Sweating the Small Stuff

If there's anything that irritates me more than breast cancer it's dealing with insurance. Don't get me wrong, I'm truly thankful that I have it. It just takes a lot of work to take advantage of it sometimes.
 
It started with our medical insurance company having absolutely no record of us right when my surgeon, Rick's surgeon and the radiology practice where I was supposed to have an MRI were all calling to verify coverage. My employer had changed insurance companies as of Jan. 1. I was diagnosed on Jan. 2. Rick was scheduled for hernia repair on Jan.10. The new insurance carrier apparently had some kind of mix-up in loading my employer's records. So they deleted us all and it was days, I honestly don't know how many days, until they reloaded our records correctly. In the interim it appeared that we simply didn't have any insurance, except dental, which is not a lot of help when you're dealing with hernias and breast cancer.

That necessitated lots of time spent on the phone getting nothing but frustrated. Finally that issue was resolved the day before Rick's surgery, much to our relief.

Then it was time to certify for my time off of work for my surgery and recovery. Yes I have sick time, but to use more than a few days here or there, you have to get it certified as FMLA or Short Term Disability so that the absences are "job protected." I don't know if this is as critical for salaried employees, but I am hourly and work for a call center where any time off is closely scrutinized. Whether it's FMLA or short term disability, you have to deal with, once again, an insurance company.

So I started by calling to open an FMLA claim, then found out that this was not what I needed. I needed short term disability. So after getting my FMLA paperwork, filling out and signing my part of it and getting that to my surgeon's office, I had to call them back, ask them to shred it and told them I'd be getting the new paperwork to them.  This misunderstanding was probably my fault as much as it was anyone else's.

Then the real frustration began. Last week I called the insurance company that handles both FMLA and short term disability, told them I needed to cancel the FMLA claim and open a new claim for short term disability. A nice lady named Brenda said she had cancelled the FMLA, then she transferred my call to a friendly fellow named Frank (OK, I admit it, I love alliteration) who spent about fifteen minutes on the phone with me taking lots of information for my short term disability claim. I got off the phone feeling that I was at least now making some progress after my initial setback and loss of time.

There was only one problem. Neither Brenda nor Frank did what they told me they had done. I waited in vain for my new short term disability claim to appear on the website when I logged in. I waited for paperwork to arrive in the mail. Finally today I called back and was told that the FMLA claim could only be cancelled if I requested it in writing, a little detail Brenda failed to mention. And there was no short term disability claim pending. So once again I started over from scratch, I think. Surgery is just a week away.

Lord, please give me grace for the little things.