REAL TALK TIME
This is long & I'm gonna make it into a tik..
🕑 Added 2023-04-10 18:20:46 +0000 UTC
REAL TALK TIME
This is long & I'm gonna make it into a tiktok but I wanted to share how funny my life works out.
Ended up in the hospital last week but ironically enough it was where my first outpatient procedure on my back was 9 years ago. I owed them a lil money in the end & let it go to collections *(if you let it go to collections it is illegal to sell your medical records, including bills so you can request it to he removed)*. Right before collections, they left a pretty angry message so I never got the xrays
So 8 years ago I was hitting the final months of having “*real” insurance* on my dad’s plan. At that point, **I was DESPERATE** for answers & *no idea* if I’d have access to insurance again. I was originally at this practice for "constant hip/thigh pain", the hip doctor called out sick.
*Oddly enough* his back specialist friend stood in. He ordered X-rays the same day(normally they'd send me home to make me come back with $40 for the results....). He looked over them saying *"Oh wow, u r in a lot of pain. It’s not your hip, it’s your back".* It was the first time I ever **felt seen**…It was all overwhelming & everything happened so fast after that.
He said we needed to make sure the pain going down my thigh & on my sit bone was *only* coming from my sacroiliac joint. But the SI joint pain requires **two diagnostic shots on different occasions**.
So he pushed the 1st diagnostic shot sooner to get the whole thing started. I ended up owing like $180+ copay for that procedure, they left a mean voicemail because they shouldn't have even done the shot w/ out but I didn't have a working number at the time and didn't know I needed that much. I just knew I needed that shot and if it worked even for the brief 10mins of 0 pain I would finally be given answers and the damn shot had worked. They hassled me a long time too but it finally went to collections.
I never hit them up on my medical files because of one particular voicemail they left saying Id never be seen by them again if I didn't pay up. I had all the procedure paperwork & figured that was something. Funny how I ended up emitted to that same hospital almost a decade later.
**So now I have access to my first X-rays pre ever being poked!**!!! Which is bittersweet. Every few doctors give me weird hope that my illness isn’t chronic and that maybe one day ill just be fine. 🙃🙃🙃 But the ankylosing spondylitis has been present in my SI joint pre ever being poked. I've had a stack of CDs of all my imaging and that is the one I probably needed most. It all happened quickly, I don't think I even thought to ask for that X-ray. I had a stack of so many already at that point 😅
Mind you, now I’m on state insurance(which I am very thankful for but goodness it is exhausting to maneuver through). My current orthopedic surgeon is still a 45 min drive away with no traffic. Thankfully they see the damage and will treat the pain but seeing a certain specialist takes a lot more effort than you’d think. At least now I’ve been authorized to see a rheumatologist since the inflammation is beyond my si joint and decided to inflame my left kidney.
I say bittersweet because my primary and I both agree I have EDS(since the hand pain seems to be from overextending my fingers). I was hoping I didn't have AS at all.....but now it looks like I could have both conditions which will change weighing into the medication I've been personally trying to avoid this whole time.(I don't want to go down the route of blocking the inflammation in my brain just yet so hoping fineness/diet changes the route if the AS condition hasn't progressed too much)??? Anyways yea...i now have access to the X-rays showing the damage from pre-diagnosis shots and cortisone pokes.
