Anybody on here experienced a bone marrow biopsy?  If so,  wish you would private message me on what was used to stop pain, if anything.  Also, if someone has advanced osteoporosis in the hip joint, is there any danger of the bone breaking during the biopsy?  If'n ya know, I mean.  It's all greek to me.

Chaos gave me enough info on her colonoscopy to gather enough courage to go through with mine.  I need some info, if anyone has any, on bone marrow biopsy and aspiration.

Thanks.

Thanks, Chaos.  I really don't like the sound of this.  I am almost as terrified of the medications as I am of the pain.  And having some serious osteoporosis in the hip bone (where I just read today they use to take the biopsy) I am curious if they've ever broken a hip bone while applying the necessary pressure to insert the biopsy needle. 

Sigh.  Now you know why I could never have functioned in a medical profession.  The whole thing scares the hell out of me.  Especially after the ground I lost with the heart surgery.  Nuts.  Noices or Choices.  ha.

(((((((((((((((Jeannedeurk1)))))))))))))))

Courage girl!  Stiff upper lip and march forward.  Regardless of what happens, it has to to be done.

OMG, I am so disgusted. 

It looks like I may have found myself another Primary Care Physician who sees "Medicare Cash Cow" written on my forehead.  The cause of my bad test results has been changed to my kidneys.  Imagine that, when I am stuffing down some twenty pills a day, at least four of which are damaging to the kidneys.  Like, wow, man!  The PCP did say he thought the next step would be the bone marrow thingee.  Now they have switched it to something else, but, wouldn't ya know, I've now got an Oncologist/Hematologist  sucking up the taxpayer's money.  And they wonder why so many people clapped when it was suggested that the uninsured be allowed to die rather than give them medical insurance.

It seems we forget that the patient doesn't get a dime of the taxpayer's dollar.  The recipients of the taxpayer's dollars are the "caregiver's" who are bitching because they aren't getting enough.  Like $500. for 30 seconds of laser blips from my eye doctor, billed as "General Surgery."

I guess the next specialist who will want his turn at the trough will be a urologist.  Then a psychiatrist.  Then....who knows?
                                                                 
I'm sorry.  I can't even stand to talk about it.  Took more blood and said come back in ten days.  Happy New Year

jd    

You are so right JD! My mom was having some light chest pain, so I took her into her PCP right away. He did an EKG, period. Then sent her to the ER. Her bill was marked "Emergency care" and he charged Medicare something like $1000!! No wonder the damn program is so screwed up. I called to complain, but to no avail. 

I've already been in that pasture, Chaos, in  May, 1984.  I lost my insurance during a change in employment involving a relocation.  I still had a seventeen year old son depending on me.  During the relocation, he got his foot crushed by the trailer hitch.  Within twenty minutes of our arrival in our new location, we were in a hospital emergency room, with no insurance.

Because he couldn't help with moving in, I had to do it alone.  Having just arrived, we didn't know anyone to ask for help.  During my moving in, I managed to injure my back.  Because I injured my back, I couldn't take the job I had moved there to take.  Because I couldn't take the job and couldn't move my arms to use a stenograph, I was unemployed and unemployable.   When the savings went, we were finished with my days of dignity.  Quite frankly, we damned near starved to death, in order to pay rent and electric bills.  My son looked like a skeleton and I wasn't far from it.

It was the beginning of the slide  into homelessness.  I certainly hope your luck is better than mine.

I don't know if anyone would want to pay the price of the disabilities,  the pain, the degradation, the insults, the aloneness, the required groveling and tolerance of disrespect and judgmentalism that go along with my access to what is called health care in this country.   

But if you'd really like to try my greener pastures, just hang around until you're 65, or 67, or 70 or whatever the age is by the time you get there--if you ever do--and it will just happen for you, like it does for millions of other folks.  Same as it happened for me and many millions of others. 

I really appreciate your sense of humor.  It's good to see you can find something to lol about.  Maybe that sense of humor can help you through this time and you will land not much worse for the wear on the other side of the rough time standing on your own two feet, once again covered with insurance. 

You would not like the green grass if you tried to get Medicare any sooner.  Even when you are declared totally disabled, it takes two years for Medicare to kick in.  It isn't as easy to get as most people think. 

And remember Erma Bombeck's book?  "The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank?"  She got that right.

By the way, I don't know what State you are in.  But, if you are losing your insurance, most States have laws that require emergency rooms to treat people who have acute attacks of anything from a broken toe to pink eye.  Because of the current economic status and the bs that is going on with the crowd of maniacs in Wash DC (ha ha.  pun intended) you will not be alone in making use of such a law if your State has one.  In Louisiana, if you go to the ER and it is something serious enough to require megabucks of medical treatment you can  not afford to pay for, that's when the DHS will usually kick in and cover the expense for the hospital.  There's a thing called a QMB (Qualified Medical Beneficiary) that is available to people who aren't old enough or disabled enough to qualify for Medicare, but who owe a large amount of medical bills.  The QMB program is actually Medicaid, not Medicare.  A lot of doctors won't accept just Medicaid.  Those who do are either milking the system, or they are the actually the most caring of doctors.  It's the luck of the draw.

