X is for X-ray
Of course X is for x-ray. What else would it be? Though I guess I took some liberties with W so probably all bets are off.
Ah, the x-ray. I have never had an x-ray before! Take that back, I’ve had x-rays at the dentist’s office but never an x-ray to determine if I have broken a bone or for anything health related. That isn’t to say that I’ve not broken a bone. I’m pretty sure that I’ve broken a toe. But, I read that there’s nothing that a doctor can do for a broken toe so I just bandaged it and waited for it to heal.
As for the kids, besides for the dentist, they’ve each had one x-ray in all of their busy, active lives! And out of the three x-rays, only one revealed a fracture. Jacob broke his wrist before a soccer game during warm ups. He was in middle school and the boys were basically goofing off. Ugh. He was not in a lot of pain initially but right after it happened, he came over to Donnie and me and said he didn’t think that his wrist was OK. It most definitely was not!
I took him to our local children’s hospital which is a smaller satellite of Dayton Children’s hospital. From there, they sent us to the main Dayton Children’s in Dayton. I don’t remember the exact reason why we had to go there but we did. We had a follow up appointment the following week where a doctor told us that Jacob would be in his cast for the next twelve weeks. WHAT? This was in late spring so it looked like Jacob would be in a cast for a good part of the summer.
Donnie told the story of the long cast wearing to a friend- she’s a nurse at a large sports orthopedic practice in Cincinnati called Beacon. The doctor that she works for is the main orthopedic doctor for the Cincinnati Reds. In fact, she, our nurse friend, goes down to Arizona for spring training each year with the Reds as part of the health team for the players. She said that the amount of time that Dayton Children’s said J would need to be in a cast for a standard break seemed really long. She told Donnie to get a copy of the x-ray of the break to her and she’d show it to the doctor. Time was a bit of the essence so when Children’s initially told me that I would have to wait 48 hours for a copy of the x-ray, I had to go all HIPAA on them and told them that per law, I needed, and was legally entitled to, the x-ray within 24 hours (Donnie told me about the 24 hour thing- I had no idea). That got me the x-ray within 24 hours!
We got the copy to our friend who showed it to the doctor she worked for who said that he would have to re- x-ray the wrist/ arm to see what was it looked like. But based on the initial x-ray, he believed that the break would mend within a much shorter time than Dayton Children’s had told us and that Jacob would only need to be in cast for five or six weeks. So, that is what transpired. Beacon took off the cast that extended beyond his elbow that he would have had on for twelve weeks and instead put on a shorter, lighter cast that he only had to wear for five or six weeks.
I was telling one of my good friends about the story. She is also a nurse- she used to be a NICU nurse at one of the large regional hospitals. She explained it to me this way: both practices, the hospital and Beacon orthopedics had the same main goal in mind: for a patient’s broken bone to heal. From there, the goals diverge. Dayton Children’s serving a wide variety of clientele, basically any child who walks or is carried in the door, is subject to many lawsuits. To that end, it will always error on the side of extra care- extra time, extra big cast, etc. A private orthopedic practice’s secondary goal is to get their patients healed as quickly as possible. They assist many athletes (though not all are) and the goal is to get the athlete back on the field or court or whatever as soon as possible. To that end, they will do what they need to for healing but they are going to take a different approach- they aren’t going to error on the side of excess time in a cast for example.
We were so grateful to find out about Beacon! Jacob was healed and out of his cast in a few weeks rather than twelve. It ended up costing us more money, of course. We paid for two initial services- that of casting Jacob and of x-rays at both places. Beacon was SO MUCH cheaper in both of those fees which initially surprised me. In fact, I received both bills in the mail for the x-rays within a day of each other. Beacon’s bill was not just a little bit cheaper but way more cheap than the bill from Children’s for the same service. We actually asked our nurse friend at Beacon if we were given a friends/ family rate- it was that much disparate from the Dayton Children’s bill. Our Beacon nurse friend said that, no, we were not given a special rate. The price we were charged was the normal price for the service.
I told my other nurse friend about this. She said that what most people don’t understand is that for every person who walks in a hospital’s doors needing treatment with insurance, five or six walk in without insurance. Those without have to be treated so those with insurance pay more. It doesn’t matter that our health insurance premium is expensive and our coverage poor- we have health insurance so we have to pay more. This was before Obamacare so maybe things have changed? (But likely not. All I know about Obamacare is “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” proved to be an untruth and that before Obamacare our premiums were high and after it came into law, our premiums became absurdly high).
Anyway... Jacob healed. He wasn’t in a cast for twelve weeks. We paid an obscene amount of money for all the medical bills, most notably those from Dayton Children´s. End of story!!!
Just do remember, regarding x-rays, that you are entitled to a copy of yours and/ or your kids’ under HIPAA within twenty four hours of requesting it. Also keep in mind orthopedic practices for breaks and scrapes ;).
Bub in his Beacon cast
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