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For once, I have to give due credit to SMA Grinston, or at least folks in his office<\/p>\n
Imagine you’re married, both of you in the service. You’d think your medical needs, if not treated according to all the most up-to-date protocols, would be taken care of without you having to pay more for them than the normal years-out-of-your-life, right?\u00a0 Well… not really.<\/p>\n
Army Spc. Daysha Cartagena and her husband, Staff Sgt. Isaiah Cortez, were looking forward to the birth of their daughter in October 2021. The pregnancy hadn’t been easy; Cartagena’s legs and ankles were swollen, and her blood pressure had been erratic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\nWhen she began feeling contractions, Cartagena went to Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, where she was examined and sent home, told she wasn’t ready yet to have her baby. She repeated the process two more times before finally returning to Womack, her contractions coming in painful waves seconds apart, the baby’s heartbeat plummeting with each squeeze. Again, she was told she wasn’t dilated enough to give birth, but by then, she was leaking brown, bloody fluid, and she was allowed to stay at the hospital.<\/p>\n
It was the middle of the night, and Cartagena was given medication to move the process along. By 6 a.m., the doctors on call decided she needed an emergency Cesarean section. Three hours later, she had the surgery, but by then, her daughter’s heartbeat was faint, she was pale and barely breathing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\nLove to say this kind of thing doesn’t happen, but in times when clinics are being shut down and military OB care is strained, problems happen. Not saying all the military OBs are weak, but let’s say historically I can cite MANY examples.<\/p>\n
Cartagena’s daughter’s Apgar score — a health assessment of a baby at birth on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the goal — was 2.<\/p>\n
The baby, Mya, was flown by civilian helicopter to WakeMed in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, a process in which a person’s blood is removed from their body, scrubbed free of carbon dioxide and then oxygenated and circulated back through.<\/p>\n
Mya’s parents believe the problem was tied to the long labor and delayed C-section.<\/p>\n
The baby was transferred to Duke Medical Center, where she spent two weeks on ECMO and six weeks total, hospitalized.<\/p>\n
Then the bills came: $12,166.40 for the air ambulance; $61,634.80 from WakeMed; $594,564.88 from DukeHealth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Coupla enlisted folks getting billed for over $600,000? Yeah, THAT’S going to end well.<\/p>\n
We’ve been dealing with tricare [sic] for over a year trying to get them to pay the medical bills and they keep giving us the run around saying that it’s been resolved but a month later we’d get calls from billing telling me the authorizations have been denied,” Cortez posted. “Has anyone dealt with this before or know which avenues I can take?”<\/p>\n
He received a slew of responses and upvotes, offering suggestions, advice and empathy.<\/p>\n
And then one response, from Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston’s public affairs shop, wrote “Dm me.”<\/p>\n
Cortez sent a direct message. And within hours, he said, “Magically everybody wants to help.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n