westcliffe01
Veteran Member
The subject of modern medicine, as we have all recently experienced with our "pandemic" has become politicized and unscientific in the extreme. I am today less convinced than ever that "corporate medicine" as enshrined in our local hospitals, drug companies and various practicioners (doctors, dentists, optometrists etc) have our welfare even close to the top of their priorities.
Some of my personal experience (sorry if some of this is TMI, mods delete if appropriate). In 2010 at the age of 42 I had a kidney stone incident. The stone was of a composition and a size that it had exited the kidney and not yet made it to the bladder. The flow on that side was restricted and it really announced itself when the kidney on that side went into spasm. Worst pain I have ever felt. It was a Sat morning, all the offices closed so I toughed it out to see if I could see the doctor on Monday. Well I never made it till Monday, I could not sit, stand or lie in any position for more than a few minutes and nothing we had in the medicine cabinet had any effect on it. So Sunday evening Im loaded up and taken to the emergency room. Eventually they decide a CAT scan is the only way they are going to pinpoint the cause of the problem. Im wheeled in and out the cat scan room in 5 minutes. The digital files are sent to Australia (since the doctors who would do the interpretation are al home in their beds) and a contract doc in OZ looks at the file and issues the diagnosis - Kidney stone.
I am then bundled up with a prescription for a serious muscle relaxant to stop the kidneys spasm and sent home and told to "drink lots of water and pee through a tea strainer". I get put on the schedule of the single urologist working for the hospital - I will see him in 2 weeks time. Later I get the bill, the CAT scan alone comes to over $5000. I have to pay everything up to $7500 out of pocket, after that Blue Cross starts picking up the cost. 2 weeks later I go and see the urologist. They take a urine sample, run labs and I get 2 separate bills for each biweekly visit which come out to $280 before paying for any medications. This cycle goes on for the next 3 months.
By the 3rd month I have developed a bladder infection and relieving myself is like passing lava. I had total sympathy for Tom Hanks in the Green Mile. The Urologist is costing me $560 a month and he has not had the decency to even discuss my chart, what they saw on the cat scan, I mean all I am there for is to check the box and leave my check. At the next meeting I was a bit heated. I said it was not clear to me how my condition was going to be resolved. The stone had not moved, was showing no inclination to move in 3 months and could potentially keep this up forever. Whats the plan to bring this miserable experience to a close ? The doc looked a little startled and said that there were basically only 2 options, one would use an ultrasound device to try to break the stone up in situ, applied to the skin on the outside of the body, but one could have collateral damage because it could result in internal bleeding and potentially injure the kidney. The second was to use an endoscopic device which gets snaked through the plumbing, through the bladder and to the site of the stone where it is then blasted with a laser. I said lets go with the second option, get me on that guys schedule and lets get this over with.
Right at that moment the urologist suggests that if I will be doing this procedure under general anaesthetic, if I had been considering a vasectomy, this would be a good time to tack that on since it would be a considerable saving and only require going dark once. Like a fool, for someone who was 42 years old, not being a father and with no plans to become one, I thought OK, sounds like a good idea.
A few weeks later I went in for both procedures. I was under for 2 hours. They never got the kidney stone, the klutz urologist was too impatient with the endoscope and hydraulically dislodged the stone and pushed it back into the kidney. Fail 1. The vasectomy appeared to have been successful, my sperm count dropped to zero in short order. Was that a win ? The whole thing was billed to Blue Cross at nearly $50k. They negotiated it down about 90% and by the time I had paid the required $7500 they were left with less than $2000 which they had to pay. Fast forward 4 years and I started having ED. Just a little here and there but within a year I'm out of business altogether. So I go to see my primary physician and the first thing he does is write me a prescription for 10x 50mg viagra. I go to the pharmacy where I discover that my medical coverage will not pay for ED medication at all. It cost over $400 to fill that script. OK so viagra does work at this stage, but at what cost ? 10 attempts in a month for the cost of a new truck note ? So I went out and did a heap of research into ED medication and discover that there are generics and GoodRX coupons and at that time it was possible to get a bottle of 90x 20mg Sildanafil for about $76. The next time I saw my GP I had a nice discussion with him about how he must be aware of the existence of the generics as well as the discounts offered by GoodRX, yet he chooses to prescribe me the most expensive medication, without even a discussion ?
Well, it has been another 10 years since. The cost of the generics have come down, but unfortunately my condition has reached the point where it can no longer be treated with drugs. At age 54 I have had to "hang it up" so to speak. The only solution at this point is an implant, but it costs $14-20k and at least locally there is no-one who does this surgery as their "primary" specialization. Apparently hospitals in Cairo do thousands of these a year at much reduced cost, but I need a new passport from South Africa to travel and since the pandemic consular services have been suspended.
No-one ever suggested to me that having a vasectomy came with a risk of low testosterone and along with that ED, weight gain, mood issues and all the other maladies. If you search online you will not find any peer reviewed journals warning about these dangers. Yet if you browse any ED support groups online you will find that many men who have this problem had vasectomies. Supposedly the lowest measured testosterone is always on men who had a vasectomy 6 or more years prior. In my opinion, doing the procedure earns the profession a lot of money and if you later have related health issues they get to earn on those too, potentially till the day you die.
