Medical Health Fitness Articles Directory

This is a story that leads to a liver transplant. Liver transplants are a problem that the medical field has made huge advances in. The liver itself is an organ that will regenerate. If you take part of it out it will grow back close to it’s original size. I was a lucky one and am here now to tell the story.

I had the transplant back in March, 2005. 7 years earlier I started feeling more tired during the day and had to take naps. It was getting worse and worse. I thought I would have to see a psychiatrist. I was starting to get lazy. I had a cabinet shop that I just opened. I was working all night sometimes with a friend to get a job out on time because I was napping during the day.

At one of my jobs I was feeling sick on a trip to the plumber. I had to pull over and lay down in the truck I felt so bad. When I got back I started coughing up the red stuff. I was working and needed to get the job done. I asked Todd (my friend) if I should go see the doctor after we finished that day. Right away he took me to the hospital. After being in there for a week, I was on a no salt diet to keep the fluid from building in side. I thought I was cured.

One particular night I had this tremendous pain in my stomach area. It had been getting worse and worse over the last three days. Now it had me buckled over in pain. My friend and fellow worker Todd took me to the emergency room again to relieve the pain. They gave me something for the pain but during one of the tests they noticed my liver functions were way off.

A liver specialist sent the findings to Mayo hospital in Minnesota. He came back with good news and bad news. The good news was that they found out what was wrong. The bad news was that I had a rare disease called PSC. I would need a liver transplant. It is nothing genetic I’m just one of the lucky ones. It will take 7-10 years before I need the transplant, I was told. I needed the transplant 3 years later. Because the disease doesn’t effect my kidneys, I was told that I would never be at the top of the transplant list. I would need a living donor to live. One who would have almost the same size and blood type among other things. The donor would have to have the same painful surgery to give me half of their liver.

Right after the super bowl I received a call from another friend that told me he had something for me. He was going to give half of his liver. Here I am today able to tell the story.

For me it is a beautiful thing. For him it is a beautiful thing.

In line with the trends of the last 3-4 years, many insurance companies have announced their claims statistics for critical illness cover.

As a brief reminder, the idea with critical illness cover is that it will pay out a lump sum (usually) in the event of diagnosis of a number of serious illnesses.

Critical illness cover is purchased for a variety of reasons, with the main ones being to cover a mortgage loan (both personal and business) and for family protection purposes.

Unlike straightforward life assurance, which pays out on death, critical illness cover includes a great deal of small print that you need to research BEFORE you purchase cover. The QUALITY of the cover is one of the most important elements, not price. Unfortunately, many policyholders purchase on price alone and may be blind to what they are actually covered for.

The acid test comes when you make a claim.

Let’s take a look at some figures from two of the major critical illness providers; Scottish Provident and Legal & General.

Scottish Provident

From January - June 2008:

• they paid £51.6m in claims
• had 703 claims submitted
• 87.3% of these claims were successful
• the average payout was £73,423
• the largest claim value was £552,487
• the average age of a claimant was 44
• the average time a plan was in force prior to a claim was 73 months

Of the 102 unpaid claims (12.7%):

• 87 were declined as the illness did not meet Scottish Provident’s critical illness definition
• 15 were declined due to the discovery of material non-disclosure at the time the plan was taken out
• 80% of the £51.6m was paid out for claims for cancer, heart attack and stroke. There were 40 claims under children’s benefit, where the payout totalled £782,423.

Under the cancer claims, £8.8m was paid out for breast cancer, £2m for bowel cancer and £1.5m for prostate cancer.

Other successful claims were for benign brain tumour and angioplasty.

Legal & General

For the whole of 2008:

• they paid £146m in claims
• 93% of all claims were paid
• only 4% were declined for non-disclosure
• £146m was paid in claims
• the average claim was £70,000
• over 2000 claims were paid in total
• the highest payout was £550,000

It is crucial that, when you apply for cover, you disclose ALL your known medical details on the application form. For example, Scottish Provident declined a claim from a 39-year-old under the heart attack definition as, at claim stage, his medical records indicated that he had a long history of stress and depression with alcohol, drug detox and overdoses. Had these been revealed at application stage, critical illness cover would have been declined.

Interestingly, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has issued guidance on non-disclosure and treating customers fairly. Some providers may consider a proportionate amount of a critical illness claim if they consider the non-disclosure to be negligent and they would have still offered the cover at outset if the full facts had been known.

The Financial Tips Bottom Line

Critical illness cover is a key cover and should be considered as part of any sensible financial plan. Not having cover in place could seriously impact upon you and your family’s lives in many ways.

