Saturday the 1st thru Friday the 7th
The first week of May has turned out to be especially rough on me. I’m not sure why but putting two thoughts together was like trying to breathe in a room full of ammonia fumes. There wasn’t any one particular event that triggered it, but it was been rough. So let’s look at what did happen…
Social Security surprised me by direct depositing my check two days early on Saturday the 1st, not that that made a difference since after I paid the rent and car insurance I had only $6 or so left in the bank. I started working on a genuine looking $25 dollar bill for an upcoming article I plan to write for BC, but since I’m a typical artist I’m never satisfied and kept scrapping it and starting over again.
Sunday was my birthday. Betsy gave me a few smiles by calling me while trying to send an animated electronic birthday card, but she kept failing. It was sweet of her to keep trying and I fought like hell to keep from laughing. While she was cussing at her computer, I talked to her fiancé Norm. Every time I talk to that man I like him more and more. It makes me lonely though I don’t blame her/them. In the end after about an hour she finally succeeded in getting it to send by first sending it to Norm’s phone and then him sending it to me, but it wouldn’t play the animation of a little bear giving himself birthday spanks and singing and the header read fwd, fwd, fwd fwd, fwd fwd. I told her I loved her for trying. She didn’t get the package with the family pictures in it until this Wednesday and couldn’t pick it up until Thursday because Norm’s mom was ill. The package was too big to fit in her post office box so she couldn’t get it on her way to Clear Lake resort, where she started back to work this week. Without those painkillers she’s going to be miserable.
Thus starts another period where instead of hearing from her almost daily I’ll go 4-5 days at a time without a call because there’s no cell service up there.
My eyes are getting worse. It takes about an hour after I wake up to get them to focus so that I can read the screen.
Monday
I set out to conquer some goals. Dr. Mind wanted me to get in touch with a minister from the gay Metropolitan Community Church because she thinks he can help me get involved and get out more. I kept trying to get her to understand that getting out more means using up gas that I can’t afford to buy. I also wanted to contact a local food bank about getting something to eat and the diabetes foundation about help with getting some insulin.
I went over to an appointment with Dr. Knee and made a follow up appointment for two months from now. I’ve got to compose a note to my lawyer about GB soon because I can’t go into the hospital without meds for my heart, ulcer, diabetes, and GB won’t pay for them. While there I had them check on the problem with authorization of more physical therapy and it turns out it was approved April 13th and fucking GB never told anyone!
Dr. Knee wrote me a note for them and I took it over to WorkHealth and handed it to Tressa. She says it’s been so long that they’ll have to do another redetermination on me before I can start all over again. (groan) I told her I’d call her later in the week and had a desperate urge to get out of there because of all the strangers in the lobby. That’s getting old really fast; it’s like being claustrophobic and feeling like the walls are closing in.
Brenda gave me a hard time on-line because she’d sent me the money to get something nice for my birthday. I went over to Wal-Mart after seeing Tressa, to buy catfood with it and decided fuck it, even if it meant taking a double dosage of my small supply of insulin I was going to indulge in a birthday cake and settled on a $2.98 three-layer Pepperidge Farm German chocolate cake… They were out. Chocolate fudge?… they were out… Lemon… you guessed it. All they had was coconut white cake-yuk. I went over to the deli and everything was more than $15. I settled on a bag of chips and 5 cans of tuna. (sigh)
When I got home I felt really defeated, but Aunt Margaret called to wish me a happy belated birthday and it cheered me up just knowing she cared. I heard from my Allstate agent, wishing me a happy birthday and saying that they were giving me the nice discount to celebrate and because I’d been a customer for so long… as it turns out this long promised discount worked out to be about $6 less a month. Wheeeeeeeeee!
They also explained that the main discount that they'd been babbling about for so long was that I could save an additional $12 a month if I pay my premiums 6 months in advance instead of the usual $8 savings… Wheeeeeee! Since I can no longer afford to pay a 6-month premium and had to go monthly the exciting discount he kept telling me about for the last several months was moot.
Par for the course.
I fell asleep in the early afternoon and woke up around midnight. Knocked around the house for an hour and then fell back asleep until Tuesday morning… Nothing accomplished.
Wednesday
I woke up screaming, I’m not sure why.
The whole morning I couldn’t get my eyes to focus because of the growing cataracts. Even with my glasses, I couldn’t get them to focus on the computer screen. This is really starting to scare me. I waited until it was nearly time to see Dr. Mind and then called cancel the appointment. I’ll probably regret that decision, but I can’t afford a roundtrip cab.
My friend Matt from the Pizza Shoppe called to wish me a belated happy birthday. He’s in his early twenties and is already an assistant supervisor like I was at Domino’s. I’m so damned proud of him. We had a nice talk about his wife and stepkids and how much we miss the fun we used to have and it cheered me up a little.
People have started e-mailing me like crazy asking for me to re-post the Blogger HTML instructions on our group website for automatically loading their links to their BC articles. I did and all hell broke loose from asshole editors whining that I was clogging up their in-boxes unnecessarily with stuff I’d already posted a dozen or more times. Founder Eric e-mailed me and asked me to send him my instructions for the custom BC sidebar; Adsense set up instructions and the HTML instructions and posted them on the permanent BC home page where everyone could see them. It took a lot of squinting at the screen and blowing the font up to 200% just to read the damned things
Between Monday and Wednesday I got three electric bills, all with different amounts and dates due and none with the same amount ranging from $85 to $138. I’m going to have to call the city to find out what the hell’s going on now. I went into the kitchen without turning on the light and bashed my left shoulder into the sharp corner of an open kitchen cabinet in the dark. I have the kind of cabinets with no door handles-they’re beveled outward so that you catch the edge of the door with your fingertips to open it. While stylish, the edges are sharp cornered. The resulting painful cussing had Mischief hiding from me for about an hour.
My eyes were still blurred on Thursday and negotiating the narrow turns at the Clinic’s parking garage was out of the question, so I regretfully called to cancel the clinic appointment, only to get their damned voicemail all afternoon. I’ll have to try Friday because I’m low on crestor for my heart.
I’m still using my insulin syringes two or three times each to make them last, I’ve been pulling rubbing alcohol into them, the squirting the injection site with it sterilizing both the skin and the needle at the same time. Dr. S/clinic warned me that the alcohol reacts to the insulin and to be careful to get it all out by squirting air with it a few times.
Friday
I wouldn’t take any excuses. GB behaved themselves and deposited my check but I couldn’t force myself out of the door to buy some groceries. I had three chicken patties left in the freezer and ate them for lunch. That was it for the day. Hopefully I’ll make it out tomorrow.
My right eye cleared up enough today to focus on working on my genuine looking $25 bill, which I created in between phone calls, then I’ll have to do some research into how much the treasury spends on printing 5 20s vs 4 $25 bills.
- I called the clinic and rescheduled, but they can’t see me until June. I’ll be out of Crestor by then, so I’ll have to see how much Simvastatin is at Wal-Mart and cut out a meal or two to afford it.
-My phone bill went up nearly $10 this month and I couldn’t find an explanation for it, so I called AT&T. Apparently when I hit *6? to keep them from seeing my number when I was trying to find out where/who the fictitious 999 numbers were calling me from, the phone company automatically signed me up for a “tracer” feature which meant an additional $9 a month added to my bill. I got them to remove it, which took about an hour, and she said I didn’t have to pay for it on the bill. On top of that AT&T has decided to charge me $5 for long-distance calls whether I make them or not! It’s some bullshit about my being on a minimal plan. I made one 33-cent phone call to my mother that ran 5 bucks because I was under the limit… (groan) While I was at it, I asked to be transferred to the nuisance call department and complained about getting calls with numbers that appeared on my caller I.D. that didn’t exist. She told me of a program that I could sign up for that would screen up to 10 calls-giving them a recording saying I’m not accepting calls from them… but there was a $6 sign up fee. When I told her I was on a fixed disability income and couldn’t afford it, she must’ve thought I was some old fart and waived the fee. Now all I have to do is write down all of the collection agency numbers and it’ll be blessed silence around here and I can actually take phone calls from doctors at Grant without thinking they’re from the collections department.
-Next I called WorkHealth to schedule some therapy next week. I’ve got an appointment with someone other than Tressa. Whether that means I lose her as my regular therapist I don’t know.
-I called the city about my electric bill and it turns out their computer had a fit and tried to put everyone downtown on a “budget” amount per month. The good news is that this month’s bill is only a little over $62! All of the walking around in the dark, shutting down the aquarium light and heater and raising the thermostat to 80 degrees paid off. I don’t know how long I can stand it, but it’s a start.
-I e-mailed Lawyer K about the situation with the upcoming operation and wrote:
Dear C***** I attended another appointment with Dr. Knee last week and will see WorkHealth next Wednesday to continue my temporary total. Thanks for apparently scaring the bejesus out of them into leaving me alone so far this year.
Dr. Knee and I do have an issue.
GB recently went through my hospital and aftercare facility bills and retroactively refused to pay for any medications regarding my heart condition and my diabetes. When trying to submit the subsequent bills to Medicare/Disability they're rejected because they state that it was a workman's comp operation so they won't pay.
Over the last 12 months my heart/ulcer hospital vs GB injury bills have become so intertwined that I can't tell what bills are for heart operations and which should've been covered by GB-some for the same visit/account number. Collection agencies are hounding me sometimes 4-9 calls a day. This may be by design so that they can refuse to pay for something they should've but I'd never notice or object because the two issues are so hopelessly blurred.
The Future problem is...
Dr. Knee and I have set up a tentative date for surgery in September. Grant Hospital won't allow me to self-medicate my insulin and heart meds, nor bring them with me and I can't afford to pay inflated hospital prices for them (which is what I've been forced to do with the previous GB covered visit medication bills), nor can I refuse Grant Hospital's meds because I can't afford them, because I'd die without them.
I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can't afford to pay Grant for the meds I already have that they won't let me take there during my stay for the operation on my leg/knee and that GB won't pay for.
Fortunately I still have about three months to try to figure this out.
Chuck, I never thought this would happen to me, but with costs going up and my income staying flat for the last six years, I have been forced to chose between eating cheap groceries and buying my needed medications. I've been getting free drug-rep medications and insulin from my cardiologist and Grant's clinic since the beginning of the year because of increases in electric and phone rates. After basic bills I have only $60 or so to buy groceries and supplies for the month. The Medicare change over at the beginning of the year increased my monthly medications from at most $22 per month to over $380-not including my insulin to cover my diabetes and have left me unable to afford my drug needs.
Dr. Mind has been a godsend in helping me deal with the hopeless financial issue or I'd have given up long ago.
I don't suppose cost-of-living increases are something I can get out of GB?
Chrysler insurance sent me another interesting offer that I’ll have to look into and compare it. I’ve been meaning to dump Allstate for some time now, but I want to take one hell of a careful look before I leap, what with short-lived “promotional” offers that suddenly expire without warning.
