently I'm NOT being discharged this afternoon to the New England Rehabilitation Hospital. Apparently I'm being discharged sometime TOMORROW to a different facility that my insurance company feels is more appropriate to my level of need for care.

Which might sound like the start of a stereotypical HMO horror story except for the fact that I'm actually OK with that.

I believe in universal access to health care. I'm comfortable with single payer insurance (and even "socialized medicine"), and I don't especially believe that I'm entitled to "Cadillac" level service just because I'm special (or perhaps I should say, I believe we are ALL entitled to the best care available simply because we are all special). And I certainly don't mind being "triaged" to care appropriate to my needs so long as that care is effective and provided in a timely manner. I'm extremely concerned about the ways that rising health care costs are limiting access to health care to those of limited means, and I want to do what I can to help hold those costs down. And I am profoundly grateful that the members of my congregation, through their financial support of this church and my ministry here, have made it possible for me to afford good health insurance in the first place.

New England Rehab was what the doctor ordered, so that's where I thought I wanted to go. But if I can get comparable services at this other facility, I'm just as happy to go there too. I've already had one denial from Harvard Pilgrim about my decision to go "out of network" for a second opinion at Memorial Sloane Kettering in New York (rather than waiting two weeks to see someone at Dana Farber in Boston) and I was planning to appeal that one anyway (if I hadn't been stuck here in the hospital). But I was also willing to pay for it out of pocket if I had to, just to set everyone's mind at ease that we had the correct diagnosis, that I was going to receive the right therapy, and that there weren't any "magic" pills that they kept behind the counter only for the special people who asked politely for them. The fact that the Oncologist there identified this area of my spine (which has cause me all this trouble) as something which required some additional attention is probably just coincidence, right?

I'm actually a lot more concerned about what I'm going to be doing when I'm NOT receiving therapy. After three weeks here in the Gibson Pavilion, I'm starting to feel a little TOO at home. Now I'm worried that once again it will take me weeks to establish effective internet access, or to figure out a daily routine that allows me to rehabilitate myself, keep my pain under control, and still find the time (and lucidity) to read and write and do what little of my job I can still do right now.

But mostly I want to be able to get up out of this wheelchair and walk the steep stairs to my apartment, to my office at church, to the high pulpit in the Meeting House in September. Never mind the cancer. That is what it is, and will be what it will be. But it is SO frustrating to live just two blocks from here, and know that I might as well be living on the moon....