Tag: insurance

When the thing that fixes you breaks

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I’ve complained about this a couple of times, but my CPAP has been making this godawful whining noise every time I inhale lately, and over the course of the night it gets louder and louder until I unplug the hose from the back of the thing and plug it back in, at which point the process repeats itself. I thought I had come up with a way to minimize if not fix it, but I’m fairly certain I got no more than half an hour of sleep last night, including when I gave up on sleeping in bed and went into the living room to my Comfy Chair to try and follow my body into taking a nap. Which didn’t work.

I don’t remember how I slept before I had this thing; it is entirely possible that I never actually did, but one way or another I can’t sleep without it now. So I finally gave up this morning and, after burning in my very last sick day for the year, because no one deserves me on half an hour of sleep, I figured out who I was supposed to call to talk about warranties and replacements and repairs and a bunch of other shit I didn’t really know anything about.

Turns out a “lightly used” reconditioned CPAP was only $150 and will be here tomorrow, so I went with that option. “Lightly used” means under a thousand hours; mine has nearly seven thousand hours of use, and it comes with a year warranty, so … yeah. I’m tasking my wife with waking me up in the morning, putting in earplugs, and taking a couple of Tylenol PM before going to bed tonight, so hopefully I can get enough sleep that I’m at least able to function tomorrow.

And if I can’t? Oh well. I’m going in anyway. There’s twelve days of school left. It’ll be fine.

In which my day is expensive and needley

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

I managed to hit a parked car in my own fucking driveway this morning.

We have, for lack of a better word and in the interest of not telling a long story, a Tenant in our house. She’s been here for several months. She parks her car in the driveway every single morning. Because our garage is currently packed full with bullshit, my wife has also been parking in the driveway. I am on Fall Break, as all of you know, and for some reason when I left my house for a doctor’s appointment at 7:50 this morning, the fact that my wife’s car was not in the driveway made my fucking brain short-circuit and I assumed that that meant the other car was not in the driveway either. I realized my terrible mistake about half a second too late, and I don’t know yet how much my fucking idiocy is going to cost me.

To the doctor’s! Where I received a hepatitis B shot (needle #1) and had blood drawn (needle #2) so that my A1C could be tested. It’s 5.7! The diabeetus is officially Controlled! I can go off one of my many medications now!

Seriously, one of these days I’m going to take a picture of the pile of fucking pills I ingest every night. It’s ludicrous.

I also had to fill out the questionnaire about my mental health that I have to fill out every time I go to the doctor since I’m on brain meds. I was honest on the depression scale, but I handed the anxiety scale over to the doctor and told her flat-out that I was lying on it. Why? There’s a fucking election in two weeks, and my anxiety is off the scale but not in a way that adjusting my meds is going to help. We’re gonna leave those alone, and in about two weeks I’m either gonna be fine or I’m gonna need a prescription for fucking strychnine.

I mailed the postcards.

And then I went and got my second tattoo (Needles #3- God, who knows) in two months. My appointment started at 11:00 in the morning and I wasn’t finished until 4:15. My arm fucking hurts— this was easily the most painful tattoo (and the biggest, and the most colorful) I’ve ever had, and you can see from all the open pores at the bottom of the image that my arm isn’t terribly happy with me. Hummingbirds were my mom’s favorites, though, and I absolutely love the design. Griffin Freehling at Enamored Arts, LLC does great work. But holy shit, I need to not spend any more money at all for the rest of my break.

Maybe don’t Google this

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, lifeLeave a comment

Here’s a sentence not many people can say: my eye doctor diagnosed me with sleep apnea. That’s completely true, although I don’t think I have it and I have no diagnosis yet from someone whose diagnosis might count. I had an eye appointment a couple of weeks ago, as I’m less happy with the long-term results of my LASIK than I feel like I ought to be and requested a consult. My eye doc then proceeded to confuse the crap out of me by asking repeatedly if I’d ever been diagnosed with sleep apnea, or if I had experienced various and sundry symptoms of sleep apnea, or if I’d ever had a sleep study done.

The answer to all of these questions was no. I absolutely utterly completely can not fall asleep on my back, and am an occasional mild snorer according to my wife, but that’s it. It turns out, though, that I have a severe case of something called “floppy eyelid syndrome,” which I did a GIS for to grab an image for this post and which you should absolutely not do a GIS for. Basically what this means is that my eyelids stretch way more than a normal person’s, which sounds like it shouldn’t be a thing, but it is. I can basically expose the entire orb of my eye if I want to, which I don’t, but it’s possible. And it turns out that you’re not supposed to be able to do that, and it’s not just a party trick, it’s a syndrome.

