Chiropractic

[kevin_standlee]

As I've mentioned, I've been seeing a chiropractor since I got home from the Canada trip. I pinched a nerve in my back and had some difficulty walking during the latter half of the trip. The chiropractor took X-rays and showed me that the discs in my lower back and in my neck are somewhat compressed, and there are signs of arthritis in my neck. They persuaded me to spend a high-four-figure sum of money (not covered by insurance, but payable through my healthcare savings account) to undertake a treatment that essentially has me voluntarily being put on a rack. Of course that overstates it, but for each treatment, they put me on a table where they stretch my neck (a little bit more each treatment), then after that stretch my lower back. The intention here is to decompress the squashed spinal discs. After each treatment, the chiropractor works on my back and neck. Today was the ninth of twenty treatments.

Is it working? Well, the pain in my lower back and leg is gone, and I can walk a whole lot more without limping the way I was on the later part of the Canada trip. My neck still hurts, and probably will for a while, but I hope these treatments will help.

Meanwhile, both my shoulders are sore, mostly from yesterday's injections. The site of the flu shot hurts less than the COVID one. In retrospect, I probably should have reversed which shoulder got which shot, because my right shoulder already hurt from repetitive motion stress. Lisa also has the expects soreness around her injection sites, but was also complaining of cold chills overnight.

Comments

[ravan]

Yeah, I just got done with a couple months of chiro after I wrenched my neck and arm at BayCon.

I paid out of pocket. Insurance doesn't want to cover it, and their third party reviewer keeps sending *me* the stupid medical forms (paper forms!!) to fill out, even though they got all the data from the chiro, twice. I'm very, very angry about it - A) It's f'ing 2023, I don't do paper forms that I then have to fax!! to them, and B) I'm not a medical billing coder, I don't know the damn codes, nor do I wish to learn. At some point I'll have enough spare time to spend on hold to give them what for about this.

[kevin_standlee]

You have my sympathy. I was a medical coder for Blue Shield of California's Medicare operations thirty-plus years ago. It did help when I had a claim rejected for reasons similar to yours, because I knew how to answer the questions they were asking. It wasn't as though I expected them to pay it, even; I just wanted them to apply it against my deductible for that year, which they eventually did.

I've been lucky that I have a Healthcare Savings Account, and that I've been able to contribute close to the maximum for years, so that when this came up, I could just charge it to the HSA card. Similarly, the copayments on my colonoscopy earlier this went against that.

Now I just have to hope the neck-stretching works.