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mistressofmusesSo after getting out of the hospital, my primary task was to get medical leave approved.
Colorado has a fairly generous required leave (called FAMLI), which is intended to allow basically anyone who is employed to take a fairly hefty chunk of time off if required, for their own health issues, to take care of a loved one with health issues, for maternity/paternity leave, etc. I’ve had several coworkers take it; one for paternity leave, one when he was dealing with his father’s failing health and then death, one for neck surgery.
So I got home on Thursday night, planning to submit my leave application on Friday, so that it was done. My HR department had sent me the information about the company that I would need, and just needed me to submit my application to the state. (When on leave, my company would not be paying me; the state would pay me a percentage of my salary. So I don’t get my full salary for the time that I’m out, but get a portion of it, similar to unemployment wages.)
Cut for length. Nothing gross, except the horrors of bureaucracy:
Friday
I mentioned it in my previous post, but I sat down to get the application filled out and submitted…
Or I tried to. Three and a half hours later, I had not succeeded. I did not remember which phone number out of a list had once been mine (any phone number other than my childhood phone number and my work phone number is not stored in my brain), and so was told I needed to get a notarized attestation of identity form.
After some fiddling, I got a different creepy set of questions that I was able to answer, and it no longer asked for the notarized form.
I hit a dead end at the required medical form, which must be filled out by your healthcare provider. Sometimes this can be done electronically, but the only doctor’s name I had was the surgeon who performed the appendectomy, and she was not listed in their database to send an electronic form to. I would have to print the form and get it signed.
I called the surgical clinic number, hoping they could tell me if someone would sign this form for me. (I was also supposed to reach out to them to schedule my surgery follow-up, however they warned me they were likely out-of-network, so I might either need to reach out to my PCP to follow up with them instead, or to get a referral for the clinic. This was an issue because I haven’t had a PCP in more than a decade.) I did not get a person on the phone, so left a voicemail. Their voicemail message very aggressively tells you DO NOT CALL MORE THAN ONCE, DO NOT LEAVE MULTIPLE MESSAGES, YOUR CALL WILL BE RETURNED BY END OF DAY.
I did not get a call back.
Saturday
I did not work on this. I was very tired, and kind of demoralized, and just didn’t feel up to dealing with it.
Sunday
I went over to my mom’s to borrow her printer in order to print off the forms I needed to have signed. (Grateful that was an option for me, rather than having to pay to do it somewhere.)
Not having heard back from the surgery clinic, I headed over to the hospital where my surgery was done. I went back up to the floor where I had stayed post-surgery, hoping maybe one of the nurses I’d had would still be on-duty. The form does prominently say that any licensed healthcare provider - doctors, nurses, midwives, etc. - can sign the form, as long as they have knowledge of the patient and health condition in question.
The nurse on duty (not one of the ones I’d met) acted like she’d never seen that sort of form before, and sort of scolded me that any forms like this should have been taken care of before I was discharged. (Which… so sorry I didn’t have a computer and printer with me in my hospital room?) She spoke to their “case manager,” who apparently told her that only a medical doctor is allowed to sign it, so I would have to speak to the surgical team in order to get it signed.
She told me that I should just plan on having it signed at my follow-up appointment two weeks post-surgery… but a) scheduling that is the same phone number that I hadn’t gotten a call back from; b) I can’t really wait that long, because that means I can’t even submit the request until the point when my leave is supposed to be ending.
She then told me that I should just visit my PCP and have them sign it instead. So I explained that unfortunately I do not have a PCP.
So she said, all right, I might be able to set up an appointment with the surgical team to sign it sooner if that was what I needed. Of course no one was available at the time (which I didn’t *not* expect; it was a Sunday at a religious hospital, and I’m sure that most of the emergency surgery team tends to be busy doing emergency surgeries rather than sitting around to do paperwork.) She told me to CALL, DO NOT JUST SHOW UP at the surgical clinic on Monday morning. Perhaps their Friday had just gotten away from them, and they’d probably return my call on Monday anyway.
I was still super easily exhausted at this point, and was tired and in pain and ready to be the fuck done. It also started snowing really hard and the roads got bad fast, so we headed home.
(I then did not sleep at all well; partially due to my sleep schedule being janked to hell, but partially because I just stayed awake to worry about this shit.)
Monday
I called the surgery clinic. Got the same voicemail message DO NOT CALL MORE THAN ONCE, DO NOT LEAVE MULTIPLE MESSAGES, YOUR CALL WILL BE RETURNED BY END OF DAY.
I was still just stupid tired at this point, but I turned the volume on my phone up so as to not miss the call back that I would SURELY be getting. I was still anxious about the whole thing, and couldn’t really drop off because I was afraid of missing them if they did call back.
I did not get a call back.
I figured I’d just go to the clinic’s suite number on Tuesday and try to get help in person, despite being told to call, not come in. Calling wasn’t working.
I emailed my HR department, as they were asking if I was still planning to take this leave, or if I was going to use PTO. I let them know that I did want to take leave, just couldn’t get this damn form signed.
