Cancer Medicaid Snafu

Having cancer is bad enough. But then to find out your Medicaid coverage got cancelled, very bad. So then Carol DiGrazia couldn't use an ambulette service to get to her twice weekly oncologist visits. Which meant no way to get up and down the stairs by herself. Carol was forced to get creative. But the whole thing has been a pain in the b--t..literally.

Carol DiGrazia has cancer. She'd been complaining about back ache and thought it was sciatica.

"They sent me to a hematologist who gave me a bone marrow test, said Carol, "and they discovered that I had multiple myloma."

And she had a hole in her hip.

"They did radiation treatments, every day for 12-15 days, I was released and told no walking, no steps, nothing."

No walking, no steps, no nothing, not easy when you live on the second floor of a two-family home.

And when you're treatment includes two visits a week to your doctors office for injections and chemotherapy drugs and other medications. It's a big problem.

Carol figured she'd be able to use an ambulette service.

"Supposedly an ambulette service would be able to carry me down on a transport chair, carry me down the two flights because I'm not allowed to walk or put any pressure on it for the simple reason the bone around the lesion is so thin, they're afraid it will shatter the entire pelvis," said Carol.

The cost of ambulette service is about $253. Round trip but twice a week that adds up.

Hopefully Medicaid would cover it.

But it turns out her Medicaid was no longer activated.

Carol would have to figure out a way to get up and down the stairs on her own. She enlisted her whole family to help her.

The day we were there it was her granddaughter Diana who pitched in. Carol improvised a way to use her wheelchair, walker and her butt to get up and down the stairs.

It's hard and it's not pretty and by Carol's own admission, it's embarrassing.

"It's embarrassing, it's degrading," says Carol. And it's painful. "I have to usually stop three or four times because my arms get tired, the hip that's affected, this leg; my son-in-law what he does is, as I pull up, he picks up the leg at the ankle, so it doesn't drag along the steps."

In the meantime her sister made a dozen trips to the Coney Island Medicaid office for her sister but got nowhere.

Carol made dozens of calls. Nothing concrete.

That's when she reached out to Help Me Howard.

We called the Human Resources Administration and finally got some answers.

It seems anyone on Medicaid is sent forms every year to recertify. They are verifying their status, their income, any change of address, etc.

Carol doesn't remember getting those forms this year. She didn't think anything of it until it was too late.

HRA agreed to reactivate her. They have sent her the necessary forms to recertify and in the meantime, her caseworker will speak to any agency, in this case the ambulette service, to verify she is covered by Medicaid until her update information clears the system.

Now Carol only has to concentrate on getting better. We have no doubt she will give give it her all when it comes to fighting her cancer.

"I try my best," says Carol, "there are times I get down, I sit and say, why, all the questions everybody else asks, but if I had to have it at least it's something that hopefully they can cure. My doctor feels he can get me into remission."