{Blank} Million Dollar Baby

Literally, I've wondered all of my life what I'm truly worth.

I remember all of those silly newspaper articles about how much the mineral content of the body was worth on the open market--$2.35? It was some relatively-less-than-latte amount of money like that. It was all very ha-ha, and every time it was reported the story ended with some aphorism that emphasized how one should never undervalue their unique character, and the gifts they bring to the world.

Through this wonderful cancer experience, though, I've started to find benchmarks that are more practically put, and far easier to express, in terms of the vulgar. To date, I've been worth several thousand dollars worth of pre-operative procedures. Six consults (although, fairly, in satisfying my deductible I paid for several of those), placement of a feeding tube, biopsy of a tongue, medical work up and benchmarking, PET Scans, CT Scans, ultrasounds--I put the total here at around $18,000. Were I not lazy and were I to gather up all the bills and add them together, I could be more precise.

One thing you should know about medical billing--it's weird. It's odd that you'll ever have a procedure and simply--in one place--be billed for all of what happened. No, for the biopsy, I had a physician bill, a facility bill and an anesthesiologist bill--the total only accurately expressed by all three.

Most of the bigger bills I'm to face have yet to roll in--but I did receive one the other day for the surgical work of the two doctors who fronted my team. This two pager listed everything that happened during surgery, who did what, and how much they billed for each procedure. That one came to $44,050--of which I owed $92.00.

I very nearly did a dance of joyful when I saw that--like most people, I don't have 44K sitting around waiting to hand over to my physicians--no matter how good they are. My inability to pay such a bill would weigh on me forever, as I'd end up paying it forever, $100/wk, rest of life.

I've yet to declare myself completely free of stress. That's just two doctors and one surgery. That doesn't have anything to do with the ICU for a couple of days, the Limited ICU for a few more, the round-the-clock vitals checking, administration of drugs, suctioning, humoring, nursing, oversight, team visits--there's still more to come

My guess is that I'm a quarter million dollar baby when this is all said and done--tossing in a few after-visits and the next set of treatments through chemo/radiation. And I may be under-guessing that figure if I don't consider the rehabbers who come after that--speech, swallowing/eating, physical therapy, occupational therapy, mental therapy.

It's difficult to feel sorry for insurance companies these days. Mine, Anthem, is able to pay their CEO an outrageous amount of money--that fellow certainly knows what he's worth. And that outrageous amount is hardly a blip to them, so my bump against the treasury will be as a ship passing in the night.

But I have in all things tried to watch what's going on, question it, and refuse what I believe is not necessary--by taking care of the small things I have control of, I certainly make myself feel better and further, probably save some money for the insurance company, though that's truly not what I'm worried about.

What am I worth? A hell of a lot more than 250K.