{"id":624,"date":"2011-06-23T00:04:45","date_gmt":"2011-06-23T05:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/?p=624"},"modified":"2011-06-23T00:12:38","modified_gmt":"2011-06-23T05:12:38","slug":"chapter-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/23\/chapter-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well here we are, I suppose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/20110622-IMG_0705.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-625\" title=\"20110622-IMG_0705\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/20110622-IMG_0705.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/20110622-IMG_0705.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/20110622-IMG_0705-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>&#8220;Chapter 5&#8221; of this very long and painful story.\u00a0 Having Chris at the apartment near RIOSA has been challenging for sure, and mostly for my mom who isn&#8217;t able to <em>escape<\/em> back to work for a few days here and there like my father and I can.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Good:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Having Chris at the apartment during the day is fantastic;\u00a0 you&#8217;re in your own environment, on your own schedule.<\/li>\n<li>Chris can go outside and get sunshine:\u00a0 I&#8217;ve managed to carefully take him and our remaining beagle, Nula, on some trips around the apartment complex.<\/li>\n<li>Evaluations for outpatient PT\/OT\/speech therapy start at RIOSA tomorrow.\u00a0 I&#8217;d guess next week we&#8217;d have a regular therapy schedule every day.<\/li>\n<li>I think &#8211; after a year of collecting part numbers at facilities &#8211; we have the required medical supplies nailed down (enteral feeding paraphernalia, condom catheters, drainage bags, briefs, wipes that work properly, etc.).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Bad:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The &#8220;night shift&#8221; &#8211; turning Chris every few hours through the night, handling accidents and so on &#8211; <em>really kicks your ass<\/em> the next day.<\/li>\n<li>Stupid UnitedHealth bureacracy:\u00a0 they won&#8217;t approve renting an air mattress overlay to prevent bed sores <em>until you have developed bed sores<\/em>.\u00a0 WTF guys?!?<\/li>\n<li>More stupid UnitedHealth bureacracy:\u00a0 they won&#8217;t approve one of the more expensive medications (Armodafinil \/ Nuvigil) Chris was taking while at HealthSouth RIOSA.\u00a0 The neurologist prescribed it on the discharge list, and even filed an insurance appeal with UnitedHealth for the drug, but they have flat out refused to fill the prescription now that we&#8217;ve switched to a different status in &#8220;the system&#8221;.\u00a0 Apparently, you only need doctor-prescribed medication when you&#8217;re in a hospital setting?\u00a0 WTF.<\/li>\n<li>UnitedHealth will only <strong><em>rent<\/em><\/strong> the patient lift and hospital bed for Chris out of his annual durable medical equipment (DME) budget.\u00a0 That sounds like a great idea, until you realize that the first month&#8217;s equipment rental fee is actually 95% of the purchase price of the equipment in the retail market.\u00a0 <strong><em>WTF #3<\/em><\/strong>, if you&#8217;ve ever wondered why healthcare costs so much more in the United States than it does in other &#8220;developed&#8221; countries*.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>*See WGBH&#8217;s &#8220;FRONTLINE&#8221; <em>Sick Around the World:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/sickaroundtheworld\/\">FRONTLINE:  Sick Around the World<\/a><\/p>\n<p>(and yeah, Chris and I were covered by German <strong>Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse <\/strong>&#8211; AOK &#8211; while our family was stationed overseas&#8230;\u00a0 no bullshit, it&#8217;s a better system than this nonsense in the USA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well here we are, I suppose &#8220;Chapter 5&#8221; of this very long and painful story.\u00a0 Having Chris at the apartment near RIOSA has been challenging for sure, and mostly for my mom who isn&#8217;t able to escape back to work &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/23\/chapter-5\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisgiles.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}