Hospital held woman’s skull in lieu of payment
`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 crash 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.’
