I'm concentrating on getting this posted, but I realize I've left everyone who has read to this point dangling, so I'm posting this raw until I can overcome a few health problems and of course there'll be photos...
Thanks for your patience...
Jet
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Back on Monday, September 10, 2007, I was supposed to have eye surgery at Ohio State University to remove the remnants of exploded blood vessels inside of my eyes due to diabetic retinopathy, the effect of which is like having a lava lamp in both eyes. The very next day, on the 11th, I was to have corrective surgery to fix my left knee.
Instead, an EKG revealed an anomaly called a negative T wave, and all surgeries were canceled in order to have a more extensive echo EKG done. That test revealed a blood clot lodged in my heart that was starving the muscles in one of the chambers and enlarging it. I didn’t realize how serious it was until that Friday when I was rushed to the hospital with congestive heart failure. I was put on Coumadin (a blood thinner that is the main component of rat poison) in order to try to dissolve it.
Between September and December, I apparently suffered a massive “silent heart attack.” It was explained that diabetics could actually have them and not know it. On December 28, I was again rushed into heart surgery and stents were implanted in narrowed blood vessels. I was told a clot that couldn’t be operated on blocked one artery. The only choice was to stay on Coumadin and to add Plavix to my list of prescriptions.
In July of 2007 (thanks to the help of many of my friends at Blogcritics), I barely had the financial ability to file bankruptcy to get out from under $56,000 in credit card debts (because of 33.9% interest and late fees). I couldn’t afford $95.50 out of my disability checks per month for Medicare and its co-pays, nor could I afford health insurance.
I was also apparently making just over the income limit from disability and workman’s comp to qualify for Medicaid. This means I’m stuck with more than $30,000 in hospital bills with no way to pay them. Bankruptcy is out of reach for seven years. Thank god for my psychiatrist (Dr. M) at Ohio State University. That brings me up to 2008. I thought things were settling down.
Fat chance.
Some year-old business in February of 2007 came back to bite me this year. I’d received a letter from Social Security saying my disability benefits totaled $1,025 per month. This perplexed me as I was only collecting (at the time) $461 per month. I called them and they said it was because I was receiving Workman’s Comp benefits.
The pizza shop I was working for at the time, in 2004, was “privately insured” through a company I’ll call GB. Several inquiries were made to get a definitive answer about my benefits through GB - with no response. I contacted a lawyer in February 2007 to look into it. He was satisfied and found I was getting what I was supposed to be getting and that my combined benefits were actually slightly more than I would’ve gotten had I only been on disability alone, because Social Security allows you to make a little over the limit from an outside source without penalizing you. I thanked the attorney for looking into it and forgot it.
In January of 2008, something strange happened. GB sent me checks for $444.34 every two weeks, directly depositing them into my checking account. I got a check the first and third week, and for no apparent reason got one on the fourth week. I didn’t realize it until a couple of weeks later when I checked my online balance against my checkbook. By mid-February I realized I hadn’t gotten a check in over three weeks. Like a fool, I figured they were making up for the check they deposited in error.
I got an unexpected letter from the Ohio Bureau of Workman’s Comp saying my attorney had filed a grievance against GB because they never provided him with the information he needed last year to close his file on me. A week later the Ohio bureau found GB in violation of the guidelines because they’d only responded a week ago (over a year).
By the third week of February of this year, I still hadn’t gotten a check from GB and things were getting very tight, especially since I was uninsured and a month’s worth of Plavix is $157 at Wal-Mart. This brought my monthly prescriptions to $225 a month. I attempted to contact GB and finally got a hold of someone who said she was new and was unfamiliar with my case. She said she’d get back to me, but never did.
That meant I was only getting $484 a month (with the yearly increase) from Social Security to survive on until I could get some answers. Those answers would never come from GB directly. Instead I found they would only deal with my attorney, whom I hadn’t communicated with in a year. I didn’t know he actually was my attorney.
Through my psychiatrist’s inquiries, I was told in March that GB had heartlessly cut me off from my checks back in December (without bothering to tell me) because my heart condition wasn’t part of my original injury. When I pointed out that I’d gotten three checks, I was told they were deposited in error because mine was a rare case that had been authorized for direct deposit, and they hadn’t caught it until then.
