Bone Scans, Dr Demento & Kid Butts

Got a call from my liver transplant coordinator this morning. She’s hyperventilating far more over the MRI results than Dr. Liver was, and wants the bone scan and Chest CT done ASAP. I called the hospital and they could scedule a bone scan as early as tomorrow morning, so I made the appointment. I won’t even have the doctor’s authorization in hand yet, so I called Dr. Liver’s office and made arrangements to have a copy faxed to the radiology department by tomorrow morning. This, of course, means that I get to miss yet another day of work. Tormorrow was when I was going to start arranging to go on disability, so this throws the rest of my plans a bit askew.

I’m still waiting to get an appointment for the Chest CT. I left my number with them a couple of hours ago, but they’ve not yet called back. If I still haven’t heard by tomorrow, I walk over and set it up myself in person. I’m then supposed to arrange to have the films from both the bone scan and CT forwarded to Big City Hospital for them to read themselves. Can we say “pain in the butt” boys and girls? I’m supposed to pay for Federal Express to do the shipping because the hospitals have no courier service for themselves between their different sites. Besides the additional financial outlay, the hospital I use is simply a suburban extension of Big City Hospital; you’d think they’d trust their own staff to read the films for them. *grumble*

I got my latest set of statements from Blue Cross, and found that I’ve been denied coverage for of $1,000 of services from my last paracentesis. The problem is that I can’t figure out what these services are supposed to be for. The lab work, albumin IV, and procedure are all listed on the statement and shown as covered. This additional item doesn’t fit in with anything I know was done for me. When I go to the hospital to get the bone scan tomorrow I’ll take the statement with me, and wander over to the billing office when the test is complete. I’d like to get this straightened out before they set the creditors loose on me.

I picked up two Dr. Demento CD’s, one of which has a good proportion of my most favorite demented hits like “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “Fish Heads,” and “Marvin the Paranoid Android”. The second disk is devoted to SciFi parodies and has Weird Al Yankovich’s spoof on Star Wars Episode one sung to the tune of “American Pie” (My, my, this here Anikin guy, May be Vader sometime later, Now he’s just a small fry. He left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye, Sayin’,”Soon I’m gonna be a Jedi.”), “Star Trekkin’,” and “Do the Picard.” The perfect way to break in my car’s brand new CD player.

More moonflower plants continue to work their heads above the soil. I have to say, they don’t look as healthy as I’d like. Their first leaves have a sort of yellow cast to them that the morning glories don’t have, and I worry that perhaps they aren’t doing as well in that spot. All I can do is wait and send them positive vibes right now, I guess.

The knuckle-headed punk skate-boarding teenager next door to us continues to throw his cigarette butts in our garden. The kid had his bike parked outside the front door yesterday, and I was sorely tempted to leave the most recent offending butt crushed on the seat of his bike, but I resisted. If I’m going to seek revenge it needs to be far more subtle than that. No point in escalating this thing. All I’d really like is to get him to just stop using my garden as his ash tray.

*sigh* I’m “on’hold” now for my doctor’s office yet again. The CT people called back and demanded script-in-hand before they’ll make the appointment for my chest CT. Now I have to call Dr. Liver and give him a specific phone number to fax the CT script to only. All I can say is that I’m glad this isn’t an emergency; I’d dead before this was all arranged.