CT scan results

No joke I once slapped the hand of my doctor out of my mouth when getting a strep test. It was purely instinctual, happened before I even knew what I was doing. There is no way I can do an endoscopy.

MAC just means Monitored Anesthesia Care. It means you'll be sedated and there will be monitoring of your vitals all the while. Twilight sedation is a form of MAC, ie, a form of anesthesia.

You won't have to "swallow" the camera. They will put a bite guard in your mouth to keep you from biting down on the probe and breaking it or breaking a tooth. They'll put that in right before administering the sedation. Then you'll be out like a light bulb until you wake up with everything finished.

I’ve had several different types of sedation also. One I’m sure was referred to as twilight. It still put me out. I’m a big baby about this too — or I used to be anyway. I’ve had so many now that I kind of look forward to drifting off. But I remember being nervous as heck when they were about to shoot the medication in (you’ll already have an IV and they’ll use a syringe to inject the medication into your line. I can taste/smell it, sometimes with a little sting. I remember almost panicking—- and then I drifted off. And never felt a thing or anymore fear until they woke me up.

Wow! That REALLY sucks. I'm glad you were going to go through with it though!

I once drank an entire prep in the hospital and my GI came in in the morning and told me I have c diff, no scope. I wasn't happy.

I feel my insurance company should have let me know. I’m literally being held hostage by my insurance company. If my doctor wouldn’t have called me I would have just been billed $6K if my claim was denied, without a peep from my insurance company. I called and let my displeasure be known.

They didn’t officially deny. But they are taking weeks to approve. Since my procedure was for today I wasn’t risking denial and a $6,500 bill. Their reasoning was because I haven’t been treated with acid blockers yet so it needed additional review and additional approvals. Apparently, they would rather put bandaids on my symptoms with drugs instead of allowing me to figure out why I am having symptoms in the first place.

Like I said, I am confident they are stalling until my deductibles start over in a few weeks.

It is really odd. However, I don't think they would stall until deductible starts over. Tons of people get expensive procedures done on purpose before the end of the year.

Well my insurance company officially denied my procedure today. What can I even do here? I’m being held hostage by them. Can’t get diagnosed.

Call your dr. They can file an appeal. But while they do that do some investigation to see if there’s a way to force them to not stall because it sure seems like that’s what they’re doing. Did there use to be a clause in policies that allowed you to rollover a deductible in cases like this? I thought I recalled that there used to be— but that was years ago. You could call an independent insurance agent and ask what your options are or speak to your HR department.

Wow! Just wow! That doesn’t seem legal to me but I’d bet they have lotsa loopholes. Might not hurt to contact insurance commissioner or something like.

It sounds like the doctor tried to get approval original because of my stomach pain and what was found on CT scan. The colonoscopy was approved but the endoscopy was not. The reason the insurance company gave is because I was not treated with PPI for 30 days. So my doctor tried resubmitting with heartburn as a symptom (which I originally had anyway, but don’t anymore) but the insurance company said they won’t review until 45 days passed from original denial. I am going to have my colonoscopy on the 20th and maybe I’ll get lucky and the reason for my stomach pain is found with just that test.

But my doctor is pretty upset at the insurance company and was even venting a little bit about it to me. Said they just don’t understand we may be dealing with 2 different problems. He wants to check my Colin because of CT scan calling out thickened bowel wall (he said that might be reason for stomach pain anyway) but wants to do the endoscopy to cover all bases because of the colonoscopy doesn’t identify reason for stomach pain he would have to do endoscopy next anyway.

Idk. Insurance companies are crooks and I should be well in my way to treatment already.

Yeah that makes no sense. I’d like to think they are really trying to check doctors for doing unnecessary medications and procedures but I know it’s just about the bottom line dollars.