Desperate College Student Needing Help with ER visits costs and Parents advice and reactions
Context: college student just about to graduate. At an out of state college until mid May. Been suffering from worsening testicular pain for a couple months, and recently started having very back neck and back pain. The pain and discomfort made me very anxious and made sleep erratic and possible. Even simple things like sleep and eating became a huge difficultly. I would even have headaches and I couldn’t sit in class without pain. My parents did know about the discomfort but we were dealing with a lot of financial and insurance stuff on the side partly due to the visits relating to the testicular pain, and other stuff in our lives. Because of this, I was told to not go on any new doctor visits without their approval. They wanted me to just try and make it through the last leg as much as I could due to finals and rest when I came hope. They said they would take the car I’m using on campus and at home and sell it if I did.
However, the physical and emotional distress at the time was unbearable.
All of this made me very anxious because I couldn’t concentrate in class. A couple of nights the pain was so unbearable that I did drive to the ER. The campus clinic was closed, and the free clinics too as it was around 3am for them each. There was a 24 hour urgent care but I didn’t know it existed at the time.
First was for the testicular pain and the second was for the neck and back pain. I was sleep deprived, anxious, and in pain. I didn’t want them to know or find out I had done this. So I removed any insurance on file or didn’t present it. The first doctor just did a physical exam and said I was fine but the second time they ran a blood test, and a CT + CT angiogram. They didn’t explain any of the pain but they I don’t have the billing for the first one, but the second one is…. It’s a lot. Given a payment plan I could in theory pay for it myself but my parents do check my account despite the fact I’m an adult (it’s the same account I made when I was younger). I thought about a go fund me but that would still show up on taxes and who knows if it would actually be successful (cause then they would know when taxes are filed). I may need to swing it through my own accounts then anyway, defeating the whole purpose.
The conditions have only marginally gotten better but I’m talking about help from the university to help deal with them. And my parents even started saying they would offer help after graduation for everything. Im really scared. I know I didn’t want to bring my parents but I’m afraid I may have to, at least for insurance. Regardless of my emotional and physical state, I fucked up, and that breaks their trust and puts us in more hot water. I would still like to pay myself but they tend to get angry when I say I want to do things like that, or even if I wanted to work on campus. What should I do?
submitted by /u/URGENT-HELP-NOW
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