Some of my personal experience (sorry if some of this is TMI, mods delete if appropriate). In 2010 at the age of 42 I had a kidney stone incident. The stone was of a composition and a size that it had exited the kidney and not yet made it to the bladder. The flow on that side was restricted and it really announced itself when the kidney on that side went into spasm. Worst pain I have ever felt. It was a Sat morning, all the offices closed so I toughed it out to see if I could see the doctor on Monday. Well I never made it till Monday, I could not sit, stand or lie in any position for more than a few minutes and nothing we had in the medicine cabinet had any effect on it. So Sunday evening Im loaded up and taken to the emergency room. Eventually they decide a CAT scan is the only way they are going to pinpoint the cause of the problem. Im wheeled in and out the cat scan room in 5 minutes. The digital files are sent to Australia (since the doctors who would do the interpretation are al home in their beds) and a contract doc in OZ looks at the file and issues the diagnosis - Kidney stone.
I am then bundled up with a prescription for a serious muscle relaxant to stop the kidneys spasm and sent home and told to "drink lots of water and pee through a tea strainer". I get put on the schedule of the single urologist working for the hospital - I will see him in 2 weeks time. Later I get the bill, the CAT scan alone comes to over $5000. I have to pay everything up to $7500 out of pocket, after that Blue Cross starts picking up the cost. 2 weeks later I go and see the urologist. They take a urine sample, run labs and I get 2 separate bills for each biweekly visit which come out to $280 before paying for any medications. This cycle goes on for the next 3 months.
By the 3rd month I have developed a bladder infection and relieving myself is like passing lava. I had total sympathy for Tom Hanks in the Green Mile. The Urologist is costing me $560 a month and he has not had the decency to even discuss my chart, what they saw on the cat scan, I mean all I am there for is to check the box and leave my check. At the next meeting I was a bit heated. I said it was not clear to me how my condition was going to be resolved. The stone had not moved, was showing no inclination to move in 3 months and could potentially keep this up forever. Whats the plan to bring this miserable experience to a close ? The doc looked a little startled and said that there were basically only 2 options, one would use an ultrasound device to try to break the stone up in situ, applied to the skin on the outside of the body, but one could have collateral damage because it could result in internal bleeding and potentially injure the kidney. The second was to use an endoscopic device which gets snaked through the plumbing, through the bladder and to the site of the stone where it is then blasted with a laser. I said lets go with the second option, get me on that guys schedule and lets get this over with.
Right at that moment the urologist suggests that if I will be doing this procedure under general anaesthetic, if I had been considering a vasectomy, this would be a good time to tack that on since it would be a considerable saving and only require going dark once. Like a fool, for someone who was 42 years old, not being a father and with no plans to become one, I thought OK, sounds like a good idea.
A few weeks later I went in for both procedures. I was under for 2 hours. They never got the kidney stone, the klutz urologist was too impatient with the endoscope and hydraulically dislodged the stone and pushed it back into the kidney. Fail 1. The vasectomy appeared to have been successful, my sperm count dropped to zero in short order. Was that a win ? The whole thing was billed to Blue Cross at nearly $50k. They negotiated it down about 90% and by the time I had paid the required $7500 they were left with less than $2000 which they had to pay. Fast forward 4 years and I started having ED. Just a little here and there but within a year I'm out of business altogether. So I go to see my primary physician and the first thing he does is write me a prescription for 10x 50mg viagra. I go to the pharmacy where I discover that my medical coverage will not pay for ED medication at all. It cost over $400 to fill that script. OK so viagra does work at this stage, but at what cost ? 10 attempts in a month for the cost of a new truck note ? So I went out and did a heap of research into ED medication and discover that there are generics and GoodRX coupons and at that time it was possible to get a bottle of 90x 20mg Sildanafil for about $76. The next time I saw my GP I had a nice discussion with him about how he must be aware of the existence of the generics as well as the discounts offered by GoodRX, yet he chooses to prescribe me the most expensive medication, without even a discussion ?
Well, it has been another 10 years since. The cost of the generics have come down, but unfortunately my condition has reached the point where it can no longer be treated with drugs. At age 54 I have had to "hang it up" so to speak. The only solution at this point is an implant, but it costs $14-20k and at least locally there is no-one who does this surgery as their "primary" specialization. Apparently hospitals in Cairo do thousands of these a year at much reduced cost, but I need a new passport from South Africa to travel and since the pandemic consular services have been suspended.
No-one ever suggested to me that having a vasectomy came with a risk of low testosterone and along with that ED, weight gain, mood issues and all the other maladies. If you search online you will not find any peer reviewed journals warning about these dangers. Yet if you browse any ED support groups online you will find that many men who have this problem had vasectomies. Supposedly the lowest measured testosterone is always on men who had a vasectomy 6 or more years prior. In my opinion, doing the procedure earns the profession a lot of money and if you later have related health issues they get to earn on those too, potentially till the day you die.