That’s not the weird thing, though. The weird thing is that floppy eyelid syndrome is very highly correlated with sleep apnea. Nearly 100%, in fact: in other words, nearly 100% of people with floppy eyelid syndrome also have sleep apnea, to the point where it’s actually used as a diagnostic marker for sleep apnea. So my eye doctor suggested I talk to my GP, and as it turned out I had already scheduled a doctor’s appointment a few days later, and my GP shrugged and went ahead and scheduled me for the study, which insurance then denied.

Like, I would like to be able to sleep on my back, but not at the expense of having to strap a CPAP machine to my face while I’m sleeping. My stomach or my side work just fine, thanks. But at the same time I feel like I ought to take this seriously in case it becomes a Thing later on, right? So if they tell me to do a home sleep study, whatever that is, I’ll do it. And in the meantime, I guess I’ll refrain from pulling my eyelids back any further than I need to to put my eyedrops in.

High-pressure sales tactics

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

I said it was happening, and yep, it’s happening: My novel Click is even as we speak being approved by Amazon’s fooferall machines and will be available for humans to buy in the very near future. Official release date is July 26, but it’ll be available for preorder soon, and as soon as the fooferall process concludes I will actually have a link you can click on to order it.

This isn’t even the official announcement post, really, because if it was there would be a link. This is like that card you get before a wedding announcement, that tells you there’s a wedding announcement coming and to hold a date, but somehow is not, itself, either the announcement or the invitation. This is just the announcement that there’s gonna be a book and that you should be prepared to buy it, if you like.

In other news, my YouTube channel is still out there and I’m still having fun with it, so you should go look at that and hit Subscribe as quickly as possible. Am I talking about it too much? Yes, absolutely– but if I don’t, no one will know about the great fun we’re having with Chicory: A Colorful Tale over there. And that one doesn’t even cost you any money! Go do it.

In other other news, the prophesied Second Child has entered the house, and I’m realizing as I’m typing this that I don’t currently hear any screaming, so either the children are both dead or they have gone somewhere without my knowledge, which seems like it could possibly be an alarming development. I don’t know where my wife is either, though, so maybe she’s with them.

(Thudding in the hallway)

Okay, I guess it’s fine now.

My sleep study has been canceled, because, I shit you not, my insurance company has deemed me “not sick enough” to require one, which … man, that’s a whole entire rant, right there, and I’m going to not bother writing the majority of it because the fact is I don’t think I have sleep apnea and not having to spend Thursday night in a hospital makes the rest of my week easier. Instead, at some as-yet-undetermined point in the future I have to do a home sleep study, and if you happen to know what the hell that might involve, let me know, because I haven’t gotten around to Googling it yet. Fact is I have got shit to do, and taking an entire night in a hospital bed hooked up to machines and pretending to sleep off my plate makes the chances that all the other stuff will actually get done a lot higher. Tomorrow’s tasks involve finding presents for my cousin’s two children, one of whom I’ve never met, and getting all of my video recording for the entire weekend done and out of the way. None of that can really start until the extra child is out of the house, and there may be a trip to the county fair in there sometime as well. I’m bringing my laptop to Michigan with me so I can keep up with bloggery, but if there’s anybody out there thinking hey, I would really love to write a piece to promote something for infinitefreetime on, like, no notice at all, let me know.

Call your Senators

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics3 Comments

Pure anecdata, and I just said this on Twitter but sometimes I like to say things in more than one place: I just called both of my Senators, one a Democrat and one a Republican, and told their staffers that I needed them both to vote against the Senate healthcare bill.  Also said to the Democrat’s staffer (who sounded exhausted) that I expected him to do literally everything in his power to oppose it.

I got through to the Democrat’s office on the first try.  It took four to get through to the Republican’s office.  And damn near every single response to this tweet by Todd Young is anti-AHCA.  It’s amazing:

There’s a lot of weasel words in there, but I’m choosing to take a bit of solace in the fact that it’s not a full-throated endorsement of the bill.

This bill will hurt literally every person living in this country.  Every single one.  Get on the phones, folks, and make your voices heard.  The DC Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121, but I find more luck getting ahold of actual people by calling the local offices.

GUEST POST: Anonymous Annoyances, by Jennifer

On By Luther M. SilerIn StoriesLeave a comment

Today!  Jennifer from Growing Toward the Sun. 

I am supposed to be home today.  I hope to God I didn’t call the bride by the wrong name yesterday.

milton-phoneRaise your hand if you’ve ever had a problem with your insurance company, cable company or bank.

Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever resolved a problem with your insurance company, cable company or your bank.

Me neither.

