So, a little background here.

Back in the early spring of 2006 I started getting mail from my insurance company for bills to doctors. A lot of doctors.

Thing is, I hadnt seen any doctors. Sure, my thigh was numb and I'd been to my regular doctor, but that was it.

The doctors who were listed on these insurance letters were from a local hospital. Several neurologists. Apparently a woman with a similar (but a little different name) had somehow ended up on my insurance. Her name was Erin MiddleName LastName-hyphenated LastName. (her middle initial was the same first letter as my middle name)

She was the same age as me (born about 2 months before me). I had seen a doctor for a ruptured achilles tendon at the same hospital these bills were coming from about 5 years before. So, I'm guessing that she had gone to one of the doctors there, the office worker/secretary must have looked her name up in the system and picked the first name that matched that came up without asking demographic information like her address, name of insurance company, things like that.

I remember when trying to investigate how this lady ended up on my insurance (amazing how the office workers ignored HIPAA or is it HIPPA? rules) I was able to figure out when she was born, (march) her insurance company name, and was able to find out that she was having some sort of serious neurological problem (but not exactly what was wrong)

Oh yeah, I found out that there were FIVE other people with my same name (6 of us in all!) that were listed in the hospital computer. Amazed me at how common my name is.

I tried all summer to get her off of my insurance so they'd stop sending me the bills.

I kept getting calls from this lady's doctor's, telling me I should come in for a treatment or whatever, and I would go off on them, telling them that she was somehow on MY insurance and would they please remove MY information from her medical files and make sure they get the correct information about her from her. (I was starting to get annoyed with the whole thing)

Then August came, and I suddenly had optic neuritis. A week later I had a bunch of MRI reports. (and a huge bill for the MRI because the evil twin had screwed up my insurance so much that I had to use my credit card to pay for the MRI)...and then I had to worry for months about my own health while getting mail from that lady's doctors.

I kept getting occasional bills for this lady till december, and the bills finally stopped coming about the same week that I got diagnosed in January of 2007.

Tonight I was googling my own name, because I've got an internet stalker that somehow managed to get my real last name. So, I googled my own name to see if anything came up under my real last name, and there she was. She's apparently a special education school teacher and works at a school that's about a block from where my best friend from grade school lived when she was growing up. (when I went to my friend's house, we'd walk up to that school and played on their playground...never went to school there tho)

So, if my internet stalker googles my name, they're not going to find me. They're going to find my (not so) evil twin. (it wasnt really her fault...she was sick, and the person who was supposed to make sure who she was didnt do their job correctly)

I'm wondering now if I should warn this person about my internet stalker, since I was able to see where she works and her phone number!! (and they had a handy map on their site that even shows you how to get to where she works and what room in the school she works in!) My internet stalker lives in North Dakota, so it's not that huge of a drive for the whacko to drive down here and go look her up if he/they so choose.

I dont know if I should contact her, because I dont want to sound like I'm a stalker or someone who's trying to steal her identity (she already borrowed mine for the better part of a year!) I probably wont contact her just because of that reason. I dont know if she still has whatever medical problems that she had that sent her to a neuro (it would be really creepy if she has MS too...One of the neuros she saw that year was the same guy who did my second opinion...at the MS Clinic...and I had to explain to him about what happened with my insurance and her. He thought it was creepy that he had two people in the same year with the same name)

I'm just really glad that I've been pretty good about protecting my real last name since I got onto the internet way back in the ancient days of the Internet. Stalkers are creepy. I already had one back when I was younger who still occasionally shows up sometimes.