week of woe

The party on Saturday was, indeed, a blast and I stayed until almost midnight :-) Thanks a lot to everyone who attended! The safe word was ‘chicken’. Here's a typical picture:

It’s been a busy, yet pretty unproductive week. The oncologist at Karlák refused to see me yesterday, claiming I owed them money from before and a deposit of CZK 100K for any further treatment, including yesterday’s initial consultation. Of course, no one had called, told, or warned me that I would have to lug one hundred thousand crowns in a Tesco or (if I wanted to be cool a) Zlaté Stránky bag (as no one seemed to have the hospital’s bank account number) to my first oncology consultation.

At that point, after twelve days (granted, she was on vacation for a week), she still had not seen the histology, MRIs, X-Rays or CT scans, so the CZK 100K meeting would have been... pointless. So she sent me to make copies of everything, even though it’s the same hospital that produced many of them and certainly had all of them.

I returned with the copies and we are to meet next Tuesday at 9AM, provided I pay my (turns out to be non-existent) bill (read on!) and the one hundred thousand crowns by Friday. Chemo would start immediately following our meeting.

You know, that’s just not the way I roll. In other words, ‘Homey don’t play that’ or a simple ‘no thank you’ will do.

I went in search of the “Economic Department” (‘Finance’ for you English-speakers), which, of course, was in a different building – through the actual Faust Haus, of all places. I went to get the elusive bank info, but wound up spending some hard time there arguing my case. "We've been waiting for you," they said. So why didn't they just call me?

I asked them how much I owed them from before and... they didn’t know. I said, “Wha? Where’s the invoice? How can you expect me to pay a random amount of money? How can you expect my insurance company to pay you without an invoice?” At that point, one of the women handed me a handy, handwritten piece of scrap paper with a couple of dates on it, but without any actual numbers (like charges or amounts or something) that one could add up, like on an invoice.

I finally convinced them to call my insurance company, who had assured, ensured, insisted and swore that they would pay the entire bill for my prior treatment. The insurance guy repeated this on the phone with Karlák. And... they didn’t believe him.

So now, I really don’t know what to do. I’m trying to get a second (or rather first) opinion at Motol with Havel’s doctor, Professor Pafko, and the oncologist over there, but it’s a little slow-going and I don’t have much time.

It's late and I've got to get to bed. More tomorrow. -m