The anticipated date for the mandatory IME appointment was given, and unfortunately it was right smack dab on my youngest daughter's birthday. I struggled with the date and went back and forth with deciding to see if we should get it rescheduled, as many years prior, my endometriosis surgery was on her birthday as well and she was pretty disappointed. We decided that we would attend so that I could get it over and done with. Our hopes was to get to Vancouver early, attend the appointment, and get home as soon as we could, all in the same day.
The car insurance company offered to fly me and put me up in a hotel, but instead I chose to have my husband drive me and also be there for support. The hotel and flight would have been great, had it not been such a stressful appointment that held my fate for coverage. I had talked over this appointment day with my functional medicine doctor and she felt that with the amount of stress and anxiety it was causing me, to prescribe something to help bring down my high anxiety and she provided a note stating that my husband needed to attend the appointment with me.
Brandon tried to make the day smooth and fun to start, and so we started off by eating at my all time favorite restaurant downtown Vancouver. It's called Cafe Du Soleil. They have the best gluten free wraps hands down and the tastiest vegan breakfast burrito that you will ever get your hands on ( you can't even tell that it is vegan or gluten free when you taste it) The owner/chef knows our family well now, and we have our own designated spot that he seats us at every time we make it to his restaurant. Because the time is far between the times I get to eat there, I bring a little cooler with cold packs and buy two more wraps to bring home. Yes, haha, I am cool like that!
The burrito was amazing, as always, but boy were the nerves hitting me. When we made it to the building for my appointment, I couldn't sit still and did my routine pacing of the floors, like so many other unnerving appointments. Before we had gone to the appointment, Brandon clarified that there were certain papers that we would not be signing, which included giving the car insurance company access to all of the documents brought to my appointment by us. We were given paper work to sign while we were waiting, and we chose to not sign a few of the papers that we had previously discussed and let them know about. The IME came out and called me into this exam room and Brandon had asked if he could come into the meeting with me, surprisingly he said yes. We didn't even need to whip out my doctor's note to strong arm him into letting Brandon in the room, which felt like a massive relief and answer to prayer.
The room was close to the usual size of a doctors exam room, it had these huge windows with a city view, and his desk was divided with this large piece of plexiglass where I sat on one side of it and he, the other. He was very chipper and friendly. Brandon spoke up and had pointed to his pad of paper with his pen saying, "You okay, I take some notes as well?" The doctor agreed and we got right into it.
I was skeptical, my guard was up and I knew not to be fooled by the friendliness from past experiences. I answered his questions as point blank as I could. I think he perceived my apprehension and shifted in his seat and put down his pen and tried to disarm me. I straight up told him," I know you are going to tell me that you are unbiased and on noone's side here, but you ultimately are hired by the car insurance company and I've been screwed over by past IMEs. All I'm here for and hoping is that you can see me as a human being and someone who desperately needs her treatments paid for, and is worried you are going to take that all away from me. I don't know why I'm here, as I've done everything asked of me and have other doctors backing me. This just feels like a waste of time." He replied with, "I wish I had that much power but I don't. I'm merely here to see what could help you in your treatments and give suggestions. Yes, there are questions that they have and I've been given them to try and best answer them for them and give my professional opinion." I answered his questions, explained as much as I could and gave all of the backed up proof of my words, by name dropping each specialist, doctor and practitioner that I could organize with each treatment, appointment, suggestion and diagnosis.
I had a big play in my hand that I held closely, which was information that the car insurance didn't currently know about. Me and Brandon had gone back and forth on knowing if we keep this to ourselves as safe keeping and as our back up to combat this sabotage, or use it as ammo and another way to show my continued effort in wanting to get better, and more proof of yet another backed up doctor. I got to the point where I thought, "Screw it, I'm going all in."
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