It was in the 80s today, but there’s supposed to be one hell of a thunderstorm tonight and then the whole weekend is supposed to be in the fifties… yikes. I can tell already that there’s a change in the weather because my chest and knee hurt like hell.
I should look into becoming a weatherman…
I have no choice but to drive illegally until I can get the damned eye test thing worked out. I just hope I don’t get caught… but with my luck.
Saturday the 8th thru Thursday the 13th
I called my mother on Mother’s day and had a nice chat with her for a change. She seemed cheerful and spry. I told her about my design for a new $25 dollar bill and she seemed to like it so I promised her I’d e-mail it to her through Dee. I got a belated birthday check from Betsy in the mail for $25. Maybe I’ll actually go out and buy that cake-blood glucose be damned.
On Monday I had to be at the redetermination hearing at WorkHealth/Physical Therapy at 10 in the morning, Lately I haven’t been able to fall asleep before 7AM because of renewed nightmares so I was dragging when I got up. The new girl that I hae to deal with rubbed me the wrong way and will only schedule appointments early in the morning. This isn’t going to work. When I got home from it I couldn’t fall asleep so I tried entering some of the phone numbers that are harassing me into the call blocker but the feature wouldn’t accept the entries. I tried with and without the area codes and everything I could think of. I finally gave up and resolved to call them tomorrow or Wednesday.
Since I couldn’t go back to sleep, I checked the mail and then took both of my printer ink cartridges up to Walgreen’s to have them refilled. I’m going to try to print out my checking account to some of my harassers and ask them where they think I have room to send them any money. It turns out that refilling them went from $9.99 to $12.99 per cartridge. I said fuck it and had them refill both blowing Betsy’s check. After about five minutes the attendant came back and told me that the color cartridge wouldn’t refill because it failed the electronics test. There’s a thin copper foil strip on the bottom that carries signals from the printer and it wears out eventually and this is the 3rd refill. I got the black filled successfully and headed straight for Wal-Mart drooling at the thought of that German Chocolate cake.
On the way there I wound up behind a car with no break lights. At a traffic light, I jumped out to run forward and tell him before he got pulled over for it and made an astonishing discovery-I don’t know how to run!!! I nearly fell on my face. Since the surgeries on my foot and ankle, I’ve had to teach myself how to walk all over again because of all the nerve damage messing with the signals from my brain to my leg/knee/ankle/foot… however in all that time I’ve never had occasion to actually run. I was astonished at the revelation. My brain actually came up a blank when I thought of dashing forward!!!
At Wal-Mart they were out of Pepperidge farm German Chocolate cake… again. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Not to be defeated I bought a Chocolate fudge one instead. I thought of buying birthday candles and singing to myself, but the very idea discouraged me, and I didn’t want to set off the smoke alarm.
I left it to thaw and had the WHOLE DAMNED THING instead of dinner… along with lots of insulin. My god how I’ve missed that “chocolate high.” When I got home from all the walking my knee/leg began hurting to the point of throbbing. This can’t be good. They didn’t have a handicapped motor-cart available for me to use at Wal-Mart so I tried to walk all over the damned store and now I’m paying for it.
Tuesday I called the phone company to find out what was wrong with the phone feature. Repair said I didn’t have the feature they described and that I could only submit a number after they called me first… sigh. I tried it and it still doesn’t work. “We’re sorry… the number you have submitted can not be used with this service.”
Betsy called and we talked about how my other sister Dee accused her of accusing Dee of ransacking Dad’s house for money just after he died. It’s a rare occasion when I hear Betsy mad and she was. While we were talking, Dee texted her to apologize and tried to blame one of her (Dee’s) kids from her first marriage that she’d disowned. Betsy was seething. Betsy told me that when she opened the package I’d sent last week, the yellow painkiller bottle had popped open and they were all over the inside of it rattling around. She was so grateful because she was on a house cleaning job and was blessedly pain free, which made sending them to her well worth what I went through.
I woke up around 10PM and missed NCIS and NCIS-LA. Fortunately I can catch the full episodes on Hulu. I worked through the night on the $25 dollar bill project because I couldn’t fall asleep until 4:30Am and I had to be at WorkHealth for my appointment to continue my “Temporary total” payments. I reluctantly set the clock radio for 6AM… and then 6:15… and then 6:45…
Wednesday I have no idea how I made it to the 7:45AM appointment at WorkHealth without wrecking the car from not being able to see, or from falling asleep at the wheel. I’m having more and more trouble with my eyes and it takes longer and longer to get them to focus in the morning. I’ve got an eye appointment next week. Dr. T has been really nice about the whole situation and I don’t have to go back for another reevaluation until August 11th. I came home and went into a coma from lack of sleep. I set the clock radio for 11AM so I could get to Dr. Mind’s at noon, but when I woke up I still couldn’t focus my eyes and tried to get a later appointment for today or tomorrow… no luck.
It would have to rain today. I kept yawning through my tears all the way there. I can’t miss her because she’s out next week and I don’t do well if I have to go two weeks without my shrink. I had to wait while she took care of an emergency. and we didn’t get to spend much time together.
I got home exhausted and fell asleep almost immediately.
Thursday I woke up around 9AM and couldn’t get my eyes to focus again. God I’m getting scared. Oh the right one gets clear after a while, but it takes longer and longer. I called physical therapy and begged off. I told them we’d have to reschedule for afternoons and my eyesight problem.
Tressa called back later to say my first appointment with her wasn’t until June 4th.
I hopped on the phone to AT&T again. It turns out call screening doesn’t work with multi-line businesses-What the fuck??? Most harassing calls come from multi-lined collection agencies, sales calls trying to sell you shit, and multi-lined sweat shops sending you pre-recorded political announcements, so what’s the use of the service?
I gave up and hung up on them. I texted Betsy to send my brother Jim a birthday message from me because I don’t have his cell phone or e-mail address to text/and or e-mail him greetings. I don’t know why I keep trying, even though he is my brother.
I started getting e-mails about someone putting the Digg project down on the BC forum page. I wrestled with the subject for a while and then said fuck it, it’s useless to put out all that energy for so little a return and gave up. I got an e-mail from Lisa and Eric liking my $25 bill idea, so I’m going to spend the evening writing up and hopefully publishing the article.
Sunday the 16th
I finally finished the Kennedy $25 dollar bill graphic and article and if I do say so myself it looks great. I almost had to start all over again… again when my research turned up that each denomination of bill has a different color scheme for its paper and I’d duplicated the $100 bills new format. It took two hours to insert a pastel yellow middle without messing everything else up, but I succeeded finally by adding it one very tiny and minute pixel at a time using Microsoft Paintbrush… yikes. I published the article at BlogCritics and on my own blog’s politics page.
There’s a core group of BC writers that I’ve joined called “BlackOps” that have been trying to get more attention for our BC articles by posting descriptions and links on the Digg home page. BlogCritics editors are generally putting down our efforts as useless, but we’ve been soldering on. Most of us are just trying to get enough attention on our articles to hopefully get some people to click on the ads just below the titles in hopes of making a few paultry pennies here and there.
The group is comprised of some really nice people that five years ago I’d have flown or drove out in person to meet but no longer have the ability to do so, which sucks.
The response to the Kennedy $25 bill article was great Friday and Saturday, but with other articles being published mine’s been pushed off of the BC home page already. I still think it sucks that the politics section only displays three articles. The readership went way down by Sunday afternoon. When I published it, I sent off a copy to the Kennedy Presidential Library hoping someone would notice and write back… we’ll see.
My right-wing sister Dee showed my mom the $25 Kennedy I designed and apparently didn’t read any of the details about it. In the graphic I have how the Statue of Liberty shifts from copper-colored to green and in the transition in the middle it’s yellow. She wrote back that I was insulting the troops by showing a yellow Statue of Liberty (dear god) and ignoring that it’s a color-shifting element on the bill. She rather indignantly said that I should’ve made it red-white and blue because “those colors don’t run.” This is the same sister who didn’t even tell her family that I existed until my father’s funeral in 2006, and jumps all over me if I try to contact her son for fear I might tell him or her husband about the black side of our family on my grandfather’s side. Apparently her husband is very racist. It’s probably why she ransacked his house to clear it of any evidence or pictures of him and had a fit when the reverend gave the photos to me before she could take possession of them… Either that or she doesn’t want me contaminating her son with my “Gay germs.”
Incredible. I’ve gotten word that my equally right-wing brother in Seattle has gotten into a rather angry confrontation with my nephew. Apparently my brother is a huge and rabid Sarah Palin supporter… dear god what is this world coming to? I guess I now have to admit to myself that half of my family are rednecks… groan.
I had a nice talk with Betsy while she drove up the mountain to Clear Lake. I’m so glad I got those painkillers to her, because she says it’s like heaven to walk around without pain from her heel spurs. I’m glad I can still help her even though I’m broke. Part way through the conversation I sneezed and nearly died from the pain in my upper chest. It was so bad that for a moment I thought the defibrillator had gone off and it scared the hell out of me. Since then I’ve been losing my equilibrium again when I try to walk around in the apartment. I’m not dizzy; I just lose my balance and want to fall sideways and have to steady myself against the wall.
After bills I’ve got $3.83 in checking left. I’m going to have to start working on a letter with a printout of my checking statement to show some of these collection agencies that I just don’t have anything left to send them and nothing left to sell that they can threaten to take. I thought seriously yesterday of cataloguing my Eisenhowers by date and mint and trying to sell them… Considering that most were a gift from my Uncle Wayne, that will hurt, but it’s all I’ve got left. I’ve actually considered taking them to the corner pawn shop so that I can eventually buy them back.
The thought of all of this depresses me to no end.
Last night a friend of a neighbor knocked on my door inviting me to an impromptu memorial for a gay neighbor who died earlier in the week. I wanted to go so badly but I can’t get past the front door to face all of those strangers. God this PTSD sucks.
Saturday my niece Amber texted me and we had a nice talk and a laugh about family politics. It’s amazing how much she is like her mother (Betsy)-very level headed. Her husband is in Afghanistan and I hope he comes home safe.
I spent most of Sunday listening to music on my headphones to drown out my ringing ears and working on a new version of my financial spreadsheet to accommodate three different kinds of insulin to keep track of and I’m making room for elements to track that I didn’t have room for on the page when I was making more purchases.
My sleep/wake cycle seems to have settled down again. I’m finally getting drowsy around 2Am and wake up at 9. The last few days have been peaceful with no nightmares, though something on the news or something I’ve read on line will set off a realistic flashback. It’s agony when I have a full-body shudder from one. I ache so much from being alone. Not having someone to love or care for or about me sucks. I miss hugging someone too. I’ve got to get over this fear of strangers before it kills me or I kill myself to end this isolation and physical suffering that seems to have no end.
I’ve got to drag myself out of bed at 7:30AM Monday morning to go to the eye appointment at 9 at OSU. I just hope I can see well enough to drive.
Thursday the 20th
What is it going to take to push me over the edge? Have I become so numb to everything that I just don’t care anymore?