The KEY is to make sure you not only work out how much cover is required, but you also analyse the small print of each plan on the market as well as finding out more about their claims history.

ACTION POINT

The starting point is to find out whether or not you need any critical illness cover. If you do you then need to:

• work out how much cover you need
• take any existing cover into account
• review the existing cover to ensure it is competitive
• decide which type of plan you need (term, whole of life etc)

You can either do this yourself or employ the services of an expert who can take the time to explain all the options available to you and help you choose the right cover.

Whatever you decide, just make sure you take action!

What will happen if Mom or Dad can’t reach the phone after falling or having some other medical emergency? Accidents do happen. In the Fall of 2000, my parents Imogene and Joe moved from their home in Spokane, Washington to live with my family outside of Fort Worth, Texas. My father had a stroke about a year prior, but otherwise both parents were in relatively good health. My father could no longer drive though and wanted a long term living arrangement in place for him and Mom. So we decided that they could live with our family.

Within 6 weeks of moving in though, Dad unexpectedly passed away, leaving behind his wife of 56 years. How grateful we were that long term living arrangements had been made and that Mom was with us.

While Mom had a comfortable home to live in, she still found herself home alone during the days. My wife and I both worked and our children were grown and had moved away. While Mom had friends who would periodically stop by to visit her, and while my wife would often come home from work at lunchtime to check up on her, I was still concerned that if she had an accident of some sort or other emergency that she would be unable to get to a phone to call for help.

I had seen the television commercials for the emergency pendants-you know, the one with the elderly lady on the floor pushing the button on her pendant and saying she had fallen and couldn’t get up-and decided that an emergency pendant was the way to go. After doing some research on the internet, I discovered that there are two basic types of emergency pendants-ones that are available through a monitoring service and ones that are standalone emergency dialers that deliver a recorded message to programmed phone numbers of friends or family members.

We opted for a standalone emergency dialer. Mom began wearing a pendant that, when triggered, would repeatedly call up to 9 designated phone numbers until someone answered. The person answering would be instructed to press a key to distinguish that it was a live person answering the call and not an answering machine. A recorded message would then play stating that Mom needed help.

Mom’s emergency dialer was only for 1-way communication, but there are emergency dialers on the market today that offer 2-way communication allowing the person in need of help to be connected via a speaker phone with the family member, friend, or emergency personnel answering the call.

I wish I could say that Mom never needed the pendant, but it proved to be useful on several occasions-such as the time she fell out of her chair and on another occasion when she had uncontrollable nosebleeds. In both of these cases, my wife received a phone call letting her know that Mom needed help, after which she rushed home to offer assistance.

Everyone knows that in the wintertime in the northern states, you’re going to have to deal with snow and ice. Snow removal teams will do their best to get out and plow, salt, and sand the roads to keep them from turning into a massive game of bumper cars. But what about all the sidewalks, walking paths, and parking lots? Sure, there are store owners, city workers, and smaller plows that do what they can, but invariably there is always some snow and ice left over. To avoid a trip to Dwight healthcare, it’s important to use caution when trying to navigate any of these areas. Even if you’re healthy and have good coordination, it’s easy to slip and fall. It sounds innocent enough, but the injuries are sometimes severe: broken hips, collarbones, and wrists-even concussions. Fortunately, there are precautions you can take.

Many times these falls occur when people are walking with footwear that is not intended for snow and ice. Commonly these are work shoes with little or no tread. It’s no wonder people can’t keep their balance and fall down! Avoid the trip to Southern Chicago Healthcare and get a pair of overshoes, which slip on over your work shoes and have sufficient tread to get better traction in wintry weather. Sure, it’s an investment to get a pair that will do the job, but it’s certainly worth knowing that you will have good enough grip to walk to and from your job safely. Another option is slip-on shoe bottoms that have metal springs or other traction devices. These are a low-cost alternative and do a surprisingly good job on slippery surfaces. They have a tendency to slip off sometimes, but that’s a small annoyance if you can walk around without falling.

Sometimes, you’re not at your best. Let’s say you tweaked a knee or an ankle playing basketball or, more serious, are in the middle of a cardiac rehab program. The last thing you need is to aggravate a pre-existing injury or condition because of a fall. If you find yourself in this situation, do what you can to minimize the risk. If you need help up an incline, don’t be bashful. Ask someone to give you a hand. Or better yet, avoid the incline altogether. Take smaller steps and slow down. Sometimes a fall happens simply because someone is in a rush and not paying attention to the pavement below them. If you take a little extra care, hopefully you won’t slip and find yourself in the doctor’s office!