Erin Stratton
Appearances
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
I just remember the day. It was my mom's birthday, my mom's 65th birthday, and so we were— Wow, happy birthday, mom. Right? She's an identical twin, so my aunt and my cousin were here, and we're prepping for this party. At the time, we didn't really know what was going on, and that was really tough.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
Yeah, absolutely. He has always had the biggest personality. He's really funny, very engaging. He's been in sales his entire career, so he has that very charismatic salesperson personality. He, both my family, my entire family extended and everything is very big into golf.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
He responded very well to chemotherapy. He was relatively, I'll say, healthy or feeling well the majority of the time. Could still play golf, could still work.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
He was very tired. He would get the chills a lot, get a lot of fevers. And his bile ducts were narrowing because of the scar tissue and things on his liver. And so they had to put in a bunch of stents. And the stents only lasted him maybe a couple weeks. So they had to keep repeating this process. And during that time is when he got a really bad infection.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
He went off the IV antibiotics at one point during the appeal process, got an incredibly bad infection, was in the hospital for I think like two weeks. They had to put him back on IV antibiotics. So it was like nothing was ever stable.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
Yes. That was, I think that was the scariest part to me, knowing that it's happened before. It's happened before to other people, right, where the overturn of the denial didn't come in time. And so what I was the most nervous about is dad giving up hope and that driving him to get sicker and then...
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
He would just get so sick. He was in and out of the hospital. He was really losing a ton of weight. He was very tired, couldn't eat.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
One was a family medicine practitioner that had reviewed the case. And I was like, hey, nothing against family medicine. We all need it. I just feel like maybe you don't have the requisite experience to be able to review and understand the medical necessity of a case that's pretty complex.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
It got to a point where There weren't a lot of options. We had gone through what would traditionally be the remedy for the issue that he's having in his liver. And so it got to this point of like, if you get a new liver in his case, all of the problems go away.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
I would start working on it at night, and all of a sudden it would be midnight. And I would be like, oh, well. How much time in all do you think you spent on this? I mean, you were still working. You still have your day job.
The Journal.
A Life-or-Death Insurance Denial
I was still working, I would say 100 hours maybe, calling, researching, emailing, drafting an email, which is like much harder, although a little bit less hard when you're like, oh, if I don't send it, my dad might die. Right? Yeah.