I went to my eye appointment Monday towards a surgery in August, and in the midst of it there was a flurry of activity. They started shuffling me from room to room using ever increasingly complicated-looking pieces of equipment to try to peer past the cataract in my left eye to see the diabetes damage. After about the third room, two and then three people seemed to be consulting and looking through all manner of scopes into my eyes.
Eventually they sent me home without telling me what was going on, but scheduled an appointment for next week. Today (Thursday) I got a call saying that I was being pushed ahead of everyone else and was going to have to go into surgery Friday of next week and that I have to report to another location across town to get more detailed pictures taken tomorrow!.
The only explanation I could get out of them was that the cataract has begun growing at an accelerated rate just from the last time they saw me.
I’m fucked
Even if I had anyone one able to help, who would be willing to drive me to surgery at 5 in the morning and then wait to take me back home. I don’t have money for a cab.
- - - - - - -
Monday I took my computer apart. It’d been making some very threatening noises and I discovered a can of compressed air I didn’t remember buying. It turns out one of the two additional cooling fans I’d added was in the process of burning out. Fortunately it was one of the ones that just moved the internal air around and toward the exhaust fan. I played with it for a while and got it to spin reluctantly, but after I put the whole thing back together it was so much quieter.
The computer is over 6 years old and they don’t usually last more than five so I’ve got to make this one last. Back when I was rich I bought a 2nd hard drive and installed it for redundancy, so I’m safe if the whole thing fails, I just won’t have a computer to connect it all to.
The group that I’m working with is nice and I’m enjoying communicating with them. It makes my day less lonely.
OSU just called and rescheduled my appointment to 1:30PM tomorrow so I won’t have to drag myself out of bed… something went right.
I thought I was doing so great with hundreds/thousands of readers until an editor posted readership in the tens of thousands. It knocked me down a peg or two. I’ve been covering the Rand Paul controversy on my Tea Baggers article at BC and it’s getting a lot of attention.
It’s been keeping me from completing my revamp of my financial spreadsheet though. The check comes tomorrow and I have to figure out how to get a two-way cab ride out of a budget that barely lets me buy food. I’m also worried because I’m running out of Crestor samples for my heart and I don’t see Dr. S/clinic until next month… Still having eye-focus problems and my chest hurts like hell. I’ve resorted to my remaining supply of Percocet.
I still wish I knew what keeps me going.
Sunday the 23rd
Well, I learned a few things Friday that I didn’t know that I didn’t know; possibly because I didn’t want to know… duh. When I went in for the pre-surgery testing for my right eye they did an EKG. While explaining it to me, he showed me how the pacemaker is delivering a tiny shock to my heart on every damned beat! I thought it was just an occasional jolt every so often to keep it in rhythm, but apparently the bottom chamber of my heart that they kept telling me was dead, is as dead as they told me it was. It was the other bottom chamber that had begun beating against the rest. When I expressed concern about the life of the battery, he said it’d probably last about 15 years!?! Those must be some pretty damned good batteries!
I guess that lets out my theory about the hiccups being caused by the pacemaker because I’d never stop. I rarely have them, but now I experience a single one about once every other day. They telling me that I’ve lost 10 pounds cheered me!
The 2nd thing that I didn’t know was that a cataract grows in your eye lens; as opposed to where I thought it grew in the middle of your eye. I was busy over the weekend researching all this stuff up on line. When they said they were putting an artificial lens in, I thought was to fill the spot where the cataract was in the middle of my eye. Apparently they’re removing the entire lens-which is why I’ll need reading glasses. It turns out my eye lens is a lot bigger than I thought it was too and they’re removing all of it! I’ll have great distance vision and that’s about it. There are supposed to be new implants that are good for all distances, but since I was warned I’d need reading glasses, and I’m only on Medicare, they’re probably not going to use them.
It’s amazing that the majority of your eye is just filler. It’s big and round so it can rotate in your socket, but essentially everything takes place on the front surface and everything that I thought was going on my big eyeball was actually happening in that little cubbyhole behind the lens.
Research has also uncovered two other things. Being out in bright sun light causes cataracts because of the additional ultra-violet light, so enjoying my convertible might be a contributing factor. Also the lens they’re implanting may filter blue light because they say blue light is harmful to your eyes with the condition I have. All that artwork I was hoping to produce… I wonder what color the sky will be… maybe I’m hopefully over-reacting. It’ll definitely be strange to see different colors from each eye.
I started two different eye drops over the weekend. I’m supposed to use them four times a day until this Friday to cut down on the risk of infection after the eye surgery. I’ve got to do something to get my blood sugars down. I’m almost tempted to start combining the Lantus and the Novolog again, which is what was causing the glucose crashes before but that’d be dangerous. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
I see Dr. Heart this Wednesday after I see Dr. Mind; boy will I have a lot of questions for him! I run out of Crestor and Lasix on Monday; those are the drugs for my heart and controlling fluid buildup. I couldn’t get into see Dr. Clinic so I couldn’t get more drug rep samples, maybe Dr. Heart will have some.
My check doesn’t come until the 4th next month and I’ve decided that the only way to pay for the cab is to be “late” with the rent. What I’m going to attempt is to take my rent check over after 3PM on the third after the banks close and hope they don’t cash it until after the 4th. I went over to Wal-Mart and bought as much in groceries as I could, hoping to stay stocked up into the first week of next month, as the check will be completely taken up with the rent and car payment.
God this sucks. While doing inventory I found some sugar free chocolate pudding in the back of the kitchen cupboard and picked up a carton of milk. Wal-Mart had 24 packs of Diet Dr. Pepper on sale for $3.88 so I bought three of them. The rest was mostly cheap ravioli and Lipton (excuse me Knorr) noodles and sauce and cans of tuna or chicken. GOD I wish I could afford salad. It was nice and sunny Saturday and it reminded me of all the road trips I’d take just to go somewhere. I smile to myself remembering when I’d actually blindly stick a pin into a map of the Midwest and just go there “just to see.”
I finally got the spreadsheet done and it’s a lot more streamlined. Something happened with Lance Armstrong because suddenly my article on him was getting a lot of readers… either that or the picture of him naked on a bike that I added a few weeks ago have seekers coming in droves. With Rand Paul making a fool of himself in Kentucky, my translation tool for the Right-Wing Teabaggers on my Politics page was getting hundreds of readers over the weekend too, and it kept me occupied answering comments.
My Digg group kept me hopping with requests too.
My computer hasn’t made a single strange sound since I took it apart, so I’m hoping it’ll last a while longer. I wish I were brave enough to reset the software back to its original state to speed it back up, but I’d have to reinstall all of those Windows updates all over again… no thanks.
There was a gathering at the swimming pool Saturday and several neighbors I hadn’t seen for a while yelled hellos at me. While looking at them, I tripped on an uneven part of the sidewalk and stumbled forward and nearly fell. Not only did I pull a bunch of muscles trying to keep from falling, but it brought back the new and very real fear of falling. Lately every time I fall, I break something. With the sore muscles when I woke up, a wave of depression hit me on Sunday. I tried to ease it by sending out Sunday church jokes that I’ve collected over the years to the Digg group but it didn’t seem to help and I was in a funk all day.
Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend a lover comes up behind me, puts his arms around my shoulders and kisses me… god this loneliness hurts.
Monday the 24th
I woke up at 6AM screaming again. I was reliving the beating in my sleep and this time it was especially real. I’ve had to repeat the story again to my new e-friends in the Digg group. I’m also hearing the damned doorbell ringing again during the day and finding no one there.
My apartment building manager hasn’t left the usual notice on my door a month and a half in advance notifying me that my lease is up at the end of June. I hope he was right about my rent not going up. I guess he just assumes I’m going to renew-which I am. I ran into him last Saturday and he told me he’d lived here 33 years. This will be my 23rd lease.
I used the last Crestor for my heart in the bottle today that I didn’t realize was there. I’m hoping Dr. D/heart will have some on Wednesday when I go in and see him. I can ask him about whether that battery is actually going to last 15 years or if he meant the unit itself will last 15 years. Eye surgery grows closer and closer. I’m not worried about the surgery, hell as many as I’ve gone through it’s nothing now, but when my left eye improves I won’t need glasses for it; in fact glasses will be counter-productive… the trouble is I’m required to have them for driving on the crazy license I have now that says I’m not allowed to drive after dark either. Problem? I can’t afford another pair of glasses… Same shit-different day.
I can’t get my goddamned blood sugars down. I’m doing 30 units a day of Lantus. If I don’t get down soon my eye won’t heal. I don’t see Dr. S/clinic until next week. That reminds me I’ve got to update my medical profile and print it out before then with all the new eye drops and what drugs I’ve run out of.
I tried texting Teresa this morning but she didn’t answer back. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s avoiding me. We’ve lost touch lately and it seems like every conversation is to apologize for not calling for so long. She’s been to busy with three jobs and the only thing I have to talk about is the latest chapter in the soap opera… pretty much the way all my friends have gone.
My Digg group fortunately still e-mails me constantly. It just occurred to me that I haven’t heard back from Amazon about becoming an associate. It’d be great to run subject-specific ads for each article. I’m going to do that and I’m going to do it soon.
I’ve also started getting “chat” messages over my computer and haven’t discovered them until an hour or so after they arrived. I went in and explored around for the sound effects that are on the computer and discovered a single ring of an old-fashioned phone. I took it, boosted the volume and then edited it back on itself to make it sound like a phone ringing ten times. Then I programmed the computer to play that sound when it detects an incoming message. When I leave my headphones plugged in now I’ll hear an in-coming message from clear out in my living room. Let’s just hope I don’t get one while I’m listening to music.
I called Wal-Mart to find out how much a refill of Simvastatin was and they said $5.99. I checked on the Lasix that I’m now out of and discovered that all of my prescriptions for it have expired. Up until now it was a moot point since I can’t afford them anyway, but I need something to control the fluids around my heart and with all the salt in the cheap food I’m eating, this could get serious. I’m still trying to save back the mere $20 I have for a round trip cab ride to the eye surgery-which isn’t near enough, so buying the Simvastatin for my heart is out of the question. Some lucky cab driver is going to be getting Eisenhower silver dollars for a cab fare… Fuck.
I tried to call MCC again to talk to Dr. Mind’s friend but got a voicemail.
Tuesday the 25th
I woke up and knocked around the house for about half an hour and while checking my e-mails I suddenly felt very cold like I’d stepped into a walk-in freezer. Scenes from my childhood spending summers with my dead cousin Billy started running through my mind and I suddenly felt really sad and lonely. It took about half an hour to shake it off before I could get the day going again.
I logged on line and tried to sign up for Amazon’s associate program and kept running into a cyber-brick wall. I finally picked up the phone and called their tech support and they walked me through the process and I can now put Amazon ads on my articles. If it’s a music or video review, I can put a picture icon in the body of the article and they would go directly to Amazon and I’d get a commission if they bought it. In fact he said I’d get a commission if they bought anything whether it was part of the ad or not!
