I’ve just gotten off the phone with the Member Appeals department at Kaiser. The very nice woman on the other end of the line told me my appeal to get my MRI has been denied; even though I meet all the criteria on the list except one. Even though she tells me it is the best appeal letter she’s ever read.
Denied.
This is after my orthopedist put in the first request for the MRI.
That was denied.
Now my appeal has been denied.
My blood is boiling. I feel rage and desperation welling in me.
The thing is, the sharp shooting pain through my left groin that radiates down my leg is so intense it makes it hard to focus, to get anything done. It has its way with me on a daily basis and has me hobbling around holding on to walls and railings, counter tops, and door handles.
I can barely lift my breastbone to stand up straight in the morning because each time I do searing pain invades my body like a bayonet. For the first hour of the day, I stoop like a 90-year-old and hope that slowly the sensations will subside so I can stand up straight.
I ask her, “well, what can we do now? I am in so much pain and because I don’t check the box of having had physical therapy in the last three months, my appeal has been denied. I understand that Kaiser needs to have policies and rules, but there is an exception to every rule, and I am that exception. Let me tell you why.”
She tells me she can write a second appeal to an outside source that will review my situation and perhaps overturn the appeal.
“Ok,” I say. “Well, I’d like to tell you why I am the exception and why I should get this MRI approved.”
She listens.
I launch into my 24-year journey of healing after the car accident. Hit by a car as a pedestrian. I won’t bore you with all the details, but let me just say, I flush out the big picture and urge her to weave into her report that I think it is inhumane to deny people who are in so much pain access to an MRI because they don’t check one box, but they check all the others.
She’s compassionate. She’s listening. I feel it.
When I get off the phone, I feel confident that the second appeal will overturn the first. If not, I will do a sit in in my doctor’s office until I get that MRI. I am determined. I have no choice but to make this happen.
All week I’ve been fantasizing about having a cane to lean on and I have one. It’s at my mother’s in Oakland. It’s an African cane with a beautifully carved handle. I used it as I healed after my accident in my 30s. Now, I want the cane. I need the support. It will be a relief to lean on it.
A friend of mine does me the favor and packs it up and sends it to me. She sends it UPS and it arrives just after I get off the phone with the Member Appeals lady.
I’m so excited to get it. I open the package and pull it out, and the handle is broken into 5 pieces. I look at it and a tidal wave of grief hits me like a tsunami and the dam bursts, and I am wailing like my mother died. This broken cane tips me over the edge.
“Noooooooooooooooo,” I wail. I sob and heave, wander from room to room. “Noooooooooooo” The sobbing lets the grief go. It floods my body and rushes through like a raging river.
I hobble from room to room crying.
I feel broken.
I feel the loss of not being an able body.
I feel the brokenness of the system, the injustice, the lack of care.
I feel for the people who aren’t good advocates for themselves because they’re in too much pain, too sick, or can’t speak up for themselves.
I feel for the overworked doctors who have no time to advocate for their patients.
I feel for the world, the senseless killing.
I feel for the brokenness of humanity.
I wail for the world. I wail for myself. I wail and let it all run through me like a river of grief.
Once the storm passes, I look at the cane and imagine putting it back together. Healing it. Fixing it. I imagine my own body healed, stitched back together in whatever ways possible so I can live pain free.
I imagine peace in myself and in the world.
May it be so.