I start out cautiously optimistic when I make the first customer service call and Phyllis from Blue Cross sounds completely competent. She assures me that my policy has been reinstated. Yeah right.

“Phyllis, are you sure? Because I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow,” I said.

Phyllis chuckles in response to my anxiety.

“Have you ever known an insurance company to run as anything less than a well-oiled machine?” she asked (in my head).

“Oh Phyllis, you’re such a card,” I retort (in my head).

But the next time I go to my doctor’s office and they won’t see me because my insurance was cancelled, I realize Phyllis is like all the rest. Making promises she can’t keep, knowing I will never ever ever ever get ahold of her again. Customer service agents are like burner phones. Their slogan is ‘One call and that’s all!’.

No accountability.

I reassure myself that everyone’s doing their best as I psych myself up for the next call. After all, growing toward the sun = assuming the best about people.

So the next time I call, I get a brand new person to tell my life story to. I always ask them if they can “look in the notes” to play catch up because I think that’s a thing, but they never act like it’s a thing. That’s fine, I tell myself, clean slate! This will be good.

I remind myself that:

1) this person is innocent (at least until you hang up and they screw you over, too) and

2) you need this person to help you and if you’re a jerk, they’re probably less inclined to do so

So I patiently explain to Travis that my policy has been canceled even though I paid my premium. Travis says he’s going to research the problem and call me back.

“Are you really going to call me back?” I ask, trust issues abound.

“Yes ma’am,” Travis answers.

WHATEVER TRAVIS.

“Can I get your extension in case I don’t hear from you?” I sounded like a thirsty first date trying to wrangle a second.

“No ma’am, unfortunately we don’t have extensions,” he replied.

Travis didn’t sound like he thought it was unfortunate. In fact, I’m willing to bet that this no extensions ruse is the only thing that keeps him showing up to the job each day. He hangs up and I’m some other chump’s problem.

And I bet he didn’t even put it in the notes.

In which I dodge a bullet

On By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

toddler-hoodie-rexHad a bad moment with the boy the other day.

He’s been throwing things lately.  This, in and of itself, isn’t such a big deal; toddlers throw things.  We encourage throwing when it’s a ball, so long as he’s throwing to and not at, and discourage throwing just about everything else.  Generally, something along the lines of “Don’t throw things!” or “We don’t throw books” or “You’ll hurt the dog” has been good enough to get him to stop.  Rarely– I mean, it, rarely— we have had to tell him twice.

He is almost 2 1/2, just for the record.

The other day, he threw his fork at dinnertime.  This earned a sharper reprimand than usual as throwing a metal fork is somewhat more dangerous than throwing many other objects.  We picked it up off the floor and gave it back to him and he threw it again.  This time, he missed my head by maybe an inch.

I… reacted somewhat strongly.  Verbally only, mind you, but more severely than perhaps he’s used to.  He was done eating anyway, so we washed him up and then told him to walk around the table and pick up his fork and give it to me.  Which he did– mostly.  He walked around the table.  He picked up the fork from the ground.  I held out my had for him to give it to me.

And he gets this look on his face.

Oh hell no, boy.  Don’t you even think what you’re thinking right now, because goddammit I’ve never spanked a kid in my life and I swear to god I may not be able to stop myself if you throw a fork at my face right now.

Out comes the teacher voice.

“Give.  The fork.  To me.  Now.”

He very clearly spends a moment considering his options, and hands me the fork.

Which… good, because I really didn’t know where I was going after that, and heading into a potential You Really Need to Understand I’m Serious Right Now moment without a game plan is never a good idea, either in my classroom or in my house.  I’m ambivalent about spanking right now; I don’t see that in general it’s going to do much good with a 2-year-old who wouldn’t know what “I’m going to spank you if you do that” even means, and in general I’d prefer to never hit my kid.  But given a choice between hit my kid and have him believe that throwing sharp things in my face is okay… well, I’d prefer to dodge the issue altogether and not have to face that choice, actually.

I may need to spend some time reading up on discipline with toddlers.

You remember the tree that came down in the storm, right?  Our insurance company estimated the cost to have it cut up and hauled away at $700, which doesn’t hit our deductible.  The first estimate we got was two grand, and even getting that guy out to look at our shit was a huge pain in the ass because of all the much-more-important bigger jobs that were available all around the northern part of the state.

I’ve got a guy coming out tomorrow who will do the job for $575.  Which is nowhere near $2000, and makes me very freaking happy.

Cue the normal concerns that you have when you get lowballed, of course, but if they do the job well I’m going to be recommending the guy to everyone I know.  I may knock down other people’s trees to drum up more work for him.