While he had me on hold, I got another call and my caller I.D. doesn’t show whom it is. I gambled and lost… well sort of. It was Grant Hospital billing department. I finally decided to fight for myself against this bullshit and talked to her and unlike the others she was very sympathetic. I laid out the whole story about how my hospital bills have become hopelessly entangled since GB started refusing to pay for my regular meds during Work comp surgeries, and how social security refuses to pay them because they’re… you guessed it-workman comp covered surgeries.
I told her about trying to block their phone numbers because of the stress and how I gave up because it’d also block calls concerning future medical appointments, doctors trying to help me with my meds etc
I also talked to her about being turned down for help with my prescriptions because I make too much in disability checks. Like all the other social workers she said she’d check into it. She promised that she’d try to see about stopping the harassing phone calls… I won’t hold my breath.
She says she’s going to mail out yet another financial assistance application. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve filled out, but she wants me to send this one directly to her… so we’ll see.
I spent the rest of the afternoon programming the HTML codes for my custom Amazon ads. With over 100 different articles and features on my six websites this could take forever, but if it possibly makes me some money I’ll be happy. Also Amazon pays by the month so I don’t have to wait until I earn $100 like Adsense does in order to get a check.
The episode of NCIS tonight was possibly the best I’ve ever scene of any series in my life. I’ve GOT to write an article.
Wednesday the 26th
Three collection agency calls before 10AM. God this sucks. I made it over to my usual Wednesday appointment with Dr. Mind. She’s going to try to find a church group to help me with rides to the surgery. God it hurts to think of myself as begging for anything… it’s so crushing to my self worth. If I could find someone with about $1,000 they could spare so that I could get back ahead of just the basic bills, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether damned GB is going to be late with their damned check or not. Anyway we had a decent session. GB is demanding her detailed notes on our sessions again.
How the hell can you talk openly and honestly with you psychologist knowing that some corporate asshole is reading her notes? It’s no wonder we’re not making all that much progress because I keep holding back the shit I don’t want some secretary to read. Speaking of secretaries, Dr. Mind’s very-very likable secretary Barb is retiring on Friday. She is so sweet and I can’t express how much I’ll miss her. I’ve been going to Dr. Mind now for nearly six years and Barb goes out of her way to be helpful and cheers me up when I’m down.
From her, I came home and had just enough time to go over my medical profile, update it, and then print it out before heading to Dr. Heart’s. It’s such a beautiful bright sunny day today. I used to call these my “get lost” days were I had the freedom to just toss everything on the schedule aside and hit a freeway and intentionally get lost in the suburbs somewhere-just to see what was there, and then try to find my way home again. Not only was if fun, I made a lot of new friends and found some great shops and restaurants that I didn’t know existed. I used to do that when I lived in San Diego and wound up in front of the naval housing unit and wondered if my brother and sister in law was there.
At the heart appointment, it turned out that it was just a test of the pacemaker/defibrillator to make sure it was functioning right; which it is. She confirmed that it shocks my heart on every beat, but corrected me that it should last about five years instead of the fifteen… though that in itself is amazing. I learned a lot. It turns out that that second heart attack did do a lot of damage. It not only enlarged and “killed” one of my bottom heart chambers, but it caused a sort of electrical “short-circuit.” Apparently the heart takes its cues like a car’s distributor and it was damaged so that the bottom two chambers were no longer communicating with the top two. The enlarged bottom chamber wasn’t pumping at all and the last chamber was so confused that it began beating against the top two, which is why I kept passing out and the triple bypass didn’t seem to do anything.
The pacemaker makes the “dead” chamber contract and then electrically “cues” the healthy fourth one to follow suit, all timed around the top two. I was also relieved to discover that a strong magnet only temporarily turns off the pacemaker and as soon as I leave its field it comes back on. (whew)
Thankfully they had a month’s supply of Crestor to give me from drug rep samples. I plan to lie to Dr. Clinic (GOD I hate this) and say I’m out, hoping to get a month’s worth from him too just to be on the safe side. I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to see Dr. D there; only the technician that was doing the testing. He came out of his office and saw me getting my next appointment at the receptionist’s office and smacked me on the back and joked with me for a while. I used to live in what seemed like an ocean of friends and his act brought back how much I miss that.
I was tempted to take the long way home in the sun but I’ve got less than a quarter of a tank of gas so that was out… alas.
I’ve been sitting here all evening trying to write something, but nothing’s coming out. I’d love to write a couple of astronomy pieces or maybe an editorial on “don’t ask-don’t tell” but it just won’t come. I studied my HTML codes for the Amazon ads and I’m trying to figure out a way to put a line of code that would allow them to “float” amongst the text of an article instead of taking up the whole line. Sooner or later I’ll figure it out. It’d be great to have them within the paragraph so the reader could click on them “while they’re thinking about them.
Thursday the 27th
I woke up this morning to the sound of kittens crying. I was blinded when I opened my eyes because the curtains in the bedroom were open and the morning sun was streaming right at me reflected off of the glass front of the new county justice center four blocks to the west.
Out on the balcony the beefsteak tomatoes were about halfway to the balcony roof on stakes and some were on the verge of turning red. I’m going to have to call Vicki and ask her to pick them for me while I’m. I’ve been having trouble with a squirrel lately that we’ve named “Spiderman.” The bastard uses his claws to climb up the masonry side of the building and then goes from balcony to balcony digging up flower beds that we “thought” were safe from them this high up. We have a family of albino squirrels that live around the dumpsters out back and one morning a few weeks ago I didn’t realize that there were people down on the ground watching him do his acrobatics and I began swiping at him with a broom trying to get him out of my geranium beds. My landlord had a fit at me when complaints started streaming in.
Anyway, while I laid there squinting, Madame Schange (pronounced “Shang” leaped out of the cardboard box at the foot of my bed and I presumed she was heading for the litter box in the bathroom. Chazra (pronounced Kazra) looked up at me and he couldn’t be bothered to move as I tried to get up out of bed. I threw on a pair of cut-offs and went into the living room and that’s when it hit me. No boxes all over the place, no garbage bags, the place was clean, the curtains were open! Out on the balcony hanging baskets of flowers were all in their brightest and cheeriest displays.
Chazra walked up to me and presented me with one of his protesting new kittens and I smiled down at it. It’s unusual for a male Siamese to have anything to do with his kittens, but I’d trained Chazra to take care of them by putting some hairball medicine on their backs (which he loves) and kept doing it until he licked and cuddled them out of force of habit as much as Madame does with or without the treats. Teresa nearly fainted the first time she saw him do that thinking he was out to hurt them. I’ve already got six good homes for these little packages of cuteness. Their eyes had opened about a week ago, but they didn’t have their “points” yet and were all white. Madame came to the door of the bedroom and started bitching at me, so I smiled and put the loud little bundle of fur back in the box with his brothers and sisters.
I nearly tripped over my suitcase in the process and something kept nagging me in the back of my head that something wasn’t quite right.
I almost made it back out of the bedroom when the phone rang and it was Brock wanting to know if I’d left for the airport yet. Huh? Then I realized I had to be in San Diego by this evening. I said I would soon and he said he’d have a rental car waiting for me and hung up. I grabbed a five-gallon bucket and began filling it in the bathtub. God I felt good this morning… in fact I couldn’t remember feeling this good. When the bucket was full I went to lift it up and nearly hurled it across the bathroom spilling water all over the place. To my shock the damned thing weighed next to nothing!
While I refilled it, I grabbed a bunch of towels and layered them on the carpet in the bathroom walking on them to sop up the water and then hung them on the racks in the shower to drip dry. When the bucket was full, I picked it up again and went out onto the balcony to the humidity on the other side of the sliding glass doors, followed by my faithful companion Chazra. One of these days he’s going to leap at a bird and fall six stories. After dissolving a little miracle grow into the water, I dunked a sprinkling bucket and filled all of the planters picking off old flowers and checking the tomatoes as I went. Then I filled a squirt bottle and misted all the blossoms and the green peppers.
When I went back in for more water I just couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong… then it hit me, my big huge desk I’d bought and built was gone! My albums were out on display instead of my CDs and VHS tapes lined the shelves instead of DVD’s.
Still holding the bucket, I ran into the bathroom and dropped the bucket on the soggy floor when I caught sight of myself in the mirror. There were my muscles, my longish styled hair and it slammed me so hard I nearly passed out in relief!!! It was all a dream, it was all a barely remembered nightmare. I was whole again.
OH THANK GOD!!!
…I opened my eyes. The curtains that had been closed since that winter of 2004 were still closed, Chazra and Madame Schange were both dead, he in 1998 and she’d been given away with a kitten in 1996. I loved him so much his ashes are still in a silver tin on my desk to this day. Mischief my tabby lay asleep beside me and when I reached over to pet her, she shied away and then jumped down from the bed.
I sat on the edge of the bed and cried and cried. I had relived some morning ten years ago in my sleep. I just sat there and wept.
After a while I pulled myself together and got the day started; or I should say it got started whether I wanted it to or not with a collection agency call. I simply picked up the phone and then immediately hung it back up.
Dr. Mind called me to give me a number for a man from her church that was willing to ride me to the eye appointment at 5:30AM tomorrow. I was about to call him when I got a call from OSU saying that they had to reschedule my surgery for next Tuesday and to stop using the eye drops until Sunday night and then start again. When I called the guy up who was going to ride me there, he said he was tied up Tuesday, so I’m in the same boat again. OSU called me back again twice in an hour to change the time of surgery, making it impossible to try to arrange a ride from someone. I guess I’ll spend the rest of my money in checking and my cherished Eisenhowers on cab rides. They also said I had to go back for a follow up appointment the next day, so that’s four cab rides. All I can do is risk driving one-eyed on Wednesday and hope it doesn’t conflict with my regular noon appointment with Dr. Mind.
I spent most of the afternoon trying to reach the eye clinic to nail down a time, or to at least confirm what day it was on but kept getting the department’s voice mail and finally gave up in frustration. My mind kept wandering back to this morning’s dream-it was so fucking real! It’s exactly what I was doing the morning of 911, only I never made it out to the balcony. That bucket of water sat in the middle of the livingroom floor all day as I watched non-stop in astonishment.
My knee’s beginning to hurt again, that can only mean that rain is coming. It’s supposed to stay in the upper 80s all week.
I’ve eaten nothing but canned ravioli and noodle mix since I can remember. It’s no wonder I’m turning to blubber.
This evening I got the hell scared out of me. Betsy called me on her cell on the way up the mountain to Clear Lake Oregon where she works. Half way there she stopped off at the house she owns to check on everything and encountered a stranger in an out-building who asked her for food. Up there in the mountains the nearest cop is 45 minutes away. She got a call from my brother Jim and clicked over. The cell service is really sketchy on the mountain and after I waited a while, she never clicked over and eventually I got a dial tone. Trying not to panic, I texted my niece and explained the situation. After about half an hour, she finally reached Betsy, who’d gone to a neighbor’s and they confronted the guy together.
Normally I wouldn’t have been so concerned, but Betsy’s house up there was broken into not so long ago and a gun was stolen, so I was concerned.
