k Has a Difficult Day, and Requests Assistance

I sat here this morning looking at the skin peeling off my left leg.

When you have an infection, it gets warm. When you have a very serious infection, it gets hot. This one got so hot it melted the cream antibiotic I was slathering on it. Melted it like butter in a hot fry pan.

An infection that hot burns the outer skin just like a sunburn, but from within.

Now the skin is peeling off - just like a sunburn. Since the entire leg was infected from mid-thigh down, a lot of skin is coming off.

It's a sign of healing. A good thing.

But still a little disconcerting to see.

The infection started 3 1/2 weeks ago, Friday, October 20, 2006. Almost a month has passed.

I'm trying to walk a little bit again. Carefully - it's quite literally dangerous. The now-dormant germs lying around the internal scars would just love a chance to get multiplying again, and that's exactly what too much walking will do. It'll make that perfect environment for them to wake up and multiply and reinfect the foot and leg.

A few days ago, I made my way outside - slowly, agonizingly - from the front porch to the back porch. It was the first time I'd seen the side of my house, or the back yard, since the day the infection set in. Almost a month.

I saw plants I love that died because I couldn't get out and water them once the rains stopped. Other than that?

Everything was exactly as I'd left it when the ID doc's office called me back on my cell phone that Friday and said, Come in, NOW.

My wheelbarrow had some things in it and there were filled yard bags, stacked here and there, just where I'd left them. Tools outside. They'd gotten rained on.

It was like returning to the deserted scene of a tornado or car crash or something, weeks later, when no one's been there or touched anything or cleaned up the mess. Chilling. Traumatizing. The shock and the memory and the fear hit me like a kick in the gut. I couldn't breathe.

I went back inside and went to sleep again. That tiny venture left me drained and exhausted for three days.

I hardly ever get the fever and chills any more. But I'm still sleeping around 18 hours a day, partly from allergies. The pain in the foot is still intense. The shin bone is tender, and the ankle too. But the foot itself, internally scarred from the abscess in 2004, is by far the most affected by pain.

If I walk just a few steps, the pain ramps up, and lasts for hours or days.

And I still don't have a working scooter, even for home use. All I can do is sit around with my feet elevated, letting the things I need done go undone, letting my life slowly fall apart around me.

Yesterday, for the very first time, a certain realization hit me full force: If I'd had a working scooter - instead of the defective one delivered in July and never replaced - the infection would probably not have happened. The incompetence of the equipment company and the HMO is the primary cause of this terrible new infection, more permanent damage and permanently increased pain, and almost the loss of my leg.

After the infection, with a working transportable scooter, I wouldn't have been stuck here for a month, unable to go anywhere or do anything. I would not have fainted at the pain doctor's office from the strain of walking 150 feet. I would not have felt the intense pain I do every time I walk from my office chair to the kitchen or bathroom or front door.

My written complaint to the Medicare HMO about the scooter issue was finally addressed, over a week after submission. The person calling me from the complaint department had no idea I was complaining about the durable medical equipment company as well, including allegations of fraud. Even though this was included in the complaint she was supposedly reading, right in front of her.

I told her, very specifically, the name of the *good* company I wanted to provide a working scooter. They even have a provider number for BCBS. They don't have one for the particular BCBS plan I'm on.

This is because the incompetent frauds my plan uses? Well, it's the only equipment company they use.

So going *out of network* takes an act of Congress.

The complaint lady now says my primary doctors' office needs to do yet another authorization request for the scooter, specifically naming the *Good Scooter Company.* Now, she says, it's out of her hands, and in the Authorization Department. She seems to think the chances of approval are quite poor.

All right. I can't say yet that I've been turned down. But I also no longer want to wait, and was hoping to get some muscle to call that authorization department, to just encourage them to do the Right Thing.

So today, I embarked upon a series of telephone calls that left me feeling so depressed and victimized I broke down and cried.

I called the Medicare Fraud Line. Not interested. WHAT? See, the frauds billed through a Medicare HMO so Medicare itself doesn't care. I said, Could you please check to see if they're a direct Medicare supplier? (Because then Medicare maybe would care.)

But she cut me off in the middle of my sentence and hung up the phone on me.

Next, I called various agencies off a list left with me by a social worker who'd come to visit. I called one after the other: agencies to help disabled people, agencies for poor people, legal aid, the State of Florida. A whole page of phone numbers.

I did leave a couple messages. So I can't say that every single one was of no help. Not yet.

Just every single one I talked to.

The ones I did speak with?: --Not our jurisdiction...we only do spina bifida...we only appeal denial of services...that's federal not state...

You see, I fall through the cracks because it's a Medicare HMO. The state HMO helpers say it's federal. But the feds, Medicare, won't help because it's an HMO instead of direct Medicare.

