Day 246 - Thursday August 16, 2012

We saw Sara Marie today and Bridgett had acupuncture again.  I am hoping to get this neck pain under control soon.  Sara said that she could feel the neck spasming and so now we will wait and see how things are tomorrow.  Unexpectedly this evening Bridgett had a fairly large bruise at one of the acupuncture sites; it is about 1/2 in. by 3/4 in.  I will have to ask Sara about that as we have never had that experience over the several years that one or the other of us have had acupuncture.  It bruised on the sore side (dang) so we are being careful when we try to massage it.  Sara recommended that we rub Tiger Balm on Bridgett's sore neck and also said we could put Tiger Balm patches on the back, which we will try.  Meanwhile I have been busy this week (still) organizing and paying medical bills for Bridgett.  My first job was to have Arrianne help me match the EOB's with every bill that we have received; we have received a crazy number of pages from the insurance company in addition to the actual bills.  Next I had our insurance agent get a list for me that shows who we owe the $5,000 deductible for this year to.  It's hard to figure that out with all of the paperwork!  I finally got that and so then now I have been matching their information with mine and then finally paying the deductible.  I did discover that several of the bills were misfiled withe the insurance company and had to be resubmitted by the provider and that a couple of the claims need appeal by us because they were treated out of network when they shouldn't have been.  Also I found that there is one bill that the insurance received and it went to my deductible, but we have never received a bill and don't know who the money is owed to.  I called the insurance company for more information and then called the phone number that they gave me only to find that the office denies that we owe them anything.  I have been calling to different IHC offices but no one seems to know who this doctor is.  I googled the doctor with no results--of course I would have better results if I knew what kind of doctor, etc.  Anyway, I don't know exactly what will happen with that one, but I finally got all of the other bills dealt with in some way.  Now to figure out the last years bills.  We had already met our deductible before the accident and so one would think they were all taken care of--but the insurance only paid usual and customery on the bills, leaving money due to these people that we thought would be covered.  So the next step is to send letters to all providers and ask that they accept the insurance payment as payment in full.  We'll see what happens.