I played chess with my computer until I got drowsy and then went to bed… alone
The first week of May has turned out to be especially rough on me. I’m not sure why but putting two thoughts together was like trying to breathe in a room full of ammonia fumes. There wasn’t any one particular event that triggered it, but it was been rough. So let’s look at what did happen…
Social Security surprised me by direct depositing my check two days early on Saturday the 1st, not that that made a difference since after I paid the rent and car insurance I had only $6 or so left in the bank. I started working on a genuine looking $25 dollar bill for an upcoming article I plan to write for BC, but since I’m a typical artist I’m never satisfied and kept scrapping it and starting over again.
Sunday was my birthday. Betsy gave me a few smiles by calling me while trying to send an animated electronic birthday card, but she kept failing. It was sweet of her to keep trying and I fought like hell to keep from laughing. While she was cussing at her computer, I talked to her fiancé Norm. Every time I talk to that man I like him more and more. It makes me lonely though I don’t blame her/them. In the end after about an hour she finally succeeded in getting it to send by first sending it to Norm’s phone and then him sending it to me, but it wouldn’t play the animation of a little bear giving himself birthday spanks and singing and the header read fwd, fwd, fwd fwd, fwd fwd. I told her I loved her for trying. She didn’t get the package with the family pictures in it until this Wednesday and couldn’t pick it up until Thursday because Norm’s mom was ill. The package was too big to fit in her post office box so she couldn’t get it on her way to Clear Lake resort, where she started back to work this week. Without those painkillers she’s going to be miserable.
Thus starts another period where instead of hearing from her almost daily I’ll go 4-5 days at a time without a call because there’s no cell service up there.
My eyes are getting worse. It takes about an hour after I wake up to get them to focus so that I can read the screen.
Monday
I set out to conquer some goals. Dr. Mind wanted me to get in touch with a minister from the gay Metropolitan Community Church because she thinks he can help me get involved and get out more. I kept trying to get her to understand that getting out more means using up gas that I can’t afford to buy. I also wanted to contact a local food bank about getting something to eat and the diabetes foundation about help with getting some insulin.
I went over to an appointment with Dr. Knee and made a follow up appointment for two months from now. I’ve got to compose a note to my lawyer about GB soon because I can’t go into the hospital without meds for my heart, ulcer, diabetes, and GB won’t pay for them. While there I had them check on the problem with authorization of more physical therapy and it turns out it was approved April 13th and fucking GB never told anyone!
Dr. Knee wrote me a note for them and I took it over to WorkHealth and handed it to Tressa. She says it’s been so long that they’ll have to do another redetermination on me before I can start all over again. (groan) I told her I’d call her later in the week and had a desperate urge to get out of there because of all the strangers in the lobby. That’s getting old really fast; it’s like being claustrophobic and feeling like the walls are closing in.
Brenda gave me a hard time on-line because she’d sent me the money to get something nice for my birthday. I went over to Wal-Mart after seeing Tressa, to buy catfood with it and decided fuck it, even if it meant taking a double dosage of my small supply of insulin I was going to indulge in a birthday cake and settled on a $2.98 three-layer Pepperidge Farm German chocolate cake… They were out. Chocolate fudge?… they were out… Lemon… you guessed it. All they had was coconut white cake-yuk. I went over to the deli and everything was more than $15. I settled on a bag of chips and 5 cans of tuna. (sigh)
When I got home I felt really defeated, but Aunt Margaret called to wish me a happy belated birthday and it cheered me up just knowing she cared. I heard from my Allstate agent, wishing me a happy birthday and saying that they were giving me the nice discount to celebrate and because I’d been a customer for so long… as it turns out this long promised discount worked out to be about $6 less a month. Wheeeeeeeeee!
They also explained that the main discount that they'd been babbling about for so long was that I could save an additional $12 a month if I pay my premiums 6 months in advance instead of the usual $8 savings… Wheeeeeee! Since I can no longer afford to pay a 6-month premium and had to go monthly the exciting discount he kept telling me about for the last several months was moot.
Par for the course.
I fell asleep in the early afternoon and woke up around midnight. Knocked around the house for an hour and then fell back asleep until Tuesday morning… Nothing accomplished.
Wednesday
I woke up screaming, I’m not sure why.
The whole morning I couldn’t get my eyes to focus because of the growing cataracts. Even with my glasses, I couldn’t get them to focus on the computer screen. This is really starting to scare me. I waited until it was nearly time to see Dr. Mind and then called cancel the appointment. I’ll probably regret that decision, but I can’t afford a roundtrip cab.
My friend Matt from the Pizza Shoppe called to wish me a belated happy birthday. He’s in his early twenties and is already an assistant supervisor like I was at Domino’s. I’m so damned proud of him. We had a nice talk about his wife and stepkids and how much we miss the fun we used to have and it cheered me up a little.
People have started e-mailing me like crazy asking for me to re-post the Blogger HTML instructions on our group website for automatically loading their links to their BC articles. I did and all hell broke loose from asshole editors whining that I was clogging up their in-boxes unnecessarily with stuff I’d already posted a dozen or more times. Founder Eric e-mailed me and asked me to send him my instructions for the custom BC sidebar; Adsense set up instructions and the HTML instructions and posted them on the permanent BC home page where everyone could see them. It took a lot of squinting at the screen and blowing the font up to 200% just to read the damned things
Between Monday and Wednesday I got three electric bills, all with different amounts and dates due and none with the same amount ranging from $85 to $138. I’m going to have to call the city to find out what the hell’s going on now. I went into the kitchen without turning on the light and bashed my left shoulder into the sharp corner of an open kitchen cabinet in the dark. I have the kind of cabinets with no door handles-they’re beveled outward so that you catch the edge of the door with your fingertips to open it. While stylish, the edges are sharp cornered. The resulting painful cussing had Mischief hiding from me for about an hour.
My eyes were still blurred on Thursday and negotiating the narrow turns at the Clinic’s parking garage was out of the question, so I regretfully called to cancel the clinic appointment, only to get their damned voicemail all afternoon. I’ll have to try Friday because I’m low on crestor for my heart.
I’m still using my insulin syringes two or three times each to make them last, I’ve been pulling rubbing alcohol into them, the squirting the injection site with it sterilizing both the skin and the needle at the same time. Dr. S/clinic warned me that the alcohol reacts to the insulin and to be careful to get it all out by squirting air with it a few times.
Friday
I wouldn’t take any excuses. GB behaved themselves and deposited my check but I couldn’t force myself out of the door to buy some groceries. I had three chicken patties left in the freezer and ate them for lunch. That was it for the day. Hopefully I’ll make it out tomorrow.
My right eye cleared up enough today to focus on working on my genuine looking $25 bill, which I created in between phone calls, then I’ll have to do some research into how much the treasury spends on printing 5 20s vs 4 $25 bills.
- I called the clinic and rescheduled, but they can’t see me until June. I’ll be out of Crestor by then, so I’ll have to see how much Simvastatin is at Wal-Mart and cut out a meal or two to afford it.
-My phone bill went up nearly $10 this month and I couldn’t find an explanation for it, so I called AT&T. Apparently when I hit *6? to keep them from seeing my number when I was trying to find out where/who the fictitious 999 numbers were calling me from, the phone company automatically signed me up for a “tracer” feature which meant an additional $9 a month added to my bill. I got them to remove it, which took about an hour, and she said I didn’t have to pay for it on the bill. On top of that AT&T has decided to charge me $5 for long-distance calls whether I make them or not! It’s some bullshit about my being on a minimal plan. I made one 33-cent phone call to my mother that ran 5 bucks because I was under the limit… (groan) While I was at it, I asked to be transferred to the nuisance call department and complained about getting calls with numbers that appeared on my caller I.D. that didn’t exist. She told me of a program that I could sign up for that would screen up to 10 calls-giving them a recording saying I’m not accepting calls from them… but there was a $6 sign up fee. When I told her I was on a fixed disability income and couldn’t afford it, she must’ve thought I was some old fart and waived the fee. Now all I have to do is write down all of the collection agency numbers and it’ll be blessed silence around here and I can actually take phone calls from doctors at Grant without thinking they’re from the collections department.
-Next I called WorkHealth to schedule some therapy next week. I’ve got an appointment with someone other than Tressa. Whether that means I lose her as my regular therapist I don’t know.
-I called the city about my electric bill and it turns out their computer had a fit and tried to put everyone downtown on a “budget” amount per month. The good news is that this month’s bill is only a little over $62! All of the walking around in the dark, shutting down the aquarium light and heater and raising the thermostat to 80 degrees paid off. I don’t know how long I can stand it, but it’s a start.
-I e-mailed Lawyer K about the situation with the upcoming operation and wrote:
Dear C***** I attended another appointment with Dr. Knee last week and will see WorkHealth next Wednesday to continue my temporary total. Thanks for apparently scaring the bejesus out of them into leaving me alone so far this year.
Dr. Knee and I do have an issue.
GB recently went through my hospital and aftercare facility bills and retroactively refused to pay for any medications regarding my heart condition and my diabetes. When trying to submit the subsequent bills to Medicare/Disability they're rejected because they state that it was a workman's comp operation so they won't pay.
Over the last 12 months my heart/ulcer hospital vs GB injury bills have become so intertwined that I can't tell what bills are for heart operations and which should've been covered by GB-some for the same visit/account number. Collection agencies are hounding me sometimes 4-9 calls a day. This may be by design so that they can refuse to pay for something they should've but I'd never notice or object because the two issues are so hopelessly blurred.
The Future problem is...
Dr. Knee and I have set up a tentative date for surgery in September. Grant Hospital won't allow me to self-medicate my insulin and heart meds, nor bring them with me and I can't afford to pay inflated hospital prices for them (which is what I've been forced to do with the previous GB covered visit medication bills), nor can I refuse Grant Hospital's meds because I can't afford them, because I'd die without them.
I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can't afford to pay Grant for the meds I already have that they won't let me take there during my stay for the operation on my leg/knee and that GB won't pay for.
Fortunately I still have about three months to try to figure this out.
Chuck, I never thought this would happen to me, but with costs going up and my income staying flat for the last six years, I have been forced to chose between eating cheap groceries and buying my needed medications. I've been getting free drug-rep medications and insulin from my cardiologist and Grant's clinic since the beginning of the year because of increases in electric and phone rates. After basic bills I have only $60 or so to buy groceries and supplies for the month. The Medicare change over at the beginning of the year increased my monthly medications from at most $22 per month to over $380-not including my insulin to cover my diabetes and have left me unable to afford my drug needs.
Dr. Mind has been a godsend in helping me deal with the hopeless financial issue or I'd have given up long ago.
I don't suppose cost-of-living increases are something I can get out of GB?
Chrysler insurance sent me another interesting offer that I’ll have to look into and compare it. I’ve been meaning to dump Allstate for some time now, but I want to take one hell of a careful look before I leap, what with short-lived “promotional” offers that suddenly expire without warning.
It was in the 80s today, but there’s supposed to be one hell of a thunderstorm tonight and then the whole weekend is supposed to be in the fifties… yikes. I can tell already that there’s a change in the weather because my chest and knee hurt like hell.
