Aetna has sent us 6 benefits cards in the past 3 days. Whyyy?

January 22, 2012 17:51 via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@rachelober

Rachel Ober

It was really weird and awkward whenever my husband then texted me later and said, “Aetna called, they saw your Twitter post and want you to call them back.”

Initially I thought to myself, “Uh oh, they must be pissed I said something? What did I say?? Am I going to get sued?”

When I got back in contact with them, a friendly lady answered and said that Aetna had noticed my Tweet, researched why I had received so many ID cards and wanted to let me know why.

Isn’t that freaking cool that companies out there are actively looking at their customers feedback and want to help you versus just trying to shut you up? Kudos, Aetna!

I’ve only donated blood once so far in my life. The other time I tried to, I was deferred since I’d been to a tropical country and I could have contracted malaria. Now that I’ve donated blood and found to have the universal donor type (O-Negative,) they want more of me!

I’m glad to help, really, but let me explain about what happened the first (and last) time I donated blood.

There was a blood drive at work on April 1st of this year. I’d never donated blood and I thought today would be a decent day to do it. I had ate well, was a bit nervous, but hey, I’d be saving a life.

I went upstairs before lunch and filled out the paperwork to donate blood. It had been a few years since I’d traveled to a malaria-ridden country so I was good on that front. I had enough iron in my blood and my blood pressure was perfect. Awesome!

They bring me to the back and sit me down. I asked the nurse if I could lay down since I sometimes get dizzy and I wanted to take precautions after I heard my boss’ story about donating blood. Everything was going well, I looked away when they pricked me since that is usually when I get nauseous about blood. I was there for a while and was almost forgotten about as the blood pumped from my vein into the bag hanging by the side. The machine beeped when it was full and they finally came over to take a look at me. I sat up slowly and for the most part felt fine.

I wandered over to the table by the entrance to partake in the apple juice and cookies. I was just polishing off the last sugar cookie when things began to go downhill. I suddenly became seriously nauseous and the world gradually became black and soon I found myself laying on my side exposing the innards of my stomach to the crowd. After I regained my facilities and rolled back over I drank some Coke and laid there for a while. My quick trip to donate blood was soon turning out to take much longer. I started to feel better and said I was good enough to go back to work. And I was… for about 2 hours. I ate lunch and generally felt fine.

In the mid-afternoon I started to feel real dizzy. I went to the restroom and the world started getting fuzzy again, like it did earlier, and like it does when I have low blood sugar. I ended up passing out in the bathroom a few times and the last time someone found me. They retrieved a nurse and a wheelchair from upstairs to embarrassingly carry me back to the nurse’s station.

They put me on a recliner and a laid bored by myself and they would come over once and a while to ask how I was doing. I told them I was “tingly” in my fingers and toes. Apparently this was a red flag for them (later, I learned it was not, I just felt that way because I was hyperventilating) and I had to be rushed to the emergency room.

I had never ridden in an Ambulance before. Adam is an EMT and I’ve been in an ambulance before, while parked. This was an entirely different experience. For one thing, I was strapped to a stretcher since they didn’t want to be held liable if I passed out and conked my head on the way out of the building. Overall the ambulance experience was a pleasant one. The techs were hilarious and took my mind off the impending emergency room visit and hospital bill.

Oh, didn’t I mention? It just so happened that I learned the day before that my health insurance was canceled due to some mess-up in the paperwork. I would spend the better part of April and May fighting with my insurance carrier and my past employer about my health benefits and payment for my hospital stay – but that’s another story!

I ended up staying at the hospital for the rest of the day until around 9 o’clock when they finally released me after a couple EKGs, blood tests and a tasty saline drip. Yum. I had to wait forever to go through these seemingly easy and quick tests since the emergency room was apparently very full that day. Lucky me!

Eventually the doctor came to tell me the test results and basically the gist was everything was inconclusive. I was just weak after donating blood and that happens to people sometimes. If I want to do it again, I should do it on a weekend and eat a big, fatty breakfast beforehand and plan to chill for the rest of the day afterward. Adam had rushed to see me at the ER about an hour after I arrived and the poor guy had to wait uncomfortably by my side while waiting. We didn’t get food, but luckily I had a few things left in my lunch bag that I was able to carry with me, but it didn’t help Adam too much since it was Passover. Sigh.

