4:33pm August 15, 2014

➸ Whoever sent me the drainage bag is a saint.

clatterbane:

youneedacat:

Seriously.

You don’t know how much I need those, and how much I have to get by on one, hoping it won’t break. Ideally I have two, so that if one breaks I have a backup. Often I have to do horrible repair jobs that leave them leaking bile all over me at night.

They’re generally around $80 a piece…

I am impressed yet again at the absurd markup on medical items.

I mean, I know very well that’s a problem, but when they can seriously charge $80 for a plastic bag with some fittings because they know people have to buy them anyway…that makes me really mad.

I am also very sorry that supplies like this aren’t always covered, or they won’t pay for nearly as much as you need. The whole thing is terrible.

Don’t even get me started on HyperSal. (Name brand salt water, packaged into little ampules. I was paying $40 for the stuff before I figured out how to ask for generic. I get that they have to sterilize it, but that still doesn’t justify the price.)

I couldn’t even get generic at that low a price.

I make all my hypertonic saline in a pressure canner. Even buying all the jar lids and equipment and crap it’s still cheaper than buying the fucking overpriced 7% saltwater.

Oh and also? Medicare would cover hypertonic saline for me if I had cystic fibrosis, but they won’t cover it for bronchiectasis, even though it’s for the exact same damn purpose in both diseases (and most people with CF have bronchiectasis too, but people with bronchiectasis and not CF apparently don’t deserve treatment… we appealed it as far as we went and they just flat out told us that without CF I don’t qualify).