I should look into becoming a weatherman…
I have no choice but to drive illegally until I can get the damned eye test thing worked out. I just hope I don’t get caught… but with my luck.
Saturday the 8th thru Thursday the 13th
I called my mother on Mother’s day and had a nice chat with her for a change. She seemed cheerful and spry. I told her about my design for a new $25 dollar bill and she seemed to like it so I promised her I’d e-mail it to her through Dee. I got a belated birthday check from Betsy in the mail for $25. Maybe I’ll actually go out and buy that cake-blood glucose be damned.
On Monday I had to be at the redetermination hearing at WorkHealth/Physical Therapy at 10 in the morning, Lately I haven’t been able to fall asleep before 7AM because of renewed nightmares so I was dragging when I got up. The new girl that I hae to deal with rubbed me the wrong way and will only schedule appointments early in the morning. This isn’t going to work. When I got home from it I couldn’t fall asleep so I tried entering some of the phone numbers that are harassing me into the call blocker but the feature wouldn’t accept the entries. I tried with and without the area codes and everything I could think of. I finally gave up and resolved to call them tomorrow or Wednesday.
Since I couldn’t go back to sleep, I checked the mail and then took both of my printer ink cartridges up to Walgreen’s to have them refilled. I’m going to try to print out my checking account to some of my harassers and ask them where they think I have room to send them any money. It turns out that refilling them went from $9.99 to $12.99 per cartridge. I said fuck it and had them refill both blowing Betsy’s check. After about five minutes the attendant came back and told me that the color cartridge wouldn’t refill because it failed the electronics test. There’s a thin copper foil strip on the bottom that carries signals from the printer and it wears out eventually and this is the 3rd refill. I got the black filled successfully and headed straight for Wal-Mart drooling at the thought of that German Chocolate cake.
On the way there I wound up behind a car with no break lights. At a traffic light, I jumped out to run forward and tell him before he got pulled over for it and made an astonishing discovery-I don’t know how to run!!! I nearly fell on my face. Since the surgeries on my foot and ankle, I’ve had to teach myself how to walk all over again because of all the nerve damage messing with the signals from my brain to my leg/knee/ankle/foot… however in all that time I’ve never had occasion to actually run. I was astonished at the revelation. My brain actually came up a blank when I thought of dashing forward!!!
At Wal-Mart they were out of Pepperidge farm German Chocolate cake… again. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Not to be defeated I bought a Chocolate fudge one instead. I thought of buying birthday candles and singing to myself, but the very idea discouraged me, and I didn’t want to set off the smoke alarm.
I left it to thaw and had the WHOLE DAMNED THING instead of dinner… along with lots of insulin. My god how I’ve missed that “chocolate high.” When I got home from all the walking my knee/leg began hurting to the point of throbbing. This can’t be good. They didn’t have a handicapped motor-cart available for me to use at Wal-Mart so I tried to walk all over the damned store and now I’m paying for it.
Tuesday I called the phone company to find out what was wrong with the phone feature. Repair said I didn’t have the feature they described and that I could only submit a number after they called me first… sigh. I tried it and it still doesn’t work. “We’re sorry… the number you have submitted can not be used with this service.”
Betsy called and we talked about how my other sister Dee accused her of accusing Dee of ransacking Dad’s house for money just after he died. It’s a rare occasion when I hear Betsy mad and she was. While we were talking, Dee texted her to apologize and tried to blame one of her (Dee’s) kids from her first marriage that she’d disowned. Betsy was seething. Betsy told me that when she opened the package I’d sent last week, the yellow painkiller bottle had popped open and they were all over the inside of it rattling around. She was so grateful because she was on a house cleaning job and was blessedly pain free, which made sending them to her well worth what I went through.
I woke up around 10PM and missed NCIS and NCIS-LA. Fortunately I can catch the full episodes on Hulu. I worked through the night on the $25 dollar bill project because I couldn’t fall asleep until 4:30Am and I had to be at WorkHealth for my appointment to continue my “Temporary total” payments. I reluctantly set the clock radio for 6AM… and then 6:15… and then 6:45…
Wednesday I have no idea how I made it to the 7:45AM appointment at WorkHealth without wrecking the car from not being able to see, or from falling asleep at the wheel. I’m having more and more trouble with my eyes and it takes longer and longer to get them to focus in the morning. I’ve got an eye appointment next week. Dr. T has been really nice about the whole situation and I don’t have to go back for another reevaluation until August 11th. I came home and went into a coma from lack of sleep. I set the clock radio for 11AM so I could get to Dr. Mind’s at noon, but when I woke up I still couldn’t focus my eyes and tried to get a later appointment for today or tomorrow… no luck.
It would have to rain today. I kept yawning through my tears all the way there. I can’t miss her because she’s out next week and I don’t do well if I have to go two weeks without my shrink. I had to wait while she took care of an emergency. and we didn’t get to spend much time together.
I got home exhausted and fell asleep almost immediately.
Thursday I woke up around 9AM and couldn’t get my eyes to focus again. God I’m getting scared. Oh the right one gets clear after a while, but it takes longer and longer. I called physical therapy and begged off. I told them we’d have to reschedule for afternoons and my eyesight problem.
Tressa called back later to say my first appointment with her wasn’t until June 4th.
I hopped on the phone to AT&T again. It turns out call screening doesn’t work with multi-line businesses-What the fuck??? Most harassing calls come from multi-lined collection agencies, sales calls trying to sell you shit, and multi-lined sweat shops sending you pre-recorded political announcements, so what’s the use of the service?
I gave up and hung up on them. I texted Betsy to send my brother Jim a birthday message from me because I don’t have his cell phone or e-mail address to text/and or e-mail him greetings. I don’t know why I keep trying, even though he is my brother.
I started getting e-mails about someone putting the Digg project down on the BC forum page. I wrestled with the subject for a while and then said fuck it, it’s useless to put out all that energy for so little a return and gave up. I got an e-mail from Lisa and Eric liking my $25 bill idea, so I’m going to spend the evening writing up and hopefully publishing the article.
Sunday the 16th
I finally finished the Kennedy $25 dollar bill graphic and article and if I do say so myself it looks great. I almost had to start all over again… again when my research turned up that each denomination of bill has a different color scheme for its paper and I’d duplicated the $100 bills new format. It took two hours to insert a pastel yellow middle without messing everything else up, but I succeeded finally by adding it one very tiny and minute pixel at a time using Microsoft Paintbrush… yikes. I published the article at BlogCritics and on my own blog’s politics page.
There’s a core group of BC writers that I’ve joined called “BlackOps” that have been trying to get more attention for our BC articles by posting descriptions and links on the Digg home page. BlogCritics editors are generally putting down our efforts as useless, but we’ve been soldering on. Most of us are just trying to get enough attention on our articles to hopefully get some people to click on the ads just below the titles in hopes of making a few paultry pennies here and there.
The group is comprised of some really nice people that five years ago I’d have flown or drove out in person to meet but no longer have the ability to do so, which sucks.
The response to the Kennedy $25 bill article was great Friday and Saturday, but with other articles being published mine’s been pushed off of the BC home page already. I still think it sucks that the politics section only displays three articles. The readership went way down by Sunday afternoon. When I published it, I sent off a copy to the Kennedy Presidential Library hoping someone would notice and write back… we’ll see.
My right-wing sister Dee showed my mom the $25 Kennedy I designed and apparently didn’t read any of the details about it. In the graphic I have how the Statue of Liberty shifts from copper-colored to green and in the transition in the middle it’s yellow. She wrote back that I was insulting the troops by showing a yellow Statue of Liberty (dear god) and ignoring that it’s a color-shifting element on the bill. She rather indignantly said that I should’ve made it red-white and blue because “those colors don’t run.” This is the same sister who didn’t even tell her family that I existed until my father’s funeral in 2006, and jumps all over me if I try to contact her son for fear I might tell him or her husband about the black side of our family on my grandfather’s side. Apparently her husband is very racist. It’s probably why she ransacked his house to clear it of any evidence or pictures of him and had a fit when the reverend gave the photos to me before she could take possession of them… Either that or she doesn’t want me contaminating her son with my “Gay germs.”
Incredible. I’ve gotten word that my equally right-wing brother in Seattle has gotten into a rather angry confrontation with my nephew. Apparently my brother is a huge and rabid Sarah Palin supporter… dear god what is this world coming to? I guess I now have to admit to myself that half of my family are rednecks… groan.
I had a nice talk with Betsy while she drove up the mountain to Clear Lake. I’m so glad I got those painkillers to her, because she says it’s like heaven to walk around without pain from her heel spurs. I’m glad I can still help her even though I’m broke. Part way through the conversation I sneezed and nearly died from the pain in my upper chest. It was so bad that for a moment I thought the defibrillator had gone off and it scared the hell out of me. Since then I’ve been losing my equilibrium again when I try to walk around in the apartment. I’m not dizzy; I just lose my balance and want to fall sideways and have to steady myself against the wall.
After bills I’ve got $3.83 in checking left. I’m going to have to start working on a letter with a printout of my checking statement to show some of these collection agencies that I just don’t have anything left to send them and nothing left to sell that they can threaten to take. I thought seriously yesterday of cataloguing my Eisenhowers by date and mint and trying to sell them… Considering that most were a gift from my Uncle Wayne, that will hurt, but it’s all I’ve got left. I’ve actually considered taking them to the corner pawn shop so that I can eventually buy them back.
The thought of all of this depresses me to no end.
Last night a friend of a neighbor knocked on my door inviting me to an impromptu memorial for a gay neighbor who died earlier in the week. I wanted to go so badly but I can’t get past the front door to face all of those strangers. God this PTSD sucks.
Saturday my niece Amber texted me and we had a nice talk and a laugh about family politics. It’s amazing how much she is like her mother (Betsy)-very level headed. Her husband is in Afghanistan and I hope he comes home safe.
I spent most of Sunday listening to music on my headphones to drown out my ringing ears and working on a new version of my financial spreadsheet to accommodate three different kinds of insulin to keep track of and I’m making room for elements to track that I didn’t have room for on the page when I was making more purchases.
My sleep/wake cycle seems to have settled down again. I’m finally getting drowsy around 2Am and wake up at 9. The last few days have been peaceful with no nightmares, though something on the news or something I’ve read on line will set off a realistic flashback. It’s agony when I have a full-body shudder from one. I ache so much from being alone. Not having someone to love or care for or about me sucks. I miss hugging someone too. I’ve got to get over this fear of strangers before it kills me or I kill myself to end this isolation and physical suffering that seems to have no end.
I’ve got to drag myself out of bed at 7:30AM Monday morning to go to the eye appointment at 9 at OSU. I just hope I can see well enough to drive.
Thursday the 20th
What is it going to take to push me over the edge? Have I become so numb to everything that I just don’t care anymore?
