I just checked my email and had a notification from my health insurance company alerting me that there is new claim acitivity on my account. So I logged in and it looks like - FOR SOME REASON - the first orthopedist I saw back in February only filed his claim NOW and that they miscoded or otherwise f’ed up because they’re billing me $490 for the office visit and in-office X-rays, and have indicated that I didn’t pay a co-pay. That’s bullshit right there. I went to his office once and I paid my damn co-pay.

I’ll have to see if I can pull the image of the cancelled check from my banking website, but first I have to call my insurance company tomorrow and see what the hell this is and how I would dispute it or if I even need to. The doctor is still in-network (I just checked) and if I paid my co-pay, then I don’t know what the HELL this is all about. Nice way to do it though - wait f’ing almost 9 months before filing a claim… and then try to dick the patient out of $490??

If anyone questions anything, I can always refer them to my blog entry from February where I went on about how uncomfortable the doctor made me feel by walking into the room and announcing, “You have a disease.”

To add to my stress, though in a less ridiculous way, I got my pre-surgery paperwork from my current orthopedist today and it looks like I’ll have to take off the entire week after my surgery.

This is all just icing on some grotesquely large shit-souffle that I’ve been enjoying lately. Since Friday, I’ve been feeling nauseated, dizzy, and tired all the time. I know it’s stress because if it was something physical in source, I’d feel this way all day through work. As it stands, I feel this way in the morning and then again when I leave work and start unwinding for the night and thinking about non-work things.

I can’t eat. I have had Frosted Mini Wheats for dinner three nights in a row now since I can’t even stand the thought of eating real food. I’m drinking water and tea. I’m dry-heaving. THIS is the same type of stress I last felt in 1998. When I went to the doctor and after he ruled out pregnancy and other medical reasons, asked me if I was experiencing stress and I burst out crying (which gave him his, “yes.”)

I don’t even know what to do. I’m sitting here. SITTING. In a chair. And I feel like I need to lie down or curl up in a ball. I stood in the shower this morning with my face in my hands leaning into the corner of the shower wall, squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as I could, wishing that my world would shrink up that small right then and there. It wasn’t a suicidal thought by any means, but this strange sort of agoraphobia. I just want to feel small and hidden and alone - but not in a cold way. Rather, I want to feel small and hidden and alone and warm - as if in a den or burrow of some sort. I guess I want to feel rodent-like.

I can’t even think about $490 for this stupid shit doctor. I can’t help but think that there’s some loophole, though, and that I will actually owe him the money. It’s simply impossible, though. He was covered then; he’s covered now. I paid my co-pay. X-rays done in-office are part of the office visit. The claim online shows that I didn’t pay anything and shows that the patient responsibility is $490. They MUST have screwed up something on the billing end, because there’s NO way. None.

The last thing I need tonight is additional crap to stress over. Isn’t it enough that I’m overweight, depressed, alone, stressed, in debt, living at home, driving a crap car, having invasive BONE REMOVAL surgery and now this? It’s not like I can even say, “At least I have my health” because I don’t. I can’t say, “At least I have my family to support me…”; their actions speak louder than their words and any amount of, “we’re here for you” is instantly discredited by their actions/arguments/lack of actual support. Work is an escape as is spending time with friends. This doesn’t make them less valid, but it means that *I* can’t lose myself in the time and enjoy it because I’m hyper-sensitive and hyper-aware of the fact that they ARE distractions and that after X amount of hours, I’m back where I was before.

So I realize that the escape isn’t an escape; there is no escape; I’m quite realistically trapped in my life situation and mental state. A great deal of it is my own doing, but another solid portion is what is being done to me, that I don’t ask for or invite.

And I become very very sad and angry and frustrated because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s beating my head against a wall - metaphorical or otherwise.

I’m going to take my sleeping pills and read until I conk out. There’s no use trying to relax because it’s not going to happen. I feel sick over it. I’m just disgusted with myself and everything I am. At least sleep can provide me with some escape that I won’t be conscious of.