Difficult Week

This will be a fairly brief factual update as my heart is not in the writing tonight.

Tuesday I decided to email my primary care provider some thoughts and arguments on why I believe I do qualify for MaineCare to cover dentures and why I think it is more cost effective to do that than the alternative.

I wanted to check with my therapist to see if there were any late developments before doing that, so on Wednesday morning I worked up my courage and somehow defeated panic enough to try calling his office. I called five times and finally left a voice mail since it was obvious I was not going to get to talk to a live person.I never got a call back and that infuriated me even more. He constantly tells me if I need anything, just call or have someone call on my behalf. Lot of good it does! It is a small practice, just my therapist and his office manager. I have been going there for 17 years and he can’t even bother to call me back?

The stress and panic of all those calls caused my body to go into overload and shut down. I spent the next 24 hours vomiting. As a consequence I became so dehydrated as to need an ambulance and emergency medical treatment. That did not help my already high stress level. Upon returning home that day I found a letter from MaineCare informing me that they would not pay for dentures unless they received additional supporting medical information by January 6.  What? The %^#@!* dental clinic must have submitted an application when they knew the information was not complete! In so doing they started a countdown clock to denial, with holidays and everyone taking time off right in the middle. That leaves me with very little time to do anything. The more I think about it the more all this looks like they are deliberately trying to get this denied by MaineCare and force me to find another way to pay.

I spent most of Thursday night and Friday morning agonizing over the precise wording of letters to both my primary care provider and therapist. I asked my therapist for a copy of all paperwork he has submitted in this matter to date, and asked him to please consider submitting a better argument as to why dentures would improve my mental health. I presented an in depth argument of my case to my primary care provider, asked her to reconsider her position, and asked to be notified what decision she reaches. I mailed those letters on Friday and am now nervously awaiting Monday to see if either of them calls me and what the word is.