I went to my eye appointment Monday towards a surgery in August, and in the midst of it there was a flurry of activity. They started shuffling me from room to room using ever increasingly complicated-looking pieces of equipment to try to peer past the cataract in my left eye to see the diabetes damage. After about the third room, two and then three people seemed to be consulting and looking through all manner of scopes into my eyes.
Eventually they sent me home without telling me what was going on, but scheduled an appointment for next week. Today (Thursday) I got a call saying that I was being pushed ahead of everyone else and was going to have to go into surgery Friday of next week and that I have to report to another location across town to get more detailed pictures taken tomorrow!.
The only explanation I could get out of them was that the cataract has begun growing at an accelerated rate just from the last time they saw me.
I’m fucked
Even if I had anyone one able to help, who would be willing to drive me to surgery at 5 in the morning and then wait to take me back home. I don’t have money for a cab.
- - - - - - -
Monday I took my computer apart. It’d been making some very threatening noises and I discovered a can of compressed air I didn’t remember buying. It turns out one of the two additional cooling fans I’d added was in the process of burning out. Fortunately it was one of the ones that just moved the internal air around and toward the exhaust fan. I played with it for a while and got it to spin reluctantly, but after I put the whole thing back together it was so much quieter.
The computer is over 6 years old and they don’t usually last more than five so I’ve got to make this one last. Back when I was rich I bought a 2nd hard drive and installed it for redundancy, so I’m safe if the whole thing fails, I just won’t have a computer to connect it all to.
The group that I’m working with is nice and I’m enjoying communicating with them. It makes my day less lonely.
OSU just called and rescheduled my appointment to 1:30PM tomorrow so I won’t have to drag myself out of bed… something went right.
I thought I was doing so great with hundreds/thousands of readers until an editor posted readership in the tens of thousands. It knocked me down a peg or two. I’ve been covering the Rand Paul controversy on my Tea Baggers article at BC and it’s getting a lot of attention.
It’s been keeping me from completing my revamp of my financial spreadsheet though. The check comes tomorrow and I have to figure out how to get a two-way cab ride out of a budget that barely lets me buy food. I’m also worried because I’m running out of Crestor samples for my heart and I don’t see Dr. S/clinic until next month… Still having eye-focus problems and my chest hurts like hell. I’ve resorted to my remaining supply of Percocet.
I still wish I knew what keeps me going.
Sunday the 23rd
Well, I learned a few things Friday that I didn’t know that I didn’t know; possibly because I didn’t want to know… duh. When I went in for the pre-surgery testing for my right eye they did an EKG. While explaining it to me, he showed me how the pacemaker is delivering a tiny shock to my heart on every damned beat! I thought it was just an occasional jolt every so often to keep it in rhythm, but apparently the bottom chamber of my heart that they kept telling me was dead, is as dead as they told me it was. It was the other bottom chamber that had begun beating against the rest. When I expressed concern about the life of the battery, he said it’d probably last about 15 years!?! Those must be some pretty damned good batteries!
I guess that lets out my theory about the hiccups being caused by the pacemaker because I’d never stop. I rarely have them, but now I experience a single one about once every other day. They telling me that I’ve lost 10 pounds cheered me!
The 2nd thing that I didn’t know was that a cataract grows in your eye lens; as opposed to where I thought it grew in the middle of your eye. I was busy over the weekend researching all this stuff up on line. When they said they were putting an artificial lens in, I thought was to fill the spot where the cataract was in the middle of my eye. Apparently they’re removing the entire lens-which is why I’ll need reading glasses. It turns out my eye lens is a lot bigger than I thought it was too and they’re removing all of it! I’ll have great distance vision and that’s about it. There are supposed to be new implants that are good for all distances, but since I was warned I’d need reading glasses, and I’m only on Medicare, they’re probably not going to use them.
It’s amazing that the majority of your eye is just filler. It’s big and round so it can rotate in your socket, but essentially everything takes place on the front surface and everything that I thought was going on my big eyeball was actually happening in that little cubbyhole behind the lens.
Research has also uncovered two other things. Being out in bright sun light causes cataracts because of the additional ultra-violet light, so enjoying my convertible might be a contributing factor. Also the lens they’re implanting may filter blue light because they say blue light is harmful to your eyes with the condition I have. All that artwork I was hoping to produce… I wonder what color the sky will be… maybe I’m hopefully over-reacting. It’ll definitely be strange to see different colors from each eye.
I started two different eye drops over the weekend. I’m supposed to use them four times a day until this Friday to cut down on the risk of infection after the eye surgery. I’ve got to do something to get my blood sugars down. I’m almost tempted to start combining the Lantus and the Novolog again, which is what was causing the glucose crashes before but that’d be dangerous. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
I see Dr. Heart this Wednesday after I see Dr. Mind; boy will I have a lot of questions for him! I run out of Crestor and Lasix on Monday; those are the drugs for my heart and controlling fluid buildup. I couldn’t get into see Dr. Clinic so I couldn’t get more drug rep samples, maybe Dr. Heart will have some.
My check doesn’t come until the 4th next month and I’ve decided that the only way to pay for the cab is to be “late” with the rent. What I’m going to attempt is to take my rent check over after 3PM on the third after the banks close and hope they don’t cash it until after the 4th. I went over to Wal-Mart and bought as much in groceries as I could, hoping to stay stocked up into the first week of next month, as the check will be completely taken up with the rent and car payment.
God this sucks. While doing inventory I found some sugar free chocolate pudding in the back of the kitchen cupboard and picked up a carton of milk. Wal-Mart had 24 packs of Diet Dr. Pepper on sale for $3.88 so I bought three of them. The rest was mostly cheap ravioli and Lipton (excuse me Knorr) noodles and sauce and cans of tuna or chicken. GOD I wish I could afford salad. It was nice and sunny Saturday and it reminded me of all the road trips I’d take just to go somewhere. I smile to myself remembering when I’d actually blindly stick a pin into a map of the Midwest and just go there “just to see.”
I finally got the spreadsheet done and it’s a lot more streamlined. Something happened with Lance Armstrong because suddenly my article on him was getting a lot of readers… either that or the picture of him naked on a bike that I added a few weeks ago have seekers coming in droves. With Rand Paul making a fool of himself in Kentucky, my translation tool for the Right-Wing Teabaggers on my Politics page was getting hundreds of readers over the weekend too, and it kept me occupied answering comments.
My Digg group kept me hopping with requests too.
My computer hasn’t made a single strange sound since I took it apart, so I’m hoping it’ll last a while longer. I wish I were brave enough to reset the software back to its original state to speed it back up, but I’d have to reinstall all of those Windows updates all over again… no thanks.
There was a gathering at the swimming pool Saturday and several neighbors I hadn’t seen for a while yelled hellos at me. While looking at them, I tripped on an uneven part of the sidewalk and stumbled forward and nearly fell. Not only did I pull a bunch of muscles trying to keep from falling, but it brought back the new and very real fear of falling. Lately every time I fall, I break something. With the sore muscles when I woke up, a wave of depression hit me on Sunday. I tried to ease it by sending out Sunday church jokes that I’ve collected over the years to the Digg group but it didn’t seem to help and I was in a funk all day.
Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend a lover comes up behind me, puts his arms around my shoulders and kisses me… god this loneliness hurts.
Monday the 24th
I woke up at 6AM screaming again. I was reliving the beating in my sleep and this time it was especially real. I’ve had to repeat the story again to my new e-friends in the Digg group. I’m also hearing the damned doorbell ringing again during the day and finding no one there.
My apartment building manager hasn’t left the usual notice on my door a month and a half in advance notifying me that my lease is up at the end of June. I hope he was right about my rent not going up. I guess he just assumes I’m going to renew-which I am. I ran into him last Saturday and he told me he’d lived here 33 years. This will be my 23rd lease.
I used the last Crestor for my heart in the bottle today that I didn’t realize was there. I’m hoping Dr. D/heart will have some on Wednesday when I go in and see him. I can ask him about whether that battery is actually going to last 15 years or if he meant the unit itself will last 15 years. Eye surgery grows closer and closer. I’m not worried about the surgery, hell as many as I’ve gone through it’s nothing now, but when my left eye improves I won’t need glasses for it; in fact glasses will be counter-productive… the trouble is I’m required to have them for driving on the crazy license I have now that says I’m not allowed to drive after dark either. Problem? I can’t afford another pair of glasses… Same shit-different day.
I can’t get my goddamned blood sugars down. I’m doing 30 units a day of Lantus. If I don’t get down soon my eye won’t heal. I don’t see Dr. S/clinic until next week. That reminds me I’ve got to update my medical profile and print it out before then with all the new eye drops and what drugs I’ve run out of.
I tried texting Teresa this morning but she didn’t answer back. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s avoiding me. We’ve lost touch lately and it seems like every conversation is to apologize for not calling for so long. She’s been to busy with three jobs and the only thing I have to talk about is the latest chapter in the soap opera… pretty much the way all my friends have gone.
My Digg group fortunately still e-mails me constantly. It just occurred to me that I haven’t heard back from Amazon about becoming an associate. It’d be great to run subject-specific ads for each article. I’m going to do that and I’m going to do it soon.
I’ve also started getting “chat” messages over my computer and haven’t discovered them until an hour or so after they arrived. I went in and explored around for the sound effects that are on the computer and discovered a single ring of an old-fashioned phone. I took it, boosted the volume and then edited it back on itself to make it sound like a phone ringing ten times. Then I programmed the computer to play that sound when it detects an incoming message. When I leave my headphones plugged in now I’ll hear an in-coming message from clear out in my living room. Let’s just hope I don’t get one while I’m listening to music.
I called Wal-Mart to find out how much a refill of Simvastatin was and they said $5.99. I checked on the Lasix that I’m now out of and discovered that all of my prescriptions for it have expired. Up until now it was a moot point since I can’t afford them anyway, but I need something to control the fluids around my heart and with all the salt in the cheap food I’m eating, this could get serious. I’m still trying to save back the mere $20 I have for a round trip cab ride to the eye surgery-which isn’t near enough, so buying the Simvastatin for my heart is out of the question. Some lucky cab driver is going to be getting Eisenhower silver dollars for a cab fare… Fuck.
I tried to call MCC again to talk to Dr. Mind’s friend but got a voicemail.
Tuesday the 25th
I woke up and knocked around the house for about half an hour and while checking my e-mails I suddenly felt very cold like I’d stepped into a walk-in freezer. Scenes from my childhood spending summers with my dead cousin Billy started running through my mind and I suddenly felt really sad and lonely. It took about half an hour to shake it off before I could get the day going again.
I logged on line and tried to sign up for Amazon’s associate program and kept running into a cyber-brick wall. I finally picked up the phone and called their tech support and they walked me through the process and I can now put Amazon ads on my articles. If it’s a music or video review, I can put a picture icon in the body of the article and they would go directly to Amazon and I’d get a commission if they bought it. In fact he said I’d get a commission if they bought anything whether it was part of the ad or not!