Well, there used to be.    Since the changes made during the Bush Administration, there may no longer be such a program.

You are not alone, and neither am I.  Unfortunately, there is a lot medically wrong with me, and none of it is reversible.  I am past the tilt point.  A whole lot of people are going to be going past the tilt point, and there are a whole lot of opportunistic jerks with medical degrees who are milking the taxpayers and mistreating the disabled and the elderly, both of whom are ill equipped to defend themselves, or even be believed.  The screams for tort reform from the medical profession wouldn't be so bad if the malpractice insurance premiums weren't so high.

The insurance premiums for malpractice insurance would not be so high if there weren't so many injuries and deaths inflicted upon unsuspecting patients by incompetent, drug addicted, opportunisitic, arrogant, greedy care givers and their places of practice.  I am only one person, and, had I the strength of my youth, there are three doctors who have injured me in subtle ways, too difficult to prove.   Last time I contacted an attorney about a malpractice suit, he said that if I was still alive and could move, the case wasn't worth taking on a contingency fee  basis because of our State's new Tort reform law.   This was passed in addition to the tort reform laws passed during GW's stay in the White House.

Multiply your position by at least a million, Chaos, as I do mine.  It is not just me.  It is not just you.  And the green of the grass depends on other factors besides the one thing, or two things, or fifty things that one loses.   

I've been divorced for over forty years.  I raised four children for twenty years by myself.  I never took or got a penny of support from any State agency.  I worked, went to school, and was lucky enough to have living relatives to spend the night with my young children while I did so.  So did a lot of other people.  And a lot of other people ran into obstacles, injuries, difficulties, health problems, legal problems, or just plain economic changes beyond their control that put them where I was and am, and where you are without insurance. 

I truly hope this does not last long for you.  But I also truly wish our government could have passed a universal health care legislation that would have permitted all citizens to maintain their dignity when seeking health care.   And that doctors would be forced to practice with attention to their patients needs instead of how many they can process, and how much they can make.

The loss of insurance is not so awful if it weren't for the fact that when you are sick is when you are least able to fight for, search for, and receive health care without the indignities and the unscrupulous opportunists who will damn you with humiliation and get paid by working taxpayers for the privilege.

I am sorry this has happened to you.  I truly hope there will be something good coming your way so that you do not have to go through what I went through when I was in that green grass of yours.  However, I suppose it is survivable.  Sometimes it is unforgettable.

Just put this down as another rant, only I am including in this rant that I am pissed off because another USian is being deprived of the right to health care.  I don't know them all, personally, or even on the internet.  But I know there are far too many in Chaos' position simply because the jerks in DC still demand that every citizen pay for their right to life.

Wow... I'm speechless.

As I understand it, Chaos, the bone marrow biopsy is off, for now. The fact that I was only told about that factor as being of concern and NOT fully informed as to the reasons for referring me to such a specialist remain. The blood tests taken from this "specialist" will not be known to me until the 7th of January, if then. When I have those results I will return to the referring physician and we will discuss the month long wait for the visit with the specialist with my being informed only that there was a problem with my bone marrow.

I doubt that I will revisit this board with any further concerns, since I don't think the dickters (intended misspelling) are playing with a full deck.

I certainly wish the best for you and hope good results come from the blood tests. 

As a Canadian... I blanche when I read the very different experience Americans have with their healthcare. If I were to list the extent of the benefits I'm entitled to as a person on disability, I would feel like I'm gloating. So I'm left with little else to say other than this: it is my deepest hope that the American PEOPLE eventually aspire to build what we Canadians have been building since the mid-60's a national healthcare system.

American media is quick to describe our healthcare system with prefixes like "socialized", "socialist", "government" including even "free". I'm here to tell you it is nothing of the sort. Canada's healthcare system is a legislated agreement between all stakeholders - the government, the people, the healthcare industry and insurance, and the medical professions. Hospitals are not owned by the government. They are owned by Hospital Foundations - nonprofit agencies that oversee the financial state of their hospital(s). The doctors are private businesses that bill to the provincial government. Any improvements or restructuring of hospitals is funded by the hospital foundation with matching or proportional grants from the upper levels of government. A few things are very certain in all of this: no one in Canada can be denied care. The idea is to take care of the patient first and worry about the money later.

As I age, I am encountering the healthcare system more frequently and another thing that is abundantly clear is that I only put out pennies on the dollar for my healthcare needs. Whatever I do pay out, I can claim back on my taxes up to an upper level (not sure offhand how much that upper level is). So in the final analysis, I am paying nothing out of pocket for my healthcare - including meds. But - it's NOT free - nothing is.... Since 1965, every working person has been paying into this system, whether by taxation or payroll deduction. From the time I started paying taxes at 18 years old (1973) until I left the job market in 2005 I have been paying into that system along with employers. We all share in the cost and we all share in the benefit.

The US has a lot of growing pains to go through first before even hoping to develop a system like this, but you also have a very storied history of rising to a common cause. Develop the proper meme - create the message - build the dream.