Gotta Love American Health Insurance

Well, my wrist surgery was done back on Aetna HMO, then I switched jobs and changed to Blue Cross PPO and continued to see the same surgeon for follow ups, but they cost me more and 5 weeks of 2 times a week physical therapy will likely be costing me over $700 under that fabulous plan.

So, I managed to switch the blue cross HMO, but now I have to get a referral again to go see the same Doctor for my follow up appointments.

I just don't get how the original referral, the surgeon and the next referral are all with the same medical group who have all my records, x-rays et al - yet I need to go in to get re-referred to the same surgeon for further follow ups and presumably show the five inch long scar on my arm to prove I had the surgery or some such nonsense.

Even though the lines at the NHS were long in the UK, socialized medicine has a lot going for it.

Snowboarding the Geek Way

It's easy, just stick a GPS in your pocket as you get on the first lift of the morning and stop it recording when you get back down again 4 hours later (yeah, I know, 4 hours ain't that long - but I'm old and didn't stop the whole time, so I don't care!).

Of course, to complete the geek factor of this post, you need to upload the GPS data to the Internet and overlay it on to Google Maps - see here.

Finally, for full true geek factor, follow the Google Earth link and tilt the image to see the slopes too.

Wrist Status Update

Haven't updated in quite a while, so here's the latest. I did 5 of the scheduled 6 weeks of physical therapy - various reasons caused me to stop early, amongst them my fantastic medical insurance that barely covered anything.

I'm continuing to do the exercises I learned in PT at home.

My range of motion is around 90% of my left wrist and my strength is getting better all the time (though it still ain't that great!).

I went to see the doc a few weeks ago and he confirmed that the radius is healed. He suspects that the lunate is the consistency of a marshmallow and the hope is that it revascularizes over the current weeks.

I'm back at the docs on 2/14 where more x-rays will be done to see how things are coming along.

I've been snowboarding once now as the radius is healed and even if I fall on the wrist, I'm not likely to exert pressure on the lunate (I was wearing my large wrist brace - the glove barely fit over it). The doc wasn't too keen on me going, but didn't say I shouldn't either.

Still hoping for a mid-April return to mountain biking.