I continued to not sleep because I was so damn worried.
Tuesday
At this point I also started to worry that the hospital wouldn’t approve a longer leave than through Wednesday. (Which would be day six post-release from the hospital. The original doctor I had spoken with told me that I was okay to return on Monday, but I do have Mondays and Tuesdays off. Monday had been day four, and I was NOT feeling capable of going to work. I was still having potentially embarrassing races to the bathroom, had functionally zero focus, was falling asleep at unpredictable times, still hadn’t succeeded in eating anything solid beyond a piece of toast soaked in soup…) But because that doctor had given me a return date of Monday, which was on my file, I was afraid that would be the maximum they would give me on the leave form as well. What I *wanted* to ask for was for two weeks post-discharge, so a return date of February 6th. I hoped this would feel like a better amount of time, as well as allowing me to get an all-clear from my follow-up… if I could get that scheduled.
I was also extremely frustrated about not getting a call back, too.
SO! Plan B!
I didn’t have a PCP, but I had been *assigned* a PCP.
I have the cheapest insurance possible through my job, which is United Healthcare’s “Navigate” plan. One of the main “features” of this plan is that they assign you to a PCP, and *all* care must be done through *that* PCP. They must write any referrals to other specialists or providers.
I’d been assigned to the same guy for three years now, I just hadn’t ever gone to see him. So I had no PCP, but I was allegedly this guy’s patient. He was highly rated, and very close to where I live. So I figured maybe I’d just swing by his office; I could go in, and see if maybe I could schedule an appointment with him to do the surgical follow-up, or get a referral back to the clinic for that, and perhaps he’d be able to sign the paperwork (even if I did have to wait for that follow up appointment.)
I verified that the office was open.
We headed out, with a couple errands to run. We got to the office around 12:30.
…Their hours are 9 - 12 on Monday - Thursday. They are “clossed” [sic] Friday - Sunday.
12 hours per week???
Ugh. So, I was frustrated, but figure okay. I’d try again on Wednesday, getting up a little earlier.
Wednesday
We headed out, closer to 10:00, to visit “my” PCP.
The receptionist was… a bit cold. I tried to explain my situation, that this doctor was my assigned PCP, but I hadn’t ever established care. That I had emergency surgery and would need to do a follow-up…
She cut me off with “Yeah, the problem is that he’s not taking new patients. I don’t know why insurance keeps assigning him, but you’ll have to find someone else.”
She did suggest trying a clinic down the street that had multiple providers.
I futilely protested that I’d been assigned to him for years, that the United Healthcare site even said he was accepting new patients, that I *can’t* go anywhere else if my insurance said he was the only one I was allowed to see…
She just sort of shrugged and told me good luck.
I headed out to the car and just… cried for a while. At this point I was just so fucking tired and defeated and frustrated. And still felt like shit! Everything still hurt, I was exhausted, I still wasn’t able to eat anything, and this was not what I wanted to be doing, and EVERYTHING just seemed to be as frustrating as it could be. I was not at my best, having to do the sort of thing I struggle with even when I’m NOT recovering from major surgery, and just… was not having a good time.
After a bit, I went onto my insurance company’s website and was able to switch my PCP to the clinic that the receptionist had mentioned. You’re only allowed to switch once every 30 days, so that was a bit of a gamble, but it did allow me to pick the *clinic,* so as long as they had one provider that would see me, I hoped it would work out.
At this point I was still crying every time I even sort of thought about the whole situation, and tried to get it together well enough to go to the other clinic.
Eventually I held it together enough. The receptionist I talked to was very kind. She got me set up in their system, and told me they could definitely get me in within the week to do an intake appointment. She did tell me they’d have to do that and *then* schedule the surgery and paperwork appointments, which was fine.
She told me there was actually a nurse who could see me later that afternoon if I’d come back.
Yes, I would come back. I just wanted this done, and the promise of MAYBE finally having someone actually help me was at least a small bit of hope.
Went back for my later appointment. The assistant who took my vitals reiterated that I’d have to make a separate surgical follow up and paperwork appointment. My blood pressure was somehow normal, though I am dismally dismayed by my weight.
Finally the nurse came in to see me. She was quite young. But she started off with “So! Welcome to the ‘adult appendectomy’ club!”
The relief I releft, lol.
(She apparently dealt with hers for a *week* in nursing school, feeling like she was dying, before going to the hospital. She kept being told it was just stress, or just being a hypochondriac because of what she was studying! Then hers was almost the same as mine, having already perforated and abscessed by the time they went in to remove it.)
She said she was concerned about my anxiety and depression screening questions… which ask about basically how miserable you’ve been for the last two weeks, which for me was almost entirely taken up by being cripplingly, painfully sick, then being in the hospital, then being stressed as hell about sorting out this leave and follow-up stuff. I had written “there are extenuating circumstances” at the bottom of the forms, lol. She was glad I didn’t think that was actually typical for me.