Would I have to pay those checks back? Repeated calls left on assorted voicemails went unanswered. Now I’d have to go on only Social Security until I could get it straightened out and wouldn’t get my checks from them increased until they did months of paperwork.
To compound my problems, GB almost pushed me over the edge to suicide. Over the last four years, I found I wouldn’t be able to return to the life and career I loved. My eyes were failing and cutting me off from artwork and writing. My left leg was all but destroyed and I’d never be able to be active again. As these problems continuously grew, a deep depression set in that progressively got worse as my life continued to fall apart.
If you’ve never experienced a clinical depression, you’d never understand. It affects you physically as much as mentally. To combat it, I started on 20mg of Cymbalta, and then a few months later it was increased to 30 (which at the time was the maximum recommended dose), then 60, and eventually 90mg a day. On a Monday in mid-March, I went into refill the prescription only to be told that GB was re-evaluating my case and wouldn’t authorize it. I was out, and the pharmacist took pity on me and gave me a three-day supply until they could get it straightened out.
On Wednesday, they told me GB still wouldn’t authorize it. I had to go cold turkey from 90mg a day down to zero. By Saturday I was experiencing uncontrolled rages. I trashed my apartment trying to find my glasses and bellowed angrily at nothing. My sleep schedule went out the window and I’d sleep eight hours, wake for four, then grow tired and fall asleep again. I couldn’t keep track of what day it was. Killing myself to end the ordeal was never far from my thoughts as the withdrawal symptoms got worse.
Mysteriously I began spontaneously bleeding. I’d clean off the site only to discover I couldn’t find where it was coming from. My shoulders were scabbed over, as were sites on my hairline and below my knees. My doctor looked at them and within seconds told me what I’d already suspected: it was caused by nerves and tension. Within days my pillows and sheets were covered in dried blood.
The following Tuesday, I found that just as GB had cut me off without telling me, they authorized the refill without telling me - the previous Friday.
I decided I’d have to gather myself up and try to fight again. I’d failed many times before and wasn’t exactly hopeful. I contacted a nice lady at Ohio Workman’s Comp and explained the situation, and she contacted GB. Meanwhile, my shrink at OSU discovered a program called “Spenddown” that might override my ineligibility for county health assistance by presenting my tens of thousands of hospital bills and my low bank balance.
After driving all over the county, I finally found a social worker who got some results. Meanwhile Dr. M got word that GB was bowing to pressure from the Ohio BWC and would be sending me a back check of $1,544. They wouldn’t, however, authorize direct deposit anymore because of the mix-ups. I wouldn’t get a check for about 10 days.
As long as I’m on Coumadin therapy and Plavix, I can’t have surgery to repair my knee, nor can I get surgery on my eyes so I can see again. As of today, my left eye is useless, just barely able to make out light through a dark maroon haze. My left eye has exploded blood vessels hanging down over my optic nerve. If I suddenly shake my head to the right, I can see crystal clear for maybe a second or so before they fall back in front of it.
I got a letter in the mail today. GB is demanding I start vocational training in order to keep my checks coming. They assigned the same woman to me who, last year, made me put in 15 applications for work a week and turn in the records to her or not get my checks.
I’ve lived in my apartment for 20 years now, so it’s memorized, as are the routes to the store and doctors when I could drive “one-eyed.” What I didn’t realize until today is how blind I really am. I had a hospital appointment at the heart failure clinic. I knew the route from the cab, down the hall, and to the facility.
I decided to go across the street to the library to get a 1040A form to do my taxes, a route I didn’t have memorized. I couldn’t see traffic to cross the downtown street, and left when everyone else moved. On the hundred-yard trek to the front door, there are several sets of four marble steps with about twenty paces in between. After falling over the first set, I began cautiously feeling ahead of myself with my foot.
After the terrifying ordeal, the cab left me safely at home. I was overwhelmed with frustration and hopelessness, and slept for fourteen hours, waking up a few hours ago. I'm still fighting, but I've become paranoid wondering where the next blow will come to blindside me.
This is the edge of my story stretching back, now I'll go forward, which means blogs will appear backwards from the bottom up...
As I go through my cab rode logs, and journals spread all over my computer, I'll be editing in events that I've blissfully forgotten-when I do I'll "blue pencil" them in like this... stay tuned
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