The knee folder is an inch and a half thick. It's a green pocket folder from the dollar bin at Target, and since December 28 it has swallowed every estimate, invoice, discharge sheet, rehab note and claim email that had anything to do with Hank's left hind leg. Yesterday was Caleb's 36th birthday, and the present he asked for was a long nap, so I had the dining room table to myself for the afternoon. I emptied the folder and added it all up.
Seven months after surgery felt like the right time. The last bill was the recheck in March, the last reimbursement came through before the end of that month, and nothing new has gone into the folder since. Mabel sat down on the receipts within five minutes. Any paper that looks important, she considers hers.
Every line, in order
- December 29, exam and sedated X-rays at my clinic: $288.00, after my 30 percent staff discount on a list price of $411.43. All of it went toward our $500 deductible.
- January 2, surgical consult in Blaine: $145.00. Also all deductible.
- January 8, TPLO surgery: $6,840.00. Our insurer counted $6,760.00 as eligible, took the last $67.00 of the deductible and paid 90 percent of the rest, $6,023.70.
- January 26 to March 4, six underwater treadmill sessions at $65: $390.00. Reimbursed $351.00.
- March 2, eight-week recheck X-rays: $310.00. Reimbursed $279.00.
- January, recovery supplies no policy would cover: three runner rugs ($162), lick mats and a snuffle mat ($46) and a second baby gate ($56), for $264.00.
Total spent: $8,237.00. Total reimbursed: $6,653.70. Total out of our own pocket: $1,583.30.
Where our $1,583.30 went
It sorts into four piles. The $500 deductible was used up by the time the surgery claim was processed. Our 10 percent share came to $739.30: $669.30 on the surgery, $39.00 on rehab and $31.00 on the recheck. The rear-support sling and soft cone sold at checkout, $80, weren't eligible. And the supplies were $264. On medical bills alone, leaving out the rugs and the gate, we paid $1,319.30.
The money moved the same way every time. The big bills went on a credit card, each reimbursement went straight onto the card the day it landed, and only our share came out of the pet fund. That's how the fund bottomed out at $255.70 on January 28. With the $150 monthly transfer running since April, it's back to $1,735.70 this morning. Not where I want it. A long way from that January screenshot.
The premiums belong in the math too
Leaving out what we pay to have the policy at all would be cheating. Hank's premium this policy year is $59.40 a month, and with the August payment we've made nine of them: $534.60. Add that to our $1,583.30 and the knee year has cost us $2,117.90 so far, against $8,237.00 in bills.
The long view is bumpier. From December 2022 through last November we paid $1,687.80 in premiums and got $126 back. Last August, two dollars short of the deductible, I wrote that I was still glad we had it, and I meant it, but I also understood anyone who read that post and thought we were paying for nothing. Counting this year, we've now paid $2,222.40 in premiums over not quite four years and been reimbursed $6,779.70.
I'm not putting those numbers side by side to win an argument. The policy didn't get smarter in January. It's the same policy it was in 2023. What changed was which kind of year we were having, and nobody gets to pick that in advance.
What the folder taught me
- Send the early bills in with the big claim. The exam and the consult went in with the surgery, so the deductible was already met when the surgery claim was processed.
- Ask for the itemized invoice and the surgical report before leaving the building. I did, and the claim paid in 18 days.
- Expect the things insurance doesn't touch. Checkout items and supplies came to $344 together, more than I would have guessed in December.
- The ledger doesn't show time. Caleb used vacation days for the drives to Blaine, I swapped shifts twice, and we both lost a fair amount of sleep on the sofa in January.
There's one more line I think about, the one that isn't in the folder. Hank's surgeon has told us at every visit that dogs who tear one cruciate ligament often run into trouble with the other. His right knee is healthy. If it ever isn't, the bill would look a lot like this one, and both the pet fund and the policy are set up with that in mind. A different dog, a different clinic's prices and a different policy's fine print would all produce different numbers, so the itemized invoice and the policy itself are where yours will come from.
When I was done, the folder went into the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in the office, behind the house papers. Hank followed me in, lay down on the cool floor under the window unit and stretched his left leg straight out behind him, the way he does now, like it had never been anything at all.
