Overheard on the street yesterday, as I passed two guys on the sidewalk:
“Some people don’t even have the intelligence of rocks.”
August 25, 2009
I wonder if he was talking about the health care ‘debates’
Posted by jolt under HealthLeave a Comment
August 24, 2009
It was a beautiful summer day today in SouthCentralSmallCity – low 80s, no humidity, blue skies – so I went to my favorite coffee shop and sat outside reading a book for lunch. Towards the end of the hour, as I sat reading quietly, I was rudely interrupted.
“Excuse me,” I said, glancing up at my book, startled.
“I said,” cackled the man leaning toward me, “Whatchya reading?” I gave him a look of disdain, thoroughly irritated to be interrupted and made a flicking motion with my hand as if to shoo him away. He did not leave, but stood there, and said, “I just wanna know what you’re reading.”
I flashed him the cover, reading it aloud as I did so, “If Looks Could Kill.”
The rude man stalked off.
August 11, 2009
Can I just say that with all the brouhaha about the completely insane anti-health-insurance reform crowd that I am starting to panic that we really will have a replay of 1994 and that we will end up with nothing? Or that whatever limps through in the fall will not do much?
Particularly now that I have joined the ranks of those with a ‘pre-existing condition’ i.e., hypoglycemia. Which can be a precursor to other things that insurers don’t like.
Good health insurance – thank you Massachusetts! – gave my mother-in-law additional years of life. Thanks to health insurance in Massachusetts that was affordable, my MIL got the best cancer care available (which in Boston is pretty damn good). It couldn’t save her because the form of cancer she had was treatable, but not curable. But that treatment afforded her at least two more summer cabin-camping trips with her grandsons (my kids) -the last cabin camping she did with a walker, a recently broken hip & a colostomy bag — talk about going the extra mile for the grandkids. That treatment afforded her at least two more Thanksgivings. That treatment allowed her to live long enough to sell her patent that she had worked on developing and trying to sell for over 15 years and meant that the money from the sale wasn’t completely eaten up by medical bills. It meant that a woman who had minimal income after she got laid off in 2003 wasn’t stuck with the poor healthcare given to the uninsured.
All of which was due to the fact that she had good insurance, which was due to her having moved back to Massachusetts in 2004 before Massachusetts did its big health insurance reform. Because otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to afford it and/or would have gotten dumped by her insurance company, as so many individually insured are. Because after she got laid off in 2003, she couldn’t find a steady job. Because she was only 58 when she died and not yet eligible for medicare.
Thank you Massachusetts. If only the rest of the country could get its head out of its ass and follow some form of your example.
*Edited to fix stupid errors
July 17, 2009
For about the last, two weeks or so, I’ve had episodes of lightheadedness, ranging from mild to severe (about a week ago I literally wanted to lie down on the floor of my office my head was so woozy). So I made an appointment with the doctor and unsurprisingly, they needed to run a bunch of tests before they can begin to figure out what the problem is* (not vertigo, I’ve had several friends with that & I don’t have spins, just woozy).
So my doctor, who wasn’t going to be in for a few days immediately following the appointment earlier this week, told me to call in yesterday & get the results to see if anything was abnormal. Most of the tests were normal (not pregnant – yippee!; no Lyme disease – yippee!). The report came back that my blood sugar was abnormally low, but SO abnormally low they wanted me to do another blood draw because the number came up was not possible. Technically, I should have been virtually COMATOSE at the level recorded and since I had, after all, driven to and from the appointment, they thought perhaps the test results were wrong.
So I had another blood draw this morning & I get to wait through the weekend for the results. The phsyician’s assistant I spoke to when getting the results was, I have to say, rather blase’ about the whole thing. Um, okay, you’re basically telling me its a miracle I’m upright, but we’ll retest & meanwhile go on with your bad self for a few days while we determine whether it was a lab problem with the last blood draw.
In the meantime, I figure it gives me carte blanche to lurch around all weekend with my arms out while moaning “I need chocolate.” Gotta boost that blood sugar somehow.
* thank you decent health insurance. I have become more & more aware of what a privilege this is over the last couple of years.
July 8, 2009
In recently reading a series of intensely personal posts on another blog (which I won’t link to b/c they are password protected) it occurred to me what courage and strength it takes to write, in detail, about an active personal problem: a problem one hasn’t yet found the solution for. I’m not talking about the 3 sentence ‘can you believe what happened to me today’ post, but the in-depth, holy frijoles, this is what I’m going through and I don’t know how to get out of this spot type of piece.
Is it because we are conditioned by op-eds and feature articles that not only complain, but provide solutions (at least the better ones do)? Perhaps. I think also we don’t want to admit when we feel like a failure, which is what the most complex problems, particularly those we have little control to fix, create in us. And we don’t want to whine. Well, maybe a little. But we’re generally only going to whine in an amusingly snarky fashion that distances ourself from the problem and its causes.
