Friday, May 01, 2009

Insurance battle

I'm due for my annual breast MRI.

I can't have mammograms, because a) the skin tissue is so thin that I literally imagine that it would burst under the pressure, and b) I have lymphaedema.

I would think that those reasons would be suffiencient, but no. Aetna says that I can't have an MRI without a mammogram.

No way am I getting a mammogram. It sounds dangerous to me, given my "unique" medical history, and I can't believe they'd suggest it. Plus, I fall into every risk category (greater than 25% of lifetime recurrence, implants, radiation to the chest...) so why on earth would they fight this?

I'm counting on Dr. Rinn to make my case but MAN this hacks me off. I have enough to do without fighting this!

Okay, back to writing. Harumph.
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1 comment:

Sue said...

Sometimes I am convinced that insurance companies deny things just to see how badly you want it, and are you willing to fight for it. I go through this all the time. When they inadvertently found that lymph nodes all over my body were enlarged, they wanted to do a biopsy, my doctor said no, do a PET Scan since it involved too many body parts. Insurance said no, you need a cancer diagnosis first. My doctor screamed at them and ultimately got them to okay the scan.

I'm surprised that they want you to do the mammogram first though - my coworker had a prophylactic mastectomy (due to extreme family history/risk), and due to her implants was told not to have mammograms anymore - and that's without having had breast cancer.

Here's praying you can resolve this easily and quickly! I'm betting Dr. Rinn has seen this kind of denial before and knows how to fight them successfully, for better or worse!

6:34 PM, May 01, 2009

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