Sirens and stretchers and bills, oh my!

In November of 2008 I suffered the worst physical pain in my life.  Now to put this in context I am the ripe old age of 45 and I was 44 when this incident occurred.  In those 44 years I suffered many different injuries.  I have been in car accidents, and physical altercations.  I have had broken bones from being run over by cars (someone tried to kill me another story for another day) to playing superman as a child jumping from bed to bed with a towel tied around my neck. 

The worst part of my superman incident aside from realizing I wasn’t the man of steel was the beating I got for breaking my leg!  Needless to say my mother wasn’t amused.  

Anyway I digress, back to November 2008. 

It was about ten o’clock in the morning and I was on a mission.  A humanitarian mission but a mission nonetheless.  You see we had a serious squirrel problem.  The cute little rats had found their way into the walls of our house thorough openings in our porch roof.

Despite reports to the contrary I am not a cruel man, so I borrowed a have-a-heart animal safe trap.  I had been placing it on the porch and caught a few squirrels and took them miles away to release them.  I still had a few persistent squirrels though that would hang out in the roof of the porch so I had a brilliant idea.

I decided to climb a ladder remove some ceiling panels and place the trap close to the squirrels in the roof.  I know what your thinking, what a thoughtful guy.  Anyway, I set up the ladder on my cluttered porch.  Of course there was no need to clean the area around the ladder because it still fit.  So I climbed the ladder with my cordless drill and began to remove the panels without incident.  I took two panels down and there they were in the far corner of the porch smiling at me, two cute rats.   They quickly ran away and they were gone or so I thought.

As I surveyed the area I was looking for a good area to place the trap.  I found the perfect spot.  It was little further back away from my current location.  So I had to step up one more step.  Well the only step that was left was at the top of the ladder and was clearly marked DANGER DO NOT STAND HERE.  Of course that was not a message for me so, yes I did stand there. 

Initially, there was no problem until I shifted my weight or what I really think is when those two smiling rats shook the bottom of the ladder.   Needless to say what goes up must come down and yes I did.  Not before grabbing onto a roof beam and dangling. 

I called out to my pregnant wife and she came running.  She saw me hanging and I asked her to step back because I didn’t want to fall on her and kill her.  So I thought as I hung there I would do a hanging drop and did.  It was perfect except for me landing on the side of my right foot and twisting my ankle under me.

The pain was extremely intense.  I have never felt so much pain.  I knew my ankle was broken but I didn’t realize how bad it really was.  It felt like someone was pushing a hot poker into my ankle.
Now my wife is freaking out scared to death because I am lying on the porch writhing in pain but laughing. 

I know it sounds crazy but my reaction to pain is laughter and tears.  I told my wife to call 911 because my ankle was broken and as I stated she was pregnant and I didn’t want her to have to help me into the car and drive to the hospital.  Being the big brave cop that I am I called my mom.  I know I was risking a beating but I wanted her there to support my wife so I took the risk. 

Soon enough the ambulance and my mom arrived.  The crew was very nice and they helped me hop to the ambulance.  There were no splints, no soft air casts, no IV’s and no medical devices of any kind
were employed.  I then suffered the grueling 2.7 mile 6 minute ride to the hospital. 

I spent the next several hours in the emergency room the diagnosis was a broken ankle, torn ligaments and ruptured tendons.  Flash forward a year later and I still have pain and problems with the ankle.

And now the insult to injury…the bill for the ambulance arrived.  It was an astronomical $850.00.  Yes I know crazy right.  They drove me 2.7 miles for 6 minutes and provided nothing more than a ride.  That works out to almost $315.00 per mile or $141.66 per minute.  Man would I like to paid at that rate!  I know your thinking it is a good thing you have insurance, right.  Wrong, I have insurance and I filed a claim.  It was denied.  I called my friendly insurance company and asked why and was told…..drum roll….. The ambulance company was not in my provider network!  LOL

It is no wonder that people hate insurance companies and are, out of desperation asking for government health care?  I think not.