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@mayblin I am so grateful that I found this site and learn so much from others like yourself! Thank you for your responses to my particular situation! I'm also lucky in that I didn't start osteoporosis medication until I was 75 and that's better than many who have had to reckon with medications at earlier ages.
My plan is to try to do another CTX on my own. I'll give the phlebotomist no more than 3 sticks. If they fail, so be it. That was what happened to me last time. On the other hand, I've had hospital-based nurses get an I.V. started in one stick. There really are different skill levels and I'll hope for the best.
Spoke with my hospital about the Medicare coverage for the Dexa and they doubt Medicare will cover it since it's before the 2 years. Assuming that would happen, the hospital said my out-of-pocket cost would be about $320. If denied, I'll appeal and if that doesn't work. I'll pay. It's worth it to me to have that Dexa scan.
And I'm pretty much counting on having that second Zometa infusion the end of October, one year after the first. Had my breast cancer spread to my bones, I'd be using the 6 month interval schedule. When I pressed my oncologist for the primary purpose of Zometa - is it to prevent the breast cancer moving to the bones or primarily to address bone loss - she said it was the bone loss.
It's perverse that Zometa is used to prevent fractures from bone loss and the same drug can risk causing other bone-related injuries like AFF or jaw necrosis!
Replies to "@mayblin I am so grateful that I found this site and learn so much from others..."
@prarysky Your hospital and other folks doctors who say you can only get DXAs every two years are doing everyone a great disservice. There is a general original Medicare guideline for screening for osteoporosis which says, DXAs is limited to every 23 months. But Medicare specifies a number of exceptions to this general screening guideline. One exception is for monitoring the effect of osteoporosis drugs. These exceptions are stated in the Medicare guidelines and there are appropriate codes to go along with those exceptions. The problem for many of us is not the Medicare rule but the doctors and staff not knowing the rules well or being willing to make the small extra effort.
I've had 6 or 7 DXAs over the past few years and most of those were done around a year apart. I've also paid for them when I wanted to know where I was at in less than a year's time.
BTW I checked this with the two AI programs I've been experimenting with, ChatGPT (my favorite) and Claude. Both gave excellent answers when asked about the supposed two year limit. They can list the general rule, the exceptions, the codes and how the reason for the DXA should be stated and so on. I prefer ChatGPT usually, but they are complementary so on important matters I sometimes use both. Remember they are not perfect and can make mistakes and give wrong answers, but that is more of a relief to me at this point than a problem. Oh yes, I'm using the free desktop windows versions of those at present.
Good luck on getting a DXA scan when you need it!
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@prarysky
Can you doctor finagle a dexa sooner....??