When they let us leave, I managed to wander home back to Westchester myself and even went to work the next day because I’m a masochist. I fully recovered my strength by the Monday after.

I don’t mean to be cruel or bitter with my story, and I really would like to donate blood in the future. But until I get some decent health insurance and have the time to spend all day exhausted after the appointment, I hope you will understand the reason for me ignoring your calls.

I got Isabella from her breeder last June, so now Izzie and I have been best buds for more than a year now. She was due for her yearly checkup and rabies and parvo yearly vaccinations. I had told the vet that she has been bitten by a lot of ticks since we moved into our apartment and that I wanted the Lyme disease test done on her just in case.

The test he did checked for four tick borne diseases (ehrlichiosis, babesiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme Disease.) After a few minutes (the test was to take at least 10) he already started to see in the test that it was coming up positive for anti-bodies responding to a A. phagocytophilum infection (part of the ehrlichiosis test.)

This bacteria causes lethargy and joint pain in the dog. Luckily, Izzie hasn’t shown any of those symptoms yet, but the vet said that if left untreated should could be put in a lot of pain over the years. Why do that to my best friend? The next step was either to watch and wait, do more blood work to see if it is indeed a large infection ($200-$300) or hit her with the antibiotics anyway ($30.) I think you already know which one I chose. I am not sure why my vet would even suggest more costly blood work when a simple, cheap, antibiotic will clear it right up. :-p

So, I throw in 1 1/2 pills into some peanut butter once a day for her and I’ll have to do it for a month. Hopefully, she’ll be A-OK. But now what am I supposed to do about the crazy amount of ticks around my apartment? I talked to some of the other dog owners in the apartment complex and they have all been complaining about the amount of ticks around. We all use a flea and tick treatment on our dogs but we still see them. One lady called up the manufacturer and complained and they responded that the treatment is 99.99% effective. If the dog is getting ticks it means that you have an INFESTATION of ticks in your complex. UGH.

I think I am going to have to formally complain to the management today and see that they spray around the entire complex and not just around your own apartment. Apparently they only spray bug killer if you request and only around your apartment not the whole complex. Too bad for us owners that walk our dogs all over the place!

I have almost half a dozen “draft” entries here in WordPress but I haven’t been able to finish any of them due to the massive migraine I’d been babying the past week. Well, you should be happy to know that I have since been cured and can now enter in this entry before I can continue on with my “Females in Tech” series.

I’ve suffered with migraines and neck pain and Temporomandibular joint disorder syndrome for the better part of my adult life. It wasn’t until I met my (get ready for it) father’s college buddy’s wife who is a physical therapist that I started to feel noticeable and immense relief of my chronic pain.

She practices a therapy called Cranialsacral Therapy. Now, I’ll preface what I say with this warning, yes, I am aware that some people are of the opinion that the therapy and especially the developer of this therapy is crackpot. However, I can’t deny that this therapy and Linda Hanson have changed my life.

If you take a look at the therapy’s Wikipedia entry, first you’ll note that the article’s neutrality is disputed. But you can get an idea about what the therapy is said to do. Now, I’m not a physical therapist, nor will I ever try to pretend I know enough about the body to be an expert, but I think the therapy most likely works well because it basically gives the body’s fascia and muscles a chance to rest and “reset” themselves. My PT does not use a lot of pressure on my body at all but I noticed immediately after my first session that I was “one-thousand” times better than before I first laid on the therapy table and my body has since felt so much better after repeated sessions.

So, like I mentioned above, I had been experiencing a massive migraine since at least Thursday and I went last night to see Linda. She literally just touched my forehead and could feel how much tension I had been keeping. I hadn’t noticed, but it was difficult for me to even nod my head down because the muscles on the back of my neck and brain-stem area were so tight! It took a good hour, but by taking over the work of the muscles, Linda was finally able to get that area of the head to RELAX and my migraine was just about gone. You know you have a good session when the area right underneath your head, where your skull and spine sort of “meet,” is all mushy and relaxed.

Anyway, that is my story of success for this week. I hope I can keep my head more relaxed enough to keep up with my work at my job and my writing in this blog.