For instance, BB has a quasi-medical thing that has some pretty embarrassing side effects. It’s fixable, but its taking a LONG LONG time to fix. A week ago, there was a Positive Event that had BB, mr. jolt & I celebrating. I was so hopeful that progress would move forward from there, but like many things that are medical/behavioral, it’s not that easy. Yet that night, I imagined forward about the self-congratulatory blog post I would write, full of advice for parents dealing with the same issue and how we ‘overcame’ it.* But I can’t write that post yet. (not sure I ever will given privacy issues). But I thought it was illuminating that something I’d never considered writing about (and until recently basically didn’t talk about) suddenly became a ‘writable’ subject once I thought success was within our grasp.
I dunno. Maybe its just me and my own inability to get out of my own way when trying to write.
*I now, of course, blame myself for ‘jinxing’ further progress for even thinking we were done.
July 8, 2009
Seen on a license plate on the way to work:
IGNRNT 1
Um, ok. Not something I’d brag about, but to each their own.
June 25, 2009
I have a decent job. It’s not exciting, but the pay is decent, usually,* and it’s got good benefits. But I have been bored, bored, bored. So I’ve been poking around, not seriously, because a) massive unemployment out there already; and b) no good jobs in my area (most local employers have hiring freeze). So I poked around on the internet and saw a job posting. It’s been up for a while, but it’s still up so I’m thinking the job may still be open. It’s in an area of law that was an early and strong interest of mine in law school and would allow me to become, almost overnight, a virtual expert in the area, more so than I was when I was actively researching it, because I would be advising people on this one area of statutes/regulations. The pay is much, much better than what I currently make. The benefits – hell, its with the feds, so decent healthcare.
Problem: it’s in a city two hours away. A city that while it could be interesting and mr. jolt could probably find a job in (there are mucho schools there), it would require a radical lifestyle shift that I’m not sure I want or can afford. To live in that city the way I live here would require FAR more than the jump in salary I would get. It would require mr. jolt to get a serious jump in salary, too. A jump that frankly, isn’t realistic. And it would require the boys to leave a phenomenal school that nurtures and challenges them. It would require us to return to a type of life that was one of the reasons we came here.
I just can’t do it. And it makes me crazy. Because whenever I think about making a move somewhere the first thing that comes to mind is all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. When the hell did I get so negative and inertia-filled? When mr. jolt hears of an opportunity he immediately starts thinking about all the advantages, and is often completely blind to major deficiencies for a good period of time. Part of that is confidence, I suppose. Part of it, I think, is the difference between someone who has never had to question his place in the world and the need/desire for fulfilling work and his ability to obtain it.
It’s funny. When I started my current job and was amazed at the differences between it and my last job (bosses and clients who appreciate me -wow!; bosses who don’t play bipolar mind games with me – wow!) I had been out of work for six months. My prior job eviscerated my self-confidence in several ways and the first few years here allowed me to build it back up. Which was great. But I’m realizing that I somehow stepped onto a side path and don’t know how to get off. My job isn’t even that great for having kids (although its a lot better than private practice).
I have never ever liked uncertainty (few do, I suppose). But my fear of the unknown devil has always deterred me from taking sufficient steps to walk away from the devil I know. I stayed at my prior job well past the point that was healthy for me. I think I may be entering a similar stage in my current job. But is it any coincidence that my desire for something new now has only grown the worse the economy has gotten and the less likely it’s become that I could actually achieve it?
When we moved here it was on the assumption that we would be moving in several years to somewhere “even better” wherever that might be. So I didn’t worry too much about my job because it was supposed to be short term. But we’re here and it is a total crapshoot as to when we will ever “move on.” And while I was marking time assuming we would soon move somewhere with better opportunities, the economy went south so even the opportunities here have disappeared.
In a way, I feel like I’m acting like LB. Sometimes LB gets really upset when he doesn’t get what he wants. We’ll tell him he has choices A or B. He’ll tell us he doesn’t like those choices and that our choices are to let him do whatever it is he wants to do or he will [fill in inappropriate activity here]. And it sucks, being a kid, not liking the choices your parents have offered you. It sucks, being an adult, not liking the choices before you and not knowing how to find new ones. Sometimes, talking things through with LB (when he’s willing to listen) we figure out other choices or compromises. I just wish I knew how to create or find better choices for myself.
*Usually. Except I may not get paid in July. But I still have to work in the hopes that they’ll get their shit together soon and make it up to me in August.
June 25, 2009
Today I am thankful for the fact that BB still lets me kiss him. Even when I drop him off at camp (although we were early today so there weren’t any bigger kids out front).
I know from friends with older kids that this is likely to end soon, so I’m going to treasure it as long as it lasts. He will be eight – EIGHT – this fall so we will see.
June 24, 2009
June 24, 2009
According to this NYT article, some geothermal company is planning to dig deep into Northern California earthquake country to access geothermal energy. Sounds green, low emissions, great, right? Except said company failed to disclose that similar technology tried in Switzerland caused earthquakes. Add that to an already quaky area and you’ve got trouble.
