Walking with two poles and a little help from D.C.
When you have gray hair and live with a bunch of old folks, using a cane is the final indignity. So a feature story about the health benefits of walking with two poles catches my attention. Burn more calories with each mile, it says. I don’t need to lose pounds but I sure could polish my image.
Our fitness guru gives a presentation showing how two poles beat a cane or walker. I’m sold. My daughter and grandson are visiting Montana State University where he hopes to study next year. He calls me one afternoon and says he wants to bring me something. He shows up with the spiffiest pair of poles around; spring loaded shocks, adjustable height, the works.
It’s autumn in Montana and all the active young folks are out getting ready for ski season. In-line skates and poles take them up hills and down, really fast. I practice in my apartment, sans skates of course, then up and down the hallways and finally outside on the trails.
Way speedier than leaning on a cane, back straight, shoulders even. Wow! With my gray hair safely tucked under a cap, I might even fit in with the ski crowd, at least from a distance.
Recovering from a major fracture is a challenge at any age, but post the big M, it requires professional help. My surgeon agrees and authorizes several weeks worth. Medicare pays the lion’s share and all I have to do is get my bones to rehab three times a week and the therapists drag me through the routine. They’re kind, but persistent.
A little behind the curve to start, I soon catch up and find ways to make recalcitrant muscles respond. It’s very disconcerting to tell a muscle to move and have it totally ignore the request. What’s up with that? I suppose some neuron sends the message but the target muscle just doesn’t get it. At times, I have to move the other leg first, to prime the pump, so to speak.
Anyway, seven weeks from surgery, I have the post-op appointment with the orthopedic surgeon, who watches me walk. I tell him I’ve booked a photo trip for the next weekend. What would you do if I said you couldn’t go, he asks. I’d be so sad, I say. Well, I won’t tell you that, he says. Whew!
We talk about photography awhile, after which he says, I’ll see you in a year. That’s music to my ears and a real incentive to channel more energy into rehab.
The hardest part of the photo trip is the two-hour drive there and back. The rest is a breeze. The landscape is beautiful, the weather divine and I can handle my small camera, which fits in pocket or fanny pack and still manage the two walking poles. The heavy lenses and tripod will have to wait for another time.
When I booked the trip, I paid in advance, having no idea what the medical bills would come to. Like most seniors who were fortunate and thrifty enough to save for old age, near-zero interest rates have eroded that nest egg. Medicare pays up to 90 percent of some bills but without a Medi-gap policy, the remainder is all mine.
I Google healthcare fees and learn that a hip replacement in the U.S. can cost upward of $45,000; in India maybe $7,000 and New Zealand about $15,000. A new report finds medical costs are expected to rise 8.5 percent in 2012 after rising 8 percent from 2010 to 2011.
With all statements in except for rehab, I hope, the total from the hospital and all providers is just less than $30,000 of which Medicare has paid $22,357, leaving me with $1,590 plus $460 for rehab and $1,350 for nine days in assisted living, the bargain of all time. Three weeks of home healthcare appears to be covered. If not, I’m in deep doo-doo.
To better understand why Americans pay way more than poorer outcomes and why costs continue to soar at many times the rate of inflation, look up surgeon and writer Atul Gawande’s articles in the New Yorker magazine beginning in 2010. He is a brilliant writer, an original thinker, steeped in medicine and beholden to no interest group. Read his Jan. 17 piece on “super-utilizers” for a new take on how to save money in a system overwhelmed by those with chronic diseases who use emergency rooms because they have no insurance.
Then tell those who want government to stay out of their healthcare to take a closer look with an open mind. I worked and saved my whole life, but if it weren’t for government, I’d be sliding toward bankruptcy after just one accident.