Meeting your insurance deductible in April is not a good thing

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know that this hasn't been the best year for me personally, health wise. January 1st I began having lower back pain. By Monday, I couldn't sit up. I had my first kidney stone. Not just any stone, a big trapped stone. One that didn't leave after the first procedure. Two procedures later and there are still stone fragments in my body. I was also injured but the medical staff at the hospital during the first procedure. I'm still in PT for my hip flexor strain/tear.

I met half the family deductible all by myself. In January. Go me.

Thursday night was my 10th wedding anniversary. We didn't have a sitter as all our usual ones were either vacationing for Spring Break or ill, so we took the kids with us out to dinner and for some fro yo. Little did I know the excitement that was to come.

BBD had been sick earlier in the week. When we came home from dinner, he took the prescribed antibiotic. Within minutes he began having discomfort in his chest, he was comparing it to severe heartburn. After about 20 mins, the pain was so bad he asked me to take him to the ER. (It should be noted that BBD, like most males, hates going to the doctor, taking drugs, etc. I knew he must have been miserable to ask to go to the ER.)

So I call a friend, throw some pjs in a bag for K, and we leave.

At the hospital, I check BBD in. Because I wrote down chest pains, he was taken back right away and hooked up to an EKG machine. Within minutes, the admitting nurse and an entire crew of people come rushing in. The nurse looks at me and tells me that there is something going on with his heart. The attending physician comes in and says his EKG was telling them that something was going on, maybe a heart attack, maybe something else. They brought in a second EKG machine and decided that a heart cath would be necessary to determine what was going on. BBD was rushed in for an emergency heart cath at about 9:00pm that night. From the heart cath we learned that he did not have a heart attack, but he had pericarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle probably from the infection he had earlier in the week.

So we spent our anniversary night in the hospital, listening to the sound of heart monitors and IV machines.

And meeting our insurance deductible. In April.


I would like to thank our friends to took our kids no questions asked that night. I would also like to thank the ER staff that acted quickly on BBD's behalf. While I was less than please with the quality of care received once we were admitted, we were discharged fairly quickly, for which I am also thankful.


-Big Blue Momma