Recall

Recall!

Had clinic today. I go down to the UW every week or two for them to take my blood and for me to see Sandy. She is the transplant coordinator. She takes really good care of me. Makes sure my labs are good, It is like I get a check up every two weeks. I have had like a zillion blood draws at that darn lab and they still forget to get one and I end up getting poked twice. Arrgh! I really do not mind the needles but geez… but I get so many different tubes drawn that it is easy to get mixed up.

The UW has me so dialed in that she says that my labs are better than hers. The doctor who saw me before the surgery said that I am the healthiest transplant patient he has ever seen. Lots of people see me after hearing about my ordeal and are like “Where is the sick guy?” I just tell them if they want to see sick, I can unplug the batteries. Then you will see sick.

I am pretty lucky to have the care I have. I mean I will not go into it but let’s just say that even if you are in the medical field and you really watch what’s going on and try to champion your care….things can get missed. If you ever think that something doesn’t seem right or just a gut feeling, don’t ignore it. Find out what it is and if you don’t get an answer, find someone who will.

For example, I have been checking my ins statements. I look at them to see when I am going to hit the max and they kick me to the curb. I can imagine that there is some big office with a bunch of the insurance guys going “How the heck did we get THIS guy? And how do we get rid of him? He ate up all of second quarter’s profits!!!!” But I was checking on my clinic bills. They would run like $1000 every time I went down. Then I started getting clinic bills for like $8-9k. I was like Huh? So I call and they said you need to get an itemized bill before we can talk about it. Sooo a week later they send it and I look at it. There is a $127.00 charge x like 47!!!! That is why. I call and they say….I don’t know. I ask again a week later and they say “I think it is a blood thing” Thanks. So I get Sandy to call the Blood Bank cause that is where it is going and the lady on the other end says “Oh yes, we have seen this error and the UW is aware of it….pause….. Sandy says “so is there anything being done about it?” Who knows. Well this all gets taken care of but my question is would it get fixed if I did not catch it? If you want to you can poke holes in any system but I am just hitting some of the highlights just for the sake of argument.

OH…if you really want to hear something funny, listen to this. So Thursday I go down for the dry run for the transplant. Big disappointment, I kind of mope around for the weekend and get myself together. Then on Monday Jules is taking me to work and I get a text….THERE IS A RECALL NOTICE OUT ON YOUR HEART MACHINE!!!!!!! I really started laughing my butt off. I mean really. Recall? You are kidding me? What am I supposed to do, go to the customer service desk at Thoratec and yank the half of it that is in my body and plop it on the desk and ask the salesperson for an in store credit!!!

Well I called and it turned out that Thoratec put out an advisory regarding the device. The driveline that goes from the machine in my heart out of my belly and to the controller is basically a power cord. Power cords can go bad. Of the almost 2000 units they put in 27 went bad, 17 had to be replaced with surgery and of those people 5 died in the process. That is a terrible thing for the family of the 5 and a great pain for the 20 or so people. But of the total number of devices this is not a very large number, I can live with those odds. The press was using the word “recall” because I guess it sounds sexier than “advisory”.

What can you do, really? We just do the best you can with the information you have at the time.