[Katie]

Hi fuzzy,

I want to reply to this:

"Oh I didn't read you whole post. You say your insurance will not pay for "emergency treatment" with any of the other surgeons? And you have to file appeals? Even for a decompression and fusion procedure? Can you try to find the right doctor that is part of your network and offers you the right treatment? Even out of network you should be able to ge coverage for a nessesary treatment especially of it is not a multilevel ADR "experimental procedure"."

I am in Canada. Perhaps that explains a lot ;-) The surgeon that will do my lumbar but not my cervical is in another province. Because he is in the same country, my province must pay for it.

Unfortunately I have been unsuccessful in trying to find a surgeon who will treat me in my home province for over two years. The only two I saw way back when said that they see half a dozen like me every day, and to go home and take more pills. Period. Everyone else has a wait list over a year long and will not accept new patients.

The other surgeons who have strongly recommended that my cervical needs immediate surgery are from out of the country. One is in NY and the others are in other countries. But they all agree on my neck. Only my Canadian doctor is not worried. ????

So no, I am not able to get treatment unless I pay for it dearly. In order for my government insurance to pay for ANY out-of-country back treatment, be it ADR, fusion or whatever, a doctor from my province must first say that it is necessary surgery to prevent loss of life or tissue damage, AND that it cannot be done in my province 'in a timely manner'. Timely is not explained. Six months, ten, a year? No one will say.

So I am stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Either I accept the neighbouring Canadian doctor's opinion and have the lumbar fixed but not the cervical, and risk quadraplegia, or I hope and pray that I can win my appeal for out-of-country funding in a month or two and go to NY and get several hybrids done right away. I can't even get fusion, even if I wanted some. No one will see me, and the ones that did pushed me out the door with no treatment plan.

So far there is no in between. I have been fighting for this for over three years, before I knew what an ADR was. I just knew I hurt like he** but could not get either surgery or pain medication for a long time. Even when the 2007 MRI came in, the home provincial doctors did not take it seriously. The new MRI from last week looks much worse. I sent it to the NY doctor to get his reaction. He did not want me to go home without surgery several months ago, from looking at a two year old MRI. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when he opens the new one.

Fuzzy, thanks for all the feedback and links. It really helped.