[drewrad]

So Kaiser yesterday told me, flat out, they don't put ADRs into people anymore. My Kaiser surgeon, Dr. Veoglei, said that they stopped about 6(I'm guessing now) years ago.

Here's my take on that. Kaiser is the most bureaucratic of all HMOs and thus, cost containment issues. Ergo, they have the most robotic statements to patients regarding their issues on what they can and cannot say(legal). Cost containment is paramount to the organization. Its how they stay in business. And with the FDA only allowing a one level... well, that only makes a guy like me more S out of luck. I am a multi-segmental. Thus, at 44, it appears I am in no man's land from an HMO perspective. A shame.

Kaiser is not a dr/patient organization. You need a PPO to get that. Kaiser, in a lot of ways, is like a cult. Those strange pink buildings almost have a Scientology feel, don't they? Anyway, I pushed and pushed my surgeon and he could only say what he was allowed to say. A guy like me, they're going to do steroid injections, they're going to prescribe any drug I want(I don't want any).

By the time Kaiser is completey finished with me, I will be an opiate addict and my back much more worse off with possible early fusion and a chain reaction of future fusions.

My only hope, for now, is learning as much as I can here and getting all the doctors(both overseas and here) opinions as to ALL my options. My goals are simple. I want to drive a car again without having to be the strange Driving Miss Daisy dude in the back. I want to sit at a restaurant with my wife. I want to be able to go to a movie theater and sit in a chair. I don't want to do triathalons. I just want to be a part of the human race again, and not be excluded from it. This isn't too much to ask, is it?

Even at Kaiser yesterday, there I am in the waiting room, a very healthy guy who can't sit down. Everyone is sitting down, all the sick people are sitting down quite fine it appears. I can't sit down. And there are no beds, so I'm standing or taking a knee. And since my doc was backed up an hour, I finally gave in and laid on the floor and had people walk around me!

This leg pain has been a journey and its one I will get to the end of eventually, but I don't think its going to be inside the giant pink buildings that gets me to where I need to go.