As we chatted, even though it wasn’t supposed to be more than the intake, she asked how I was doing from the surgery, and she took a look at the incision sites. She told me to walk a lot more to help with the bloating (which is largely from the amount of air that gets pumped in when the surgery is done, and it’s just gotta work its way out.) Otherwise, everything looked good. While it was only 10 days (not 14) post-surgery, she said that everything really looked and sounded like it was healing on the normal timeline. She said that unless something changed, she didn’t think I needed to make another appointment for just a few more days out, and could treat this as my follow-up. However, if I was still struggling in another week or two to get back to a normal diet, then I should make another appointment.
I asked her about the paperwork, and she said yes, I’d have to make another appointment for that. If I wanted to, I could even just drop the form off for her and make an appointment to pick it up.
“I have the form with me, if you want me to leave it now?”
“…Yeah, let me take a look. The only other thing I’ll need is your records from the hospital, which will take some time to get. But once we do, we can have this done by next week, I’m sure.”
“Well… I have my hospital discharge paperwork, if that helps.”
“…Let me see?”
She took a look and said, “You know, this is enough. You’ve been nice to me, I remember how miserable the recovery was. I can just get this signed now, if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes. How long did you want?”
I told her that I was really hoping for through the 5th, two weeks after my discharge.
She said that seemed perfectly fair.
I WAS SO RELIEVED. YOU DO NOT KNOW. NONE of this had been easy, and someone finally helped make something easy.
(She actually ended up signing it through the 6th, though I’ll work a half day that day, just so I have a chance to get caught back up before being with the still brand new person for the weekend.)
I’m not much of a “things work out the way they’re meant to” type… but when I did make another appointment to see this nurse sometime in March to do a regular physical (because I really should get some of the medical care that I’ve neglected for more than 15 years at this point), I was told she works every day except Tuesday. So if I HAD made it to the other doctor’s office the previous day, and they’d referred me to this clinic, this nurse I saw would not have been there.
After, I went back to my mom’s to scan the document, so I could get it uploaded.
At this point, I was exhausted. While I hadn’t been eating much anyway, I’d wound up being out of the house and not eating anything for about 8 hours, and I was wiped. I decided to work on the application the next day, because I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t screw something up, as exhausted as I was.
Thursday
Time to try and finish the fucking application, a full week after I got out of the hospital, after having had to work on getting things nearly every damn day.
…And it told me I needed that notarized attestation of identity document. I didn’t even get the chance to answer questions this time, it just had me take pictures of my ID and a selfie and said it couldn’t verify my identity, so I had to print off the attestation and get it notarized.
So back to my mom’s to print and take it to a notary.
Went to my credit union, only had to wait a few minutes. Got the form notarized, went back to my mom’s to scan it, uploaded it, and FINALLY FINISHED THE APPLICATION.
Friday
…Until Friday morning, when I woke up to automated texts and emails telling me that I had “important communication about my FAMLI leave.”
According to them, there was a notary error on my attestation of identity: the notary’s printed name and her notary stamp name didn’t match. (She didn’t print her middle name. On the world’s smallest blank line that they provide for the name.)
FUCK EVERYTHING FOREVER.
BACK to the credit union, get the same notary. She said she’s NEVER had anything returned to her for that reason, and that the notary standards they claim were broken don’t actually say anything about that. She even showed me the state notary letter, which only talks about the standard being signature matching. She apologized and made sure to include her middle name.
UGH WHATEVER.
Went to fix it, and the upload process was unclear. The spot where it asks you to reupload only has a text box. Afraid of fucking it up, I called their help number. Was on hold for twenty minutes, but finally did get someone, who said yeah, he gets several calls about this per day. You have to enter something in the text box, and then it will allow you to move on to a second page that has a spot to upload the document.
So I finally did that. By that point it was getting near the end of the day, so I didn’t expect there’d be a chance to have anyone look at it again until Monday.
Saturday and Sunday I ignored all of this entirely.
Monday (today):
I didn’t hear anything new from the FAMLI agency. I let my manager know my return date. I let my HR department know that I had submitted the leave application.
My HR rep let me know that I will probably get a denial letter from them at some point, but that it’s not legitimate; everyone has been getting them, and it has to do with the fact we switched from a private insurer to the state system, and they really just need extra info from the company.
So I’m waiting for that.
THIS HAS BEEN SO FRUSTRATING.
I’m relieved that I’ve basically done as much as I can at this point, and that my return date is Friday for just a half day. I hope to get as much rest as I can the next couple of days before I have to go back.
I’m still hurting, but it’s mostly just achey and bruised feeling, nothing sharp or concerning. I’m mostly meeting with success in reintroducing foods, though my appetite is a bit unpredictable. Guts are still not right, but seem to be improving slowly. Going on more walks does seem to be helping, and at least we've had a couple pretty nice days. I’m still very tired basically all the time, which is annoying, but I’m trying to push through.
(I’m also still SO BEHIND ON EVERYTHING. I’m trying to get caught up, but even minor things wear me out and take three times as long as I think they should. I promise, I’m trying to get caught up! I will!)
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