I managed to pull a calf muscle on my non-surgical leg, and this has led to an era of disheartenment. Things that had become easy are difficult again.
Also, I feel as if I am not making good Bending Progress. I AM making good…what would we call it. AGENCY Progress. When I first came home from the hospital, my surgical leg felt heavy and unresponsive. The physical therapist would give an instruction, such as marching the leg up, and then she had to reassure me that the important thing was activating the muscle: it was perfectly okay that when I marched my leg up, the foot did not even leave the floor; just please activate the marching muscle ten times. I had to do a lot of in-between exercises, like using my hands to lift my leg up off the floor, and then trying to control its slow descent back to the floor: that works those same lifting muscles, apparently.
So it’s been three weeks and I’ve had a huge improvement in being able to move my leg without needing my hands or a scarf or a belt. I can march my leg up like billy-o. But the amount of BEND I can get from that march doesn’t seem to be any more than what I could get when I had to bend it with my hands. And the bending angle is what the physical therapist has to work on at each visit while I gasp and whimper, so it would be super good to be able to get more of that done on my own. That’s how I pulled the calf muscle: in the pursuit of more bend.
I know it varies hugely, but would you like to know what a knee replacement cost in my case? Just under $58,000. Our portion is a $150 surgical deductible plus a $30 specialist copay. Plus we have one of those exhausting notes where the insurance says the surgeon has billed us $1,500 for something he is not allowed to bill us for, and that we are not responsible for paying it. In my experience, that’s easy for the insurance company to say, and I can plan on needing to make MULTIPLE phone calls to get that straightened out, when the doctor’s office DOES bill us for it and then acts as if they have never heard of an insurance company telling the patient not to pay it, and then assures us they’ll straighten it out, and then sends a bill threatening to send it to collections.
I would expect the itemized bill to be interesting, but it’s only confounding. While I was in recovery, a physical therapist came by to show me how to use my walker, and how to get dressed and use the bathroom, and how to use stairs. My sense of time was very sketchy, but I’d estimate she spent an hour or so with me. There are four separate physical therapy charges, all just labeled “Physical Therapy,” for $388, $300, $300, and $287. There are fourteen separate charges all labeled “Hospital Services,” ranging from to $292 down to $10. There is one Pharmacy charge for $509, and one for $33. (I’m remembering when Elizabeth had her tonsils out, and they charged us $14 for the two chewable children’s Tylenol they gave her.) Three for “Med / Surgical Supply”: $16,720 (I wonder if that’s the replacement knee itself), $4,415, and $4,140.