International Medical Insurance

It was 1:00 a.m. Tuesday morning when the right-side of my chest throbbed with each heartbeat, awakening me suddenly from my sleep. I tried to sit up but my right arm was numb and uncooperative. I rolled out of bed only to fall to the floor, realizing that my shirt was drenched with sweat. I tried once again to sit up, but I was too dizzy to make sense of what was going on. My eyes blurred from the salt stinging sweat and the darkness all around me, I struggled to try to find the phone. I rolled left and I rolled to the right, only to find myself stuck there on my right side, barely the strength to upright myself.

I concentrated on all that I had done with my life in the darkness and uncertainty that followed and wondered what have I done to deserve such a fate. Am I do die here all alone with no one to see me crossover and no one to morn my immediate departure? Hours must have passed before I came to and found myself in the emergency room with plastic tubing going into my nostrils, metal needles in my arm, patches on my chest with wires going here and there all the way down to my legs. When I looked up the glaring examination lamps with their shiny aluminum covers blinded me on wakening and the bags of fluids hanging over my head did nothing to ensure that I was going to be alright.

The first words I heard from anyone since my sudden awakening with chest pain was the woman from the admissions office of the hospital asking me for my medical insurance information. Thank goodness I was able to speak and more importantly recognize that she wasn't my doctor. I gave her my medical insurance information and she didn't seem to pleased and walked away without saying goodbye or "I hope you feel better." To her, I was just another person in the grand scheme of her workload that early morning. Throughout the ensuing four days, I had medications for pain, Nitroglycerin and Morphine. I had an EKG, a chest X-ray, a CT Scan of my neck, chest and groin and if, that wasn't enough, I had an MRI of my head, neck and chest to include an echocardiogram of my heart and a sonogram of my legs. I was poked, prodded and had more than one orifice explored, only to be told that I had a passing blood clot in my right lung and that I didn't have a heart attack.

Over those four days in the emergency room and upstairs in the Cardiac Unit of the hospital, I had seen a transporter, an admission clerk, a patient care technician, an licensed practical nurse, a dietary aide, a nutritionist, a registered nurse, a nurse practitioner, a pulmonologist, a cardiologist, an Internal Medicine Specialist and a host of Allied Health Practitioners, ranging from Nursing Assistants to Phlebotomist-folks who draw your blood. Most of these folks make a decent living and have an array of benefits associated with working at such a fine hospital, so as I am laying there in bed, I began to ponder just how much all of this is going to cost me and more importantly, how much of the total hospital bill would the medical insurance cover?

When I saw the admitting physician on my fourth day in the hospital, I sure was eager to go home. It sure is difficult to get any sleep in the hospital because there is always someone coming in about once a hour in the cardiac unit to take your blood pressure, your temperature, your blood, your urine (to measure your input and output)or listen to your lung sounds for fluid buildup. This was my first hospitalization in all my years on this planet and I must admit, you haven't lived until you've been hospitalized. I say this because, it is the ultimate in humility. You are no longer the master of your life, because when you are in the hospital, you are at the mercy of people you don't know, who may or may not have your best interest at heart and worse still, who may be competent at what they're doing or Lord forbid, just doing what they're doing to make ends meet and not really have passion for their work or empathy for the patient.

I'm blessed to have survived my hospitalization and I am equally blessed to have gone through the experience and lived to tell it. Going to the hospital is one thing and getting out alive and unharmed or infected is another. There are many medical insurance plans available and it's hard to know which medical insurance plan is right for you. For me, I found that the Blue Cross Blue Shield Plan that I had was utterly of no use abroad and was grateful for the International Medical Insurance and Pacific Prime Health Insurance that I carried. Between the two of them, the financial burden of my short hospitalization was for the most part taken care of and I am free to roam the Earth once again.