Yesterday we got Sondra home.It was a rainy cloudy day and again today the weather was cold and wet. This morning we went to both the church we attend now and the church we had attended for ten years before this, and got prayed over at both places.

A cousin of Dale’s and his wife and family came from out of town to be there for prayer at the first one. We have missed folks from the second and it was especially good to see and hug old friends. After the service they had us come down front and most everyone came and stood with us for prayer. We were talking to a few at the end and I looked up and the daughter of a friend was standing there just looking at me. It took a moment to realize that she couldn’t speak but she had big tears in her eyes. I hugged her and told her it would be okay.

We had just enough time to eat lunch and load up the car for Dallas. We made it back to Dallas after limping along through slow traffic and went to pick up the keys for Twice Blessed House. Instead of having us one two bedroom they had two one bedroom apartments which meant two deposits and two payments. I hope to talk to someone about that tomorrow since no one for the actual apartments was here tonight. No one let us know anything was different and we had called to confirm our reservation so I am not happy about that. We were tired, grouchy, and hungry and went to eat and to Target to pick up some things that will be needed.

I don’t have access here which is a disappointment but I’ll have to live with that. Through all this my nine year old nephew has been wonderful. He dealt with the flight cancellation, road trip to Texas, staying over night with strangers, driving two hours from the airport to our house, sitting through two church services, driving back to Dallas, all more maturely than I did, I think. Tomorrow is tests and dialysis. The rest of the sisters will be driving in as well as my kids so they will all be here for the surgery Tuesday morning.

Posting from Baylor Monday morning!

Dale got a letter in the mail yesterday giving him a general timeline. The day before the transplant he and his sister both go to the hospital at 8:00 in the morning for labs, chest x-ray, and EKG. After that his sister is free til she sees the surgeon at 2:00 but Dale will go to the transplant center to see the nephrologist. At 12:30 he will see the transplant surgeon at the Heart and Vascular hospital and then back across the street at the main hospital to turn in consent forms. Dale will have to go to a local dialysis center at 4:00 for one last dialysis (we hope) which takes about 4 hours. Both he and his sister have to be at admitting at 5:30 the next morning. He will need surgery to get a rest!

His sister is scheduled for surgery at 7:30 and he is scheduled for 9:30. From what we understand they do two a day so we are first shift which sounds like a good thing to me. We get the docs when they are fresh and not too tired!

This is getting real.  As long as neither Dale nor his sister catch a bug between now and then it will happen. One of the fellows that Dale knows from the dialysis center drove to Dallas after being called because they had a match.  When the center makes these calls they call the first three possible matched on the list.  By the time this guy got there they had already found someone higher on the list who was a better match.  I can’t imagine gearing yourself up for that and then having to drive back home.  We are lucky we have a living donor for Dale.

We have enjoyed this summer so much compared to last year at this time. Dale was in and out of the hospital for a large part of the summer and the rest of the year he was making the long climb back. We recently went to Dallas to have a procedure done and before we left we were presented with a bill that was from last year.

When we got home I called the insurance company to see what happened. Medicare had paid their part but our private insurance was denying the claim. They initially said that it was because the hospital didn’t precertify. Dale of course didn’t call them because he was half dead from infection and hallucinating due to the pain medication (given to him by a hospital I won’t name since they recently showed a desire to frighten anyone who publishes negative opinions about them by suing them).

Next they claimed that the hospital didn’t provide enough information to convince them that the procedures in the list of charges were necessary. I proceeded to explain exactly what the procedures were and why they were done and you can trust me when I say they were not elective. The customer service person I was speaking to said the only thing I could do would be to request the records from the hospital and send them with a letter asking for an appeal to the insurance appeal department. I had already given permission for the hospital to file an appeal on my behalf about 8 months ago. We have requested records from the hospital for ourselves over a month ago and still haven’t received them so this put us in an interesting situation.

I explained to the person on the phone that this was not going to be a workable option and that I needed to speak to someone in the appeals department. She replied that the appeals department doesn’t speak to the people who file claims. You have to communicate with them in writing. I asked to speak to someone who could help me. She told me (in a rather sarcastic tone) that I could speak to someone else in her department and they would tell me the same thing she was telling me. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was put on hold for fifteen minutes (I timed it and the elevator music wasn’t lousy) before someone answered.

This new person checked back and found that the hospital had sent records – 131 pages to be exact. The reason the claim was being denied was because the doctor’s notes were not legible. We now have three completely different reasons why the claim has been denied and I still haven’t been granted an audience with the great and powerful grand pooba of appeals. I have also patiently explained to each person I have spoken to, what was done and why.
I called the office of the admitting doctor and the person who deals with insurance there got out the notes and found she couldn’t read them either. The ball is in their court now.

I wonder if Michael Moore will be doing a sequel – “Sicko II” – I may have a story for him.

Thanks for all the good wishes and prayers. We made it through the first round of tests and we are waiting for them to schedule the stress test. We were given a lot if information to digest and we were both exhausted last night. The side effects of anti-rejection drugs are pretty scary and I know Dale is kind of trying to balance it all out in his mind. It would free him up from the dialysis and the diet would be better but the medications come with a chance of diabetes, nausea, lymphoma, melanoma, infection, and a host of other not so nice things. They have to be taken for the rest of your life or you lose the kidney. The actual surgery is the least scary part for him.

The traffic was terrible and at one point we actually managed to drive 8 miles in 45 minutes. It started pouring between Greenvile and Rockwall and my windshield wipers staged a protest and just quit for about 15 minutes. I was thankful for the mini-van in front of me that gave me tail-lights to follow till the wipers started working again. They have done this off and on for awhile and also refuse to turn off sometimes. They have NEVER done it when I have been near a mechanic of course. Mechanics and medicine – I’ll stick with computers.