I made it through my lung procedure. It was much easier this time so feeling pretty good and a lot less sore.
TMI warning: It was good news and bad news. My lung disease was still soft after two months and hadn't solidified. So they were able to use suction instead of cutting it out with a laser for hours like last time. So that's good that after two months it hadn't hardened back yet. The bad news is that the damaged parts they were hoping would recover did not at all. Parts of my lung are officially non-functional. So now we will have to decide if it's worth getting the dead parts of my lung removed or if we will leave it for now.
I was a bit of a celebrity which was funny/weird. Everyone recognized me this time and were super excited to see me. They said it was one of the rarest and coolest things they had ever seen in the lung department. There have been almost no documented cases of my disease in adults especially not at the severity I have. The doctors asked me to sign a release so they could write about me in a medical journal, and I allowed about 20 extra people to watch my procedure. Anything that will help others like me. I think they were disappointed it wasn't as bad this time, lol.
They want me to continue getting lung cleanouts every 4-6 months permanently. That is a lot of anesthesia, but not a lot of other options. I am on a waitlist and still waiting to hear back from the one hospital in the country that does a sort of experimental treatment to see if I am a candidate. I have been denied in the past but we'll see. A one-time intense surgery would be better than a lifetime of procedures if there is a chance it would work.
We are supposed to get our tax refund tomorrow. It's over $8k. (I like getting a large chunk back)
We had big plans for it but unfortunately, I had to pay a $2.2k downpayment for the lung procedure and next week I will have to put down $2.8k for the heart cath. There will be more bills afterwards. That is just the base price pre-payment. So for now we will be using the refund to pay medical bills. We will eventually reimburse ourselves once the HSA fills back up. But I didn't want to miss out on the 15% discount for prepaying that much money.
We also need to put $3k into retirement before April 15 because I claimed that on our taxes. After we reimburse ourselves we plan on saving for vacation, getting new tires on the car, and then saving the rest.
Heart cath next week.
February 21st, 2024 at 04:38 pm 1708533523
February 22nd, 2024 at 05:48 pm 1708624132
Is it wise to get such a large chunk from tax return back? Do you need the money more now?
February 23rd, 2024 at 05:13 pm 1708708422
February 26th, 2024 at 10:35 am 1708943720
February 26th, 2024 at 10:36 am 1708943788
February 26th, 2024 at 02:59 pm 1708959563