While he had me on hold, I got another call and my caller I.D. doesn’t show whom it is. I gambled and lost… well sort of. It was Grant Hospital billing department. I finally decided to fight for myself against this bullshit and talked to her and unlike the others she was very sympathetic. I laid out the whole story about how my hospital bills have become hopelessly entangled since GB started refusing to pay for my regular meds during Work comp surgeries, and how social security refuses to pay them because they’re… you guessed it-workman comp covered surgeries.
I told her about trying to block their phone numbers because of the stress and how I gave up because it’d also block calls concerning future medical appointments, doctors trying to help me with my meds etc
I also talked to her about being turned down for help with my prescriptions because I make too much in disability checks. Like all the other social workers she said she’d check into it. She promised that she’d try to see about stopping the harassing phone calls… I won’t hold my breath.
She says she’s going to mail out yet another financial assistance application. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve filled out, but she wants me to send this one directly to her… so we’ll see.
I spent the rest of the afternoon programming the HTML codes for my custom Amazon ads. With over 100 different articles and features on my six websites this could take forever, but if it possibly makes me some money I’ll be happy. Also Amazon pays by the month so I don’t have to wait until I earn $100 like Adsense does in order to get a check.
The episode of NCIS tonight was possibly the best I’ve ever scene of any series in my life. I’ve GOT to write an article.
Wednesday the 26th
Three collection agency calls before 10AM. God this sucks. I made it over to my usual Wednesday appointment with Dr. Mind. She’s going to try to find a church group to help me with rides to the surgery. God it hurts to think of myself as begging for anything… it’s so crushing to my self worth. If I could find someone with about $1,000 they could spare so that I could get back ahead of just the basic bills, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether damned GB is going to be late with their damned check or not. Anyway we had a decent session. GB is demanding her detailed notes on our sessions again.
How the hell can you talk openly and honestly with you psychologist knowing that some corporate asshole is reading her notes? It’s no wonder we’re not making all that much progress because I keep holding back the shit I don’t want some secretary to read. Speaking of secretaries, Dr. Mind’s very-very likable secretary Barb is retiring on Friday. She is so sweet and I can’t express how much I’ll miss her. I’ve been going to Dr. Mind now for nearly six years and Barb goes out of her way to be helpful and cheers me up when I’m down.
From her, I came home and had just enough time to go over my medical profile, update it, and then print it out before heading to Dr. Heart’s. It’s such a beautiful bright sunny day today. I used to call these my “get lost” days were I had the freedom to just toss everything on the schedule aside and hit a freeway and intentionally get lost in the suburbs somewhere-just to see what was there, and then try to find my way home again. Not only was if fun, I made a lot of new friends and found some great shops and restaurants that I didn’t know existed. I used to do that when I lived in San Diego and wound up in front of the naval housing unit and wondered if my brother and sister in law was there.
At the heart appointment, it turned out that it was just a test of the pacemaker/defibrillator to make sure it was functioning right; which it is. She confirmed that it shocks my heart on every beat, but corrected me that it should last about five years instead of the fifteen… though that in itself is amazing. I learned a lot. It turns out that that second heart attack did do a lot of damage. It not only enlarged and “killed” one of my bottom heart chambers, but it caused a sort of electrical “short-circuit.” Apparently the heart takes its cues like a car’s distributor and it was damaged so that the bottom two chambers were no longer communicating with the top two. The enlarged bottom chamber wasn’t pumping at all and the last chamber was so confused that it began beating against the top two, which is why I kept passing out and the triple bypass didn’t seem to do anything.
The pacemaker makes the “dead” chamber contract and then electrically “cues” the healthy fourth one to follow suit, all timed around the top two. I was also relieved to discover that a strong magnet only temporarily turns off the pacemaker and as soon as I leave its field it comes back on. (whew)
Thankfully they had a month’s supply of Crestor to give me from drug rep samples. I plan to lie to Dr. Clinic (GOD I hate this) and say I’m out, hoping to get a month’s worth from him too just to be on the safe side. I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to see Dr. D there; only the technician that was doing the testing. He came out of his office and saw me getting my next appointment at the receptionist’s office and smacked me on the back and joked with me for a while. I used to live in what seemed like an ocean of friends and his act brought back how much I miss that.
I was tempted to take the long way home in the sun but I’ve got less than a quarter of a tank of gas so that was out… alas.
I’ve been sitting here all evening trying to write something, but nothing’s coming out. I’d love to write a couple of astronomy pieces or maybe an editorial on “don’t ask-don’t tell” but it just won’t come. I studied my HTML codes for the Amazon ads and I’m trying to figure out a way to put a line of code that would allow them to “float” amongst the text of an article instead of taking up the whole line. Sooner or later I’ll figure it out. It’d be great to have them within the paragraph so the reader could click on them “while they’re thinking about them.
Thursday the 27th
I woke up this morning to the sound of kittens crying. I was blinded when I opened my eyes because the curtains in the bedroom were open and the morning sun was streaming right at me reflected off of the glass front of the new county justice center four blocks to the west.
Out on the balcony the beefsteak tomatoes were about halfway to the balcony roof on stakes and some were on the verge of turning red. I’m going to have to call Vicki and ask her to pick them for me while I’m. I’ve been having trouble with a squirrel lately that we’ve named “Spiderman.” The bastard uses his claws to climb up the masonry side of the building and then goes from balcony to balcony digging up flower beds that we “thought” were safe from them this high up. We have a family of albino squirrels that live around the dumpsters out back and one morning a few weeks ago I didn’t realize that there were people down on the ground watching him do his acrobatics and I began swiping at him with a broom trying to get him out of my geranium beds. My landlord had a fit at me when complaints started streaming in.
Anyway, while I laid there squinting, Madame Schange (pronounced “Shang” leaped out of the cardboard box at the foot of my bed and I presumed she was heading for the litter box in the bathroom. Chazra (pronounced Kazra) looked up at me and he couldn’t be bothered to move as I tried to get up out of bed. I threw on a pair of cut-offs and went into the living room and that’s when it hit me. No boxes all over the place, no garbage bags, the place was clean, the curtains were open! Out on the balcony hanging baskets of flowers were all in their brightest and cheeriest displays.
Chazra walked up to me and presented me with one of his protesting new kittens and I smiled down at it. It’s unusual for a male Siamese to have anything to do with his kittens, but I’d trained Chazra to take care of them by putting some hairball medicine on their backs (which he loves) and kept doing it until he licked and cuddled them out of force of habit as much as Madame does with or without the treats. Teresa nearly fainted the first time she saw him do that thinking he was out to hurt them. I’ve already got six good homes for these little packages of cuteness. Their eyes had opened about a week ago, but they didn’t have their “points” yet and were all white. Madame came to the door of the bedroom and started bitching at me, so I smiled and put the loud little bundle of fur back in the box with his brothers and sisters.
I nearly tripped over my suitcase in the process and something kept nagging me in the back of my head that something wasn’t quite right.
I almost made it back out of the bedroom when the phone rang and it was Brock wanting to know if I’d left for the airport yet. Huh? Then I realized I had to be in San Diego by this evening. I said I would soon and he said he’d have a rental car waiting for me and hung up. I grabbed a five-gallon bucket and began filling it in the bathtub. God I felt good this morning… in fact I couldn’t remember feeling this good. When the bucket was full I went to lift it up and nearly hurled it across the bathroom spilling water all over the place. To my shock the damned thing weighed next to nothing!
While I refilled it, I grabbed a bunch of towels and layered them on the carpet in the bathroom walking on them to sop up the water and then hung them on the racks in the shower to drip dry. When the bucket was full, I picked it up again and went out onto the balcony to the humidity on the other side of the sliding glass doors, followed by my faithful companion Chazra. One of these days he’s going to leap at a bird and fall six stories. After dissolving a little miracle grow into the water, I dunked a sprinkling bucket and filled all of the planters picking off old flowers and checking the tomatoes as I went. Then I filled a squirt bottle and misted all the blossoms and the green peppers.
When I went back in for more water I just couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong… then it hit me, my big huge desk I’d bought and built was gone! My albums were out on display instead of my CDs and VHS tapes lined the shelves instead of DVD’s.
Still holding the bucket, I ran into the bathroom and dropped the bucket on the soggy floor when I caught sight of myself in the mirror. There were my muscles, my longish styled hair and it slammed me so hard I nearly passed out in relief!!! It was all a dream, it was all a barely remembered nightmare. I was whole again.
OH THANK GOD!!!
…I opened my eyes. The curtains that had been closed since that winter of 2004 were still closed, Chazra and Madame Schange were both dead, he in 1998 and she’d been given away with a kitten in 1996. I loved him so much his ashes are still in a silver tin on my desk to this day. Mischief my tabby lay asleep beside me and when I reached over to pet her, she shied away and then jumped down from the bed.
I sat on the edge of the bed and cried and cried. I had relived some morning ten years ago in my sleep. I just sat there and wept.
After a while I pulled myself together and got the day started; or I should say it got started whether I wanted it to or not with a collection agency call. I simply picked up the phone and then immediately hung it back up.
Dr. Mind called me to give me a number for a man from her church that was willing to ride me to the eye appointment at 5:30AM tomorrow. I was about to call him when I got a call from OSU saying that they had to reschedule my surgery for next Tuesday and to stop using the eye drops until Sunday night and then start again. When I called the guy up who was going to ride me there, he said he was tied up Tuesday, so I’m in the same boat again. OSU called me back again twice in an hour to change the time of surgery, making it impossible to try to arrange a ride from someone. I guess I’ll spend the rest of my money in checking and my cherished Eisenhowers on cab rides. They also said I had to go back for a follow up appointment the next day, so that’s four cab rides. All I can do is risk driving one-eyed on Wednesday and hope it doesn’t conflict with my regular noon appointment with Dr. Mind.
I spent most of the afternoon trying to reach the eye clinic to nail down a time, or to at least confirm what day it was on but kept getting the department’s voice mail and finally gave up in frustration. My mind kept wandering back to this morning’s dream-it was so fucking real! It’s exactly what I was doing the morning of 911, only I never made it out to the balcony. That bucket of water sat in the middle of the livingroom floor all day as I watched non-stop in astonishment.
My knee’s beginning to hurt again, that can only mean that rain is coming. It’s supposed to stay in the upper 80s all week.
I’ve eaten nothing but canned ravioli and noodle mix since I can remember. It’s no wonder I’m turning to blubber.
This evening I got the hell scared out of me. Betsy called me on her cell on the way up the mountain to Clear Lake Oregon where she works. Half way there she stopped off at the house she owns to check on everything and encountered a stranger in an out-building who asked her for food. Up there in the mountains the nearest cop is 45 minutes away. She got a call from my brother Jim and clicked over. The cell service is really sketchy on the mountain and after I waited a while, she never clicked over and eventually I got a dial tone. Trying not to panic, I texted my niece and explained the situation. After about half an hour, she finally reached Betsy, who’d gone to a neighbor’s and they confronted the guy together.
Normally I wouldn’t have been so concerned, but Betsy’s house up there was broken into not so long ago and a gun was stolen, so I was concerned.
I played chess with my computer until I got drowsy and then went to bed… alone
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