August 30, 2010

PT Progress and Insurance “Love” Letters

Tomorrow, I will not be surprised one bit if people are calling me Egor, as I drag my useless leg around behind me. I can't recall what movie that creepy, monster dude is from but tomorrow I will become him. I'm half way there already.

Yes, that's right everyone, I had another PT appointment today. I should probably be happy, overjoyed in fact, that I'm moving along as quickly as I am when it comes to progress from appointment to appointment. Today, I went from riding the bike for 10 minutes to 15 minutes. My leg press weights went from 20 lbs. to 40 lbs. And then my PT added all kinds of crazy squat business that made me want to scream out a long and dramatic, "NOOOOOO, PUUUHHHLLEEAAASSSEE, NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

But I didn't. Instead I stood on the squishy rectangle thing, faced the metal beam in front of me and attempted to do squats. They felt awkward and weird and I kept asking the assistant guy if I was doing them correctly. He told me to pretend I was sitting down on a chair, but every time I did that I had to grab the beam in front of me for balance. I joked that he had that balance ball behind me so that if I fell on my butt, it would bounce me back up.

It took a while for me to get through three sets of not-at-all-deep-squats. I figured I had earned my stims and cryo-cuff time, but I was wrong. Next it was circus trick time. They had me stand on a curved piece of foam, barely bigger than my sneaker, while balancing on it on my bad leg and doing one leg squats. Not only were they one leg only squats. I had to hold and count to five when I got to the most bendy point. Two sets of 15 seemed like extreme and unusual torture and it took me a while to get through all of them. When I was finished, it was onto the bike for 15 minutes. When I finally got to ice my leg and hang out on the table again, I was one happy and exhausted girl.

Before leaving, I also got striped. . .

For over a month now, I've had some serious pain on the opposite side of my leg, post surgery. My ortho thinks it's just cranky muscle from the immobilizer, but after weeks of trying to rub it and work on that spot, it is still sore to the touch and it just doesn't seem to be getting better. My PT thinks that it's blood and post-surgery yuckiness in there (he used more technical words than that of course), so he put this pink stripe down my leg and it's supposed to lift the skin up and get that junk moving along.

I guess I'm wearing pants to teach this week.

As we left the PT area today, Lil C asked if we could take the elevator. I usually take the stairs back down to the parking lot, to practice alternating legs and doing so without looking all crazy and out of alignment. But you know, Lil C REALLY wanted to take the elevator, so we did. After an hour and 45 minutes of PT, I can say I earned that one flight elevator ride. Truly, I did.

Here's the leg so far. The incision is healing up nicely now that the dissolvable stitch that decided it didn't want to dissolve has been removed. Yeah, that felt great getting it taken out, just so you know.

But overall, I have to say that this stupid muscle pain and the discomfort that normally comes with a healing incision and bone wound is 1000 times better than the pain I dealt with on a daily basis from that screw working its way back out of my leg. Having it gone is a wonderful thing.

The not-so-wonderful thing was waiting for me in my mailbox when I arrived back home. I'd like to send a great big shout-out to Cigna for the lovely medical statement that arrived at my home today. It says that almost $2500 worth of my surgeon's costs are not being covered by them, despite the fact that they said pre-surgery that my surgeon's costs would be covered, just not the alloderm. This is all despite the fact that I already paid $225 in co-insurance, and $950 for the alloderm that they wouldn't cover because apparently it's not "medically necessary" to give a girl a little cushion when she could simply be kneeling on bone her whole life.

Cigna, if I could kick you in the head, I totally would.