Kara’s Medical Bills

Hi, my name is Kara. In late August I made the decision to get myself out of a bad situation and that unfortunately left me with no health insurance. I did find a new job but unfortunately it has a 90 day waiting period before coverage starts. With the astronomical cost of COBRA I gambled on coverage and thought I’d be safe to go without until my new coverage started. 2 days after losing insurance I started getting sick with what I thought was a migraine that spiraled out of control.

Raging headache, nausea, extreme hot sweats, body ache, zero strength, fever…couldn’t sleep, chugging water but couldn’t eat anything. I ended up at Urgent care with a resting heart rate of 145 and still over 100 degree fever. Covid and RSV tests negative. They sent me to Providence since they were concerned about my heart.

Providence gave me lots of fluids, pain and anti-nausea meds and said it looks like a viral infection and to go home rest and drink lots of fluids.

Needless to say I got significantly worse…

after another 2 days I started developing a cough. I was still not able to get anything down except applesauce. I could not regulate my body temperature at all and was sweating through everything. I had to crawl to the shower to run cold water laying on the bottom of the tub to try to cool myself down. Another 2 days after that I was starting to have a hard time breathing and still in a bad way. I called the nurses line and they suggested I come back to the hospital.

On my (reluctantly) second visit to Providence ER, I ended up having a softball sized pneumonia in my right lung and my potassium had bottomed out. My urine test was as dark as iced tea (after 3 bags of IV fluids) while I was still chugging water. Still negative Covid and RSV tests so they really had no idea what was happening to me. I was still sweating, throwing up, fever, and pretty delirious at this point. After 3 high dose antibiotic treatments and 2 Iv bags of potassium, an oral potassium supplement, and a RX of more potassium to go home with they sent me home.

I finally started to be able to function a few days afterwards but the cough trying to break up the pneumonia was so severe and left me often out of breath. I was exhausted all the time. I missed a lot of work at my new job and had no sick leave to cover my income.

My medical bills have started coming in totaling about $16000 collectively. I’m already in a tight spot in a lower paying job as a single income and being out of work without pay. I’ve never not had insurance before so this all caught me off guard and I don’t really qualify for the medical assistance with the hospital since I was “employed”. I am still trying to get my feet under me with bills and life and honestly any little bit helps. I still have a lot of lingering effects from whatever it was I experienced and am struggling to get back to some normalcy. I’ve never done something like this before, thank you for reading.

Kindly,

Kara