Reply #180: When my brother's 2003 hip replacement surgery sent him into a deep coma that he was not expected

[tblue37]

ever to come out of, he was in coma in the neurological ICU for 23 days. Then for a couple of weeks he would have only moments of consciousness. Eventually, he was conscious for longer and longer periods.

He was in rehab for several months, and then in a halfway-house type of rehab, to retrain him to do everyday things before he could be sent home to live alone as he had before the coma. (He is fine now--you'd never know he had to relearn almost everything. It was a most astonishing and miraculous recovery!)

All that NICU, all that rehab, starting with just learning to be vertical again after months of being horizontal, learning to stand and sit, learning to walk, learning to feed himself, and just learning to function: grand total, about $250,000. (Fortunately, he has great insurance, though!)

My point is that my brother had much more care in 2003, and of a more expensive sort (including the original hip replacement surgery) than your father apparently has had, and over a period of several months (about 6 or 7 months, if I remember correctly). And yet his total bill was about 1/4 of what your father's hospital has already charged him.

(Obviously hospital costs are rising a lot faster than inflation. That's happening in universities, too, BTW.)