Two of our local TV stations have these *help* programs. One, WSVN-TV (Fox), you can call and complain about a company or so forth screwing you, and they'll maybe pick your case out of all the many others and try to get it resolved. *Help Me Howard,* it's called. Ol' Howard's a lawyer. I left a message.

The other one is *Magnum's Force.* Diane Magnum is one of the news anchors, married to some famous race car driver. She and WPLG-TV (ABC) started this charity-type program where they help poor people who just need a decent wheelchair, or the roof fixed, so forth. They put you on the news, all public and - please excuse me, but it's true - syrupy and sappy.

The thought of either calling attention to my situation in public in any way, or even talking to any charity for something like this - a truly necessary medical service for which I paid years and years and years of both Medicare and insurance premiums - makes me cringe with humiliation. I left a message.

I also called a malpractice attorney. They referred me on to the Biggest Baddest Nastiest Malpractice Lawyers in Broward County. Why? Because one particular doctor's screwups in 2004 meant the foot scarred far more than it ever needed to. The result has been years of pain and fear and new infections and permanent inability to walk the way I could have without the screwups. I will not walk much, or be free of intense pain, ever again till the day I die.

In 2004, I let it slide. I was far too sick for far too long to want to do anything, and frankly, I really dislike fights. People make mistakes; we aren't perfect. Even the string of serious and stupid mistakes this particular doctor made...well, he's human too.

But in the back of my mind has always been the knowledge that if someone doesn't blow the whistle on this doctor, he may well kill an innocent child at some point. Not filing against him has left me with a burden of guilt. Put that together with his direct contribution to me almost losing the entire leg this time? No more. No more. I won't let him go any more.

I'll call those lawyers when I'm calmed down. Maybe the meter has run and the statute of limitations has passed. Maybe not. They can tell me if there's anything we can do.

And if I can't find anyone at the federal level who cares about those incompetent medical equipment frauds? I bet I can at some of these: the Better Business Bureau, the State of Florida Consumer Help Line, Florida Department of Professional Regulation...

The State of Florida has famously terrible DCF and Medicaid services, but their *regular* consumer-type help is excellent. In fact, it was a Florida HMO complaint taker who - after explaining she couldn't help, it was Federal - actually put me on hold to research some things for me. She was even fast. She said that even before I'm actually denied the *good* scooter company by my HMO, I have this right: if my health is endangered by the problem forming the basis of my complaint, they must respond in 72 hours. It's already been 10 days. Got 'em.

Now that is consumer service. Nothing actually *required* her to do that. She did it because it was the right thing to do.

She also asked what Medicare said about the fraud. I told her: not interested, because it was a Medicare HMO, not a direct supplier to Medicare. Ah. Jurisdiction, she understands. So. Did I tell the HMO about the fraud? --Sure, many times. I even verified the supplier was fraudulently billing for a working scooter. --Good! What did the HMO say? --Nothing. Not interested. They just don't care at all. In fact they seem to wish I wouldn't mention it.

I'll get back to *work* on all this after I go to Sam's and Penn Dutch and Walmart. I'm sure my tiny amount of shopping will do me in for the day. So what. I'll sleep and wake up and start again.

It helps that this time kmom will drive me. We are very independent people, and asking my mother for this help was an emotionally awful thing to do. She'll drop me at the doors of the stores so I don't have to walk from the parking lot to the store scooter and kill my foot again.

Because doing that is what led to this most recent infection in the first place. Walking when it's not safe to do so. Walking, because I've never had a wheelchair or scooter for my car, and the scooter at home has been broken for a year, and they incorrectly said I'd have to pay $500 to fix it. And then did nothing to replace the defective one delivered this July, despite hours of calls and two formal telephone complaints with the HMO.

My complicity in this was in not standing up for myself better. But I think you can see, I did try. Oh, I tried and tried. Now I have to tap into my own vein of ruthlessness and not stop until this is completed. They aren't just hurting me here, they're hurting others too, that's how it works. Then they make it so hard to remedy, the vast majority of people truly damaged by these incompetent HMO's and fraudulent suppliers just give up. They break down in tears and depression like I did today and simply can't face it any more.

I have it in me to take it to the wall. I used to do this sort of thing as part of my profession. I can do it for myself today. I'm exhausted and weak but I'm not entirely bedridden. I can talk on the phone and surf and email and write complaints.

The name of the incompetent HMO is Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Options Medicare and More. The name of the incompetent frauds, the equipment company, is Central Medical Equipment Rentals. I'll be surfing up any info I can on Central Medical. If anyone out there knows anything about either of these outfits that might help me, or has any suggestions where else I might turn for redress and to stop the frauds, let me know. Those people need to be put out of business.

Will my primary doctor back me up on any of this? I don't know. I was supposed to see him this Friday, and wanted to talk about it then. I had to call to cancel, though. I have no way to get from the parking lot to his office, way down a long outdoor corridor on the second floor.