Tuesday 6 December 2011

Taking Action: Day One

After the previous blog post I mentioned that it'd be great if this week turned out to be positive. As nothing happens on its own, I decided to jump straight into the action and try to get as many things done this week as possible.

Today I first went to the dentist to make an appointment there after their constant failures to call me back. Tomorrow morning I have an appointment. Score. Next I went to make an appointment with my family doctor because my knee wasn't feeling quite alright yet. Made an appointment for Thursday morning. After that I went to the local office of my insurance company.

First I discussed the letter I had received from them involving the coverage overview for the last bill I had sent them: the German hospital bill. As I suspected they had not paid the bill, instead rejecting it despite assurances before that I just had to send in the bill to get it settled. Apparently the person who handled the bill didn't check my file and note that I got granted coverage for the surgery. This should be corrected soon now.

Next I handed in the bill I got for the electrolysis therapy (800+ EURO for the past few months) and confirmed that the request had been permanently denied. When I noted to the lady who was helping me, who has helped me many times before and who is following my story as well, that I would be passing things on to my lawyer now, she told me that I could also contact the SKGZ, the Stichting Klachten en Geschillen Zorgverzekeringen, an organization which handles complaints from costumers regarding their health insurance. They offer this service for free, so I decided to try this first. Later this week I'll get mailed further details and I'll have to send in copies of all the relevant communications.

That settled things with regard to items I could take care of today, I thought. That was until my knee suddenly started hurting a lot during the late afternoon and later turned almost completely numb to the touch. It reminded me strongly of what I had gone through with the same leg in May of this year after the beating I received from the police. After a while it got so bad that I had to call the ER for an appointment and head over there.

The good news is that I probably won't need surgery on my knee. The bad news is that I have an infection in my knee and things are inflamed right now, causing the pain. The doctor who treated me was puzzled by the re-occurrence of the same symptoms after a number of months, until he noted that a cracked meniscus could be responsible. I got prescribed anti-inflammatory medication (ibuprofen 600 mg) and I'll have to get a referral for an MRI scan of the knee from my family doctor. I got asked to describe what had happened to my knee during the beating (not mentioning it was caused by the police, focusing on the relevant parts only), and admitted that I didn't know it exactly but that according to my mother I was forced repeatedly with my knees against the ground. Blunt impact force, in other words, directly on the meniscus. Depending on the results of the MRI scan I may decide to file a complaint with the police.

At least I now know what the probable cause of the issues with my knee and leg are and can work on fixing things. It's also important progress.

I also got an email from that one German company who had offered me a job that I had failed their programming test and won't be invited for an interview. Considering the poor state of said programming assignment in terms of requirements I'm quite glad I won't be working for them and wasn't hesitant to tell them this in my last email to them. I'll be focusing on the projects my awesome friend Trevor, who really is incredibly patient with silly me, and maybe finally manage to turn them into successful commercial projects very soon now.

Finally, tomorrow I'm expecting to receive the replacement for my broken Corsair headset and I firmly intend to finally do another video log entry. Run away scared now, my little lambs~


Maya

1 comment:

Russ Nelson said...

Knees suck. The main problem is insufficient blood flow. Best thing you can do for them (besides the NSAIDs you're already taking) is to apply ice for twenty minutes every couple of hours (I don't know what that is in metric -- try googling for the conversion factor). The cold causes your body to try to warm it up by supplying extra blood. Also ... also ... also ... very important: keep your knees over your toes. Twisting the knee concentrates too much stress on one side of the tendon and causes torn ACLs in women at 5X the rate of men. If you see a young athletic woman on crutches you can be 100% sure that she tore her ACL. If your knee twinges, check for knees over the toes.