my life, my pace

Or so my husband says when I ask him why he has so much credit card debt (which he conveniently forgot to tell me until after we had gotten married and I started handling all of the finances).

So it turns out that a year or so before he had the fortune of meeting me, my husband was into the typical push-yourself-too-far-that’s-why-accidents-are-a-leading-cause-of-death-in-young- males stuff. His risky activity of choice was mountain biking down precipitous cliffs and this particular time, he went rolling down the hill a la Homer Simpson (okay, maybe not, but he can’t remember what exactly happened and that’s just how I picture it). At least he was wearing a helmet, so his head was in good shape. His shoulder, however, wasn’t. He had landed on it, breaking the head of his humerus in the process. What follows is why young males shouldn’t get into accidents—they can’t afford to.

Luckily, my husband had been with friends when his accident happened, so he was driven to the ER by a friend instead of an ambulance, which would have cost him at least another couple hundred bucks. At the ER, he was seen by an ER physician, given some pain medications (which he refused), got an X-ray, and was seen by an orthopedic surgeon. He was discharged from the ER five hours later (only 30 minutes of which had been spent with a doctor) with a sling and instructions to go see his primary care doctor.

The next day, my husband looked for an orthopedic surgeon to see about his broken humerus and the earliest appointment he could get was for two weeks later. At that time, the orthopedic surgeon X-rayed him and sent him off to get an MRI to determine if there had been any damage to his rotator cuff muscles. The MRI (which took another week to get) indicated that there was minimal damage to the rotator cuff, but also showed that the bone had been broken in a very weird way that was outside of this orthopedic surgeon’s expertise. So he referred my husband to an orthopedic surgeon specializing in trauma cases. My husband waited another two weeks (a little over a month since his initial injury) to see this orthopedic surgeon only to be told that he was fine and to get out of his sling and start physical therapy.

So my husband started physical therapy—twice a week for a month. Then, being the typical guy that he is, he quit physical therapy after that point because he thought he was all better and because “it was starting to get costly.” He also didn’t go back to orthopedic surgeon #2 for his follow-up visit (to get an X-ray to see if healing had occurred properly) because he was quite broke by this time and didn’t think he needed it.

So let’s see how much this little accident approximately cost (because, of course, he can’t remember exactly how much and didn’t keep his bills) my husband in the end:
Day of accident:
ER visit: $700
ER doctor fee: $300
X-ray: $150
Radiologist fee: $300
Orthopedic surgeon fee: $300

Orthopedic surgeon #1:
Office visit x 2: $600
X-ray: $150

MRI: $500

Orthopedic surgeon #2:
Office visit: $300

Physical therapy:
2x/week x 1 month: $1,000

My husband, who had not-so-great insurance at the time (it covered 60% of all of the doctor stuff, 20% of the radiology stuff, and 60% of the physical therapy stuff), ended up having to pay about $2040 out-of-pocket for his accident. On top of that, since he was only working part-time at the time, he wasn’t paid for sick leave or vacation for the three weeks that he took off from his job to recover. Add onto that the cost of feeding himself with mostly takeout for three weeks and beyond and this little accident served to nicely ruin the finances of someone who was just starting to take his first steps towards financial stability. And in steps the credit cards to save the day, which we are still now paying off today.

So the lesson to learn here is that it costs a lot to hurt yourself (especially if you don’t have good health insurance) and that a trip to the ER doesn’t just result in bills from the ER, but bills from everyone you see in the ER and everything they do to you in the ER, something my husband did not know at the time since it was his first time going to the ER.

You can find some helpful information on what to know when visiting the ER here and information on how to check hospital bills for costly billing errors here.

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