Fishing saved my life

Where do I start? It’s been a horrible and yet great 2 years. I have been under unbearable stress yet learned a new way of fishing that I have come to love. I have met wonderful new friends and yet come to despise others.
About 2 years ago I noticed a problem. The incoming flow of money in our office was taking a turn for the worse. A bad turn. Suddenly making payroll and paying bills, which was at one time easy, became increasingly hard. Then it became nearly impossible to pay bills. I finally found out one insurance company wasn’t paying us like they should.
I am an eye doctor and run a one-doctor office with just 3 staff members. We found the problem and re-filed claims that went unpaid. The insurance company told us they wouldn’t pay because the claims we just sent weren’t received “in a timely manner”. Well, we knew that because we were REFILING claims that WERE sent in a timely manner. “Timely manner” here means if you file late(after 3 months of seeing a patient) the insurance company can simply deny payment.
After going round and round with them we finally contacted the agency in charge of implementing the system(medicaid of our state). They told us we needed to go thru “independent review”, where a person independent of both parties would basically figure out who was right in this matter.
We sent the reviewer the information needed to render a judgement and after about a month he sided with us. Easy-squeezy right? Well hold on. The very next day we get a fax from him that his secretary ‘misplaced’ the information the insurance company had sent and he was going to re-open the process. He then stated the insurance company stated the patients we saw weren’t ‘subscribers’ of theirs. HUH? This made no sense because we get ‘prior approval’ from the insurance company to see their ‘subscribers’ before seeing them. We went on THEIR WEB SITE and lifted evidence to show they were indeed their clients. We then sent some 600 pages of documents to support our side, in addition to the 200-some pages we had already sent. The reviewer looked at all the documents and after another 2.5 months of sifting thru the documents came up with a decision. This whole process of going thru this reviewer took some 4 MONTHS!!!
Meanwhile I am further and further in the hole and losing vendors to get products from and having my perfectly spotless credit record get shot to hell.
Well, thee weeks ago we got news he sided with us(AGAIN!) and the insurance company must pay us. They took 3+ weeks to decide to pay us…after we threatened a lawsuit and potentially millions in payouts for pain and suffering and interest and many other items I could conjure up.
Well today we got word “the check is in the mail”. We got a tracking number and it seems we are to receive a check tomorrow. Will let you know if it shows!

To relieve the stress of all this I fished all the free time I could get. It was amazing how I could shed the stress thru learning how to fly fish. I can say right now I think I learned how to fly fish faster and better than anyone in the history of fly fishing ever has :slight_smile:

(Keep coming back to this post as I will add items in that happened in the middle of all this…you won’t believe the things that happened while I was going thru this!!)
OK, here’s the stuf that happened during all this:
-My Mother died at the beginning of all this
-My Father is in assisted living
-My Father’s funds ran dry
-My Brothers and Sisters decided(amongst themselves, without any…or very little…discussion with me) decided we all will pay into a fund to help Dad. I told them of the problem I was having and their response was…“Pony up”. They couldn’t see I had little/no means to pay in…but I was a “rich Dr” and that didn’t matter.
-I was arrested in front of my daughter, working for me fo the summer, for “assaulting a Police officer”. I refused to take a ticket from a meter maid(not really a Police officer, but…I was backing out of a spot and she tapped on my window, scaring me to death and instead of rolling the window down and cussing her out I simply went to another parking spot nearby. I went to lunch and was arrested when we got back. Talk about abusing your ‘power’!!
-Medicare ‘lost’ $20,000 worth of claims and we had to refile for them.
-My brother had heart surgery some 3 times.
-Had to sell: one of my daughter’s dirt bikes, my trailer I have had for 10 years to tow them in, our camper(which my family loves…kind of a blessing in disguise with fuel prices.
-I have raced dirt bikes for decades with no serious injuries. I took a group of kids out for a fun ride and fell, injuring my left rotator cuff!
-Played softball the other day and tore a hamstring. Never even had a pain from a hamstring in some 30 years of playing baseball, even in college and semi-pro leagues.
-I took on leases at 2 Walmarts to help pay the bills and have worked 6 days for about a year now. A vision insurance company(VSP) told me I could no longer see their enrollees at my private office because I “lowered” myself to work at a Walmart. I threatened to sue them for trying to “restrict me from making a living”.
-in 2003: My office got flooded from spriklers in apartments above, got damaged heavily from a tornado 2 months later, my mother-in-law died of brain cancer.

What a “wonderful” couple of years!! I am glad it is over…or I hope so.

My thanks to Betty for encourging words.

If it weren’t for flyfishing and fishing in general I truly feel I would have “stroked out” by now!

Hey BBW glad you’re enjoying the fishing! Sorry to hear about the insurance problems. I work in Ophthalmology in here in VA(I’m a COT) and I know how the insurance companies can be!! I’m glad to hear that the judgment went your way, Keep up the fishing!! I got my Dr. interested in it, and he’s pretty into it now too. Tying flies and everything!

BBW,
Hoping the days & years to come are better for you!
Mike

BBW,
I can relate to the stress you have gone through. Fishing was like therapy to me. I have a feeling that you are strong person who is going to recover from everything that has happened to you and you will appreciate your life even more!
Doug

BBW,

Sorry to hear all that you had to go through, but now it sounds like all that is behind you. Like you I have found health benefits from fly fishing.

Arrested OUCH, hell in todays world I am glade you didn’t get Tazered. Keep your chin up and I hope your familey see’s you through it, well at least your daughter. Take her fishing and lets see how she does.

After the dust has settled and your life returns to whatever state of normal is for you, just throw the fly fishing gear in the vehicle and take a drive to middle TN. and we will fish the Elk River for trout and the Duck River or Bedford Lake for warm water fish. You can keep this open invitation for as long as you want and it can be redeemed anytime unless I die!:wink:

Hey BBW,

I really hope all this insurance BS is over now. Good luck with the cheque tomorrow, I hope they come through.

Keep fly fishing, and learning as quickly as you are. I’m happy to hear that it kept you sane and well.

So sorry to hear about your folks:(

Take care of yourself, and good luck.
Shane

BLOODY HELL!!!

[COLOR=Red][i]YOU RUN OVER A BLACK CAT OR SOMETHING?

[/i][COLOR=Black][SIZE=2]Geez Mr Wolf, I sincerely hope things improve for you soon, it can’t keep going like this, unless ya get flooded out or burnt next. Oh, guess I shouldn’t say that.

Really though, you did well coping through all this, good luck with the fishing. I’m thinkin’ of ya from down under if that will help.

[SIZE=4][COLOR=RoyalBlue]HANG IN THERE!!!
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Man in that same time period all I got was a broken wrist and once lost $10.00 at the casino. I sure hope you caught a lot of big fish during the last two years.

I estimate in the last 2 years I have caught:
-400 trout
-300 bass
-500 bluegill
-10 catfish (on the flyrod!!)
-100 rockbass
-50 crappie
-1 40-lb carp(on a big spinning rod)
-1 drum

Said more prayers than all of them combined.