And the winner is...

Wait, I’m sorry—that phrasing is insulting to all the losers. I should say:

And the Vicodin goes to...

Tamara.

This sounds fishy, I know, given the photographic evidence of her looking at the bill. Here are the numbers:

Bill total (all 12 pages):

$161,076.91

Winning guesses, in order:

Tamara: $179,346.87 — off by $18,269.96
Naomi: $141,257.32 — off by $19,819.59
“Anonymous”: $132,000 — off by $29,076.91
Joanna: $198,357.92 — off by $37,281.01

Due to (A) the slightly sketchy circumstances surrounding Tamara’s bid and (B) the huge amount of Vicodin I have left over and (C) the closeness of the first two entries, I’m going to split the Vicodin winnings. Check your mail for opiates, ladies!

Wait, now that I think of it, Tamara is allergic to opiates too. That means I should get a cut if she sells them to anyone.

And Joanna officially gets bumped up to 3rd place due to the modesty of “Anonymous.”

And thanks to everyone else who entered—if you bid high, yes, you clearly do love me more!

On to the bill itself!

The fascinating thing is that it’s fully chronological, so I can relive all the highlights of my stay as they happened: Ooh, DOPAMINE40MG—those were the days! (That dose was just $8.54, for the record—a relative bargain.) And I got an awful lot of Fentanyl right after the operation ($3.70 per dose).

It’s also broken down by category at the end:

Pharmacy totaled $13,240.73—and that’s even higher now, after finishing my antibiotics, considering that a daily dose of ceftriaxone costs about $617.73 (lots more when administered in the OR). On the low end, a tab of Tylenol costs $.46.

The operating room and supplies cost $24,959. I don’t think that includes the bill straight from the surgeon, however. But all those cannulas! (Cannulae? At any rate, they range in price from $206 to $655.) My replacement annulus (no leering), a little Dacron-coated metal ring that holds my valve in place and shows up in X-rays now, was an even $5,400. A bargain at twice the price, considering it means I didn’t have to get a complete valve replacement.

A night in intensive cardiac care goes for $10,983. My ginormous private room was $3,269 per night. In the regular hotel world, only the Saudi royal family pays similar rates.

My dual-lumen PICC line was $676, and the expert insertion only set me back $207. Not bad when you cost it out per use. By contrast, the albatross of a cardiac monitor that I had to keep around my neck the whole time cost $1,221 per day to run—that’s one high-toned 9-volt battery!

And, hey, on Jan. 17, I see I got charged for a BRAT PACK: $2,517. Does that mean Judd Nelson was “scrubbed in” at the OR?