I seem to enjoy these more frequently than anyone else I know. It's definitely given me a certain opinion of the entire industry but I figured I'd post my latest example so I can be told that I'm wrong yet again.
Have a ganglion cyst on the top of my right toe. I've had other ganglions and they're not usually that big of a deal but this bad boy likes to get cranky if I wear shoes and gets real cranky if I wear boots and go out hiking around on my buddies farm which I do a few times a month. I've been draining it myself for the past couple of years after paying something like $600 to watch the doctor do it the first time. Takes 60 seconds, doesn't really hurt and hasn't caused any issues as I'm pretty careful when it comes to sterilization and infection prevention. A few months ago it started rapid fire blowing up so I decided to go back to the podiatrist. We discussed it and decided on surgical removal and schedule a pre-op visit which was last week with the surgery schedule for this Wednesday morning.
Friday afternoon around 3:30pm I get a call from the surgery center. Pretty typical pre-op questioning and I mentioned that I have intermittent A fib when she asked. Apparently no one had asked to that point because I have no reason to conceal it and the lady told me I was going to have to get clearance from my cardiologist and and EKG before surgery. I informed her that wasn't happening as I was planning to be out of town yesterday through tomorrow evening. She calls the podiatrist and they called and left me a voicemail later Friday.
They called again this morning and I was told that they had scheduled an appointment for me to get an EKG tomorrow morning. I'm at the farm so I told her that wasn't happening. She said that I would have to schedule the EKG and call them back to reschedule surgery. I told her that was fine and that I'd get around to it when I have time as I've got a lot of irons in the fire at the moment.
45 minutes later she calls back and now they can do the surgery with a local anesthetic rather than general. It was the anesthesiologist who was requiring the clearance and EKG which makes perfect sense to me. What I cannot understand is why on earth I would need general anesthetic for an outpatient, 30 minute surgery on my toe? It was apparently a major issue until they learned that I wasn't going to rearrange my schedule and run around like an idiot jumping through hoops to fit their schedule and was willing to walk away from the procedure for now. All of a sudden we don't need to involve my cardiologist, another visit for an EKG before surgery and I won't be making an anesthesiologist's mortgae payment this month.
Anyone on the inside who can explain this to me so that I don't feel like I narrowly escaped a completely unnecessary, potentially dangerous and ridiculously expensive medical procedure (general anesthetic)?
Have a ganglion cyst on the top of my right toe. I've had other ganglions and they're not usually that big of a deal but this bad boy likes to get cranky if I wear shoes and gets real cranky if I wear boots and go out hiking around on my buddies farm which I do a few times a month. I've been draining it myself for the past couple of years after paying something like $600 to watch the doctor do it the first time. Takes 60 seconds, doesn't really hurt and hasn't caused any issues as I'm pretty careful when it comes to sterilization and infection prevention. A few months ago it started rapid fire blowing up so I decided to go back to the podiatrist. We discussed it and decided on surgical removal and schedule a pre-op visit which was last week with the surgery schedule for this Wednesday morning.
Friday afternoon around 3:30pm I get a call from the surgery center. Pretty typical pre-op questioning and I mentioned that I have intermittent A fib when she asked. Apparently no one had asked to that point because I have no reason to conceal it and the lady told me I was going to have to get clearance from my cardiologist and and EKG before surgery. I informed her that wasn't happening as I was planning to be out of town yesterday through tomorrow evening. She calls the podiatrist and they called and left me a voicemail later Friday.
They called again this morning and I was told that they had scheduled an appointment for me to get an EKG tomorrow morning. I'm at the farm so I told her that wasn't happening. She said that I would have to schedule the EKG and call them back to reschedule surgery. I told her that was fine and that I'd get around to it when I have time as I've got a lot of irons in the fire at the moment.
45 minutes later she calls back and now they can do the surgery with a local anesthetic rather than general. It was the anesthesiologist who was requiring the clearance and EKG which makes perfect sense to me. What I cannot understand is why on earth I would need general anesthetic for an outpatient, 30 minute surgery on my toe? It was apparently a major issue until they learned that I wasn't going to rearrange my schedule and run around like an idiot jumping through hoops to fit their schedule and was willing to walk away from the procedure for now. All of a sudden we don't need to involve my cardiologist, another visit for an EKG before surgery and I won't be making an anesthesiologist's mortgae payment this month.
Anyone on the inside who can explain this to me so that I don't feel like I narrowly escaped a completely unnecessary, potentially dangerous and ridiculously expensive medical procedure (general anesthetic)?
