There have been quite a few complaints recently regarding medical billing and miscarriages and stillbirths within the pregnancy loss communities I am a part of.
You see, I'm not the only one to have found a bill for an abortion in my mailbox a couple of weeks after giving birth.
Although in both cases, the bills were coded incorrectly (the current medical term is "missed abortion"), the fact that any medical provider thinks that a woman losing her baby through no fault of her own is the same thing as a woman terminating a pregnancy on purpose is beyond ludicrous.
I can understand how, 50 years ago or more, the term "abortion" would have been used in place of the term miscarriage, but in the last 40 years or so, the term has very different implications.
According to Urban Dictionary (which I generally like better than Websters, Oxford, etc when it comes to current nuanced meanings), abortion is defined as "The act of ending an unwanted pregnancy."
Every single one of my pregnancies was wanted SO BADLY that I spent months and thousands of dollars to try to achieve them.
In no way did I "end" those pregnancies.
As far as the definition of miscarriage goes, Urban Dictionary has this to say: Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the natural or spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the prenate is incapable of surviving, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation. Miscarriage is the most common complication of early pregnancy. The medical term "spontaneous abortion" is used in reference to miscarriages because the medical term "abortion" refers to any terminated pregnancy, deliberately induced or spontaneous, although in common parlance it refers specifically to active termination of pregnancy.
Even here the reference to abortion is given it's own little definition because the usage of the term has changed.
I wish there was a way that the entire community could contact those in charge of these terms and get them changed. No woman who experiences the loss of her child, no matter how early on, should have to see that term on a bill or statement of benefits.
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So what did my "abortion" (BLECH!!!) cost, including hospital fees?
I have insurance and it's actually pretty amazing coverage, but they don't cover abortions, which is why the bill from the on-call OB was $733. Once properly coded for a "missed abortion", my portion due was $0 from the OB.
On the hospital side, this is what I received for the 2 day ordeal:
Imaging Services: $487.00
Room and Board-Semi Private: $1009.00
Pharmacy: $304.00
Laboratory: $1112.00
Laboratory Pathological: $3430.00
Labor Room/Delivery: $2401.00
Total from the hospital: $8743.00
Of course, this doesn't include the charges for the OB or any of the expenses for having Jackson cremated. And now that I think about it, I'm wondering why my insurance company was charged for a semi-private room when I never had one. I went straight from my labor and delivery room HOME. I was never transferred to another room.
Thankfully, my portion of the bill was significantly smaller than the total.
So why am I writing about this now, after all these months? Because I'm approaching the point where things went wrong with our son and I can't help but wonder about the "what if's" while also hoping for a significantly better outcome this time.
We were so excited about the 2014 BYU Football season when the 2013 season came to a close. I had intended to spend my time during the games, holding our son as he wore a football onesie and BYU leg warmers, taking lots of pictures with his sisters in their game day shirts and eating tons of food. . . Listening to my husband explain to his son what a first down was, even knowing Jackson wouldn't understand . . .
So now that football season is upon us, and those dreams will go forever unfulfilled, I can't help but look back.
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