Friday, May 13, 2011

Cars, Surgery, Strollers





I swear I just wrote a post last week but apparently it's closer to last month..wow where does the time go? Since my last post Boo has had surgery to place a port a cath in his chest. This was one of the hardest things to do. We spoke with his hospital team, his regular ER nurses, his PCP and nearly all of his specialists who unanimously agreed it was time. He has virtually no vein access left and has frequent blood draws, iv fluids and they now want to give him TPN if his gut shuts off for more than three days...aka..everytime he gets sick. We decided to place it while he was "healthy" vs waiting for the next crisis to hit. The surgery went well, he was impatient overnight because of a sluggish (but not haulted) gut, we watched Cars 12 times in a row, then 5 min before heading home his port adapter came unscrewed so we got to watch Cars 12 more times while running IV antibiotics and running 24hr cultures which thankfully were negative! Because of that I spent Mother's Day in the hospital but it wasn't all bad. I had my coffee, we went out to the garden and Hubs brought Chinese :)

We also bought a new car...no I still haven't caved into a minivan. We have a lovely gray Chevy HHR which gives us just the extra space we needed while still giving us 24-32mpg which at $4.35 a gallon is already paying for it's self! At 188,000 miles the Passat was all worn out and ready for a new owner.

Now to find a new fullsize stroller to fit in the trunk. I found a stroller that does everything we need for Boo. Huge canopy, adjustable foot rest, full recline, headrest, reversible, table height seat, large enough undercarriage to accommodate his O2 and pump (with the addition of my own custom sewn sling) and less than 30lbs. It's called the "Mylo" but it's $1000.00 and the only store that carries it is 2.5 hrs away. So I got an idea. Called up his devel. Ped and asked if she thought Boo would qualify for an adaptive stroller. Yep she's thought he's needed more than the glorified umbrella Jeep Cherokee Sport stroller for a couple months now (why didn't she say so sooner?) Wrote the script and sent it to our DME. Then I called our private Ins. Case Manager. Our conversation went something like this:
"Hi Jan, how would your company like to save $2000.00? Boo's Doc just wrote a script for a medical stroller and for everything it needs to include it's probably going to cost at least $3000.00 however, I found a retail one that does all the same stuff for $1000.00 how would you like to buy that one instead?" Jan: "That sounds like a great idea thank you for thinking outside the box and trying to keep our costs down. You'll just need to send me the script, PT filled out form listing all the needs and a print out of the retail stroller specs and price compared to the medical one, I think it's a no brainer!"

The best part is she is going to work at getting it approved under the reimbursible medical expense allowance vs the DME allowance so as not to jeapordize our ability to get a fullout wheelchair later! Now to wait for the PT eval next week and send over the papers!

That's all for now :)
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