HoustonChronicle.com - Woman had to wait months to have skull replaced: "MIDVALE, Utah -- After a lot of red tape, Briana Lane has her skull back in one piece.
The 22-year-old woman was injured in an auto accident in January, and doctors temporarily removed nearly half her skull to save her life.
But for nearly four months afterward, the piece of bone lay in a hospital freezer across town -- and Lane had to wear a plastic street hockey helmet -- because of a standoff with Medicaid and the hospital over who would cover the surgery to make her whole again.
The surgery finally came through after an excruciating wait, during which she suffered extreme pain just bending down and would wake up in the morning to find that her brain had shifted to one side during the night.
'When you think of weird things happening to people you don't think of that,' Lane said. 'It's like taking out someone's heart -- you need that!'
Sonya Schwartz, a health policy analyst for Families USA, a consumer health care group, said insurance horror stories happen every day. But 'this particular story is outlandish.'
On Jan. 10, Lane's car rolled over on an icy canyon road above Salt Lake City. Lane, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown through the windshield. (She was later charged with driving under the influence and not having a driver's license.)
Doctors at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center in Salt Lake City removed the left side of her skull to treat bleeding on her brain. Lane's doctor originally scheduled the replacement surgery for mid-March, a month after her release from the hospital, said her mother, Margaret McKinney, a nurse who works in another division of the medical center.
But the operation was canceled the night before because the hospital was waiting to see whether Medicaid would cove"