DIY Medical Procedures

  

Being healthy is a terrible way to get sick.  

#1  BE HEALTHY –SIGN UP FOR INSURANCE

I'm fairly healthy 
(physically anyway) 
and we have great (adequate) insurance, 
a (relatively) low monthly premium of about $300 
with a $5,000 annual deductible. 
(Ouch, but we won't need it right?)  

Picture me, the peach of Obama's pit, 
the sweet-spot of Affordable Health Care.  
He needs me--
the gal who doesn’t go to the doctor
--who is young (again, relatively) 
and healthy (comparatively,) 
to make the program viable for others who need and use it. 

#2  AND INSURANCE  PREMIUMS  INCREASE WITH USE   

So like most healthy Americans, who don’t go to the doctor for everything, 
I neglect well-checks due to the animus of the expense (the annual deductible) 
(Baby needs a new designer purse... or five or ten,) 
which acts as a monetary incentive 
(don't use it, or there will be no fund for those who really need it) 
to remain well—

or use my other health care option... to self treat. 

 

#3  IN THE EVENT OF EMERGENCIES

So when you find you do require the urgent services of a medical professional, 
and you haven’t kept one on retainer with regular sickness visits, 
and your standard care giver (it's been six years... who are you?)
and three different physician receptionists (What do you need?  How do you know?)
have declined to treat you,
(We require a mammogram before we will even see you,)
and urgent care prefers that you take that particular problem to a specialist, 
(What is it you have?  Again, how do you know?)
then you are forced to either resort to the expense of the emergency room…
(Sit here, in this really expensive seat and we'll get to you... tomorrow,) 

or again, self-treat.

PINNACLE
So you perform the procedure yourself to ameliorate some of the worst pain
while you wait for that fourth physician’s 
(the real specialist whose receptionist recognizes the word ultrasound and aspiration)
first available appointment.

FACE THE MUSIC

Three weeks later,  (at the first available appointment,) 
somehow instead of awe and admiration at the inventive audacity, 
you have engendered the derision of the physician 
who can’t begin to understand  
why anyone 
(in America) 
would have to resort to 
visiting an animal feed co-op to obtain a needle 
to emergency aspirate one’s one cysts 
(I clip my own toenails too,)
—when one could just wait in agony 
for the first available appointment 
(no we don't maintain a cancellation list,)

three weeks later!

FINAL SLAP IN THE FACE

The fee for a half-hour in-office doctor visit, 
for the use of a simple medical procedure (I did the first one myself,)
with ultrasound equipment, a non-emergency cyst aspiration is 

$1010.00.  

If I were uninsured, the doctor would be willing to accept half that much, 
but the procedure amount is set high 
so that when the deal the billing department has made 
with the insurance carrier kicks in, somehow
it will actually sound affordable.

EBAY

Used ultrasound machine, $11,000.00.  
Avoid eleven more affordable visits 
and just imagine all the other, more varied uses, 
because you’re aging…hmmm.

What’s really wrong with Affordable Health Care 
is that it isn't--
neither affordable nor accessible
and it’s not all Obama’s fault.

Many people who read this 
will agree with the doctor 
that somehow,  by being healthy for ten years... 
and by taking responsibility for my own health care, 
somehow I deserve to play this sick game.  

…conspiring

This year will be different!

Instead of yawning as usual through January, I promise myself that I will change up the seasons! I’m going to snap the ennui,[1] sling the old habits and aim for a goal. I’ll be an achiever, one of the people who reach the end of January more fit, healthier, and perfectly organized!

I’ll hit the ground running with a list of goals and resolutions that will fling me confidently into the coming year with a work-in-progress already in progress.

Dear Me,
In past years, I’ve stretched myself beyond the snapping point during the holidays, and then slacked back throughout January, and I’ve comforted myself with the thought that if one doesn’t feel bad about doing nothing, then it can’t be called depression, can it? T.

Reality Bite: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.[2] Just beware of life's splat factor.

[1] Boredom, the only word I recall from Mr. Jewkes' high school vocabulary class.
[2] American proverb – author unknown.

…lost in translation

I have begun the writing process! Research, compile, outline and then a very strong rewrite! The first three phases are complicated, but I will get it in order—when everything else in my life is in order!

Dear Me,

I will sort and chuck the paper chaos, so that when I die the children can chuck without sorting.

I am excavating all my ancient writings buried in the depths of every computer I’ve owned since the dawn of the techno age. Or I will as soon as I answer the age-old question of how to translate the hieroglyphics from ancient computer language into recognizable English. The process is taking more computer know-how than I know how.

Dear Me,

Only a few more visits from the geeks bearing gifts and soon all of the letters and e-mails that I have written over the years will be readable—a copious font of uselessness. But, on the bright side, I’ll be more tech-savvy, T

I now have a new plan for my life, a higher purpose. I will organize my journals, write a memoir and salvage my pride, all in the guise of writing a book! In addition, I can mark one item off my newly-revised Top Ten To-Do’s-Before-I-Drop-Dead list—#6 “Organize My Personal History.”

After I accomplish this, the next bold project is turning the vintage Apple Mac, Commodore, and PC Jr. into planters!

Reality Bite: Put that on next year’s TD before I DD List.

[1] Homer, sort of. My editor (teen daughter) advises me that a good writer should not underestimate their reader. “Duh, Mom.”

…enchanted plastic

I’m finally lounging alone, all by myself, in front of a roaring fire—an environmentally correct, natural gas fire, (not very warm, nor very roaring) and I’m munching popcorn with my feet up, wrapped in Gram’s afghan. I heave a deep sigh of relief at having bested another day, while I try not to choke on old maids.

My life is perfect except for a slight armpit prickling that interrupts my coziness. I reach up and delve beneath the double layer of shirts and deep in the sleeve next to my skin, I discover my daughter’s library card!

How did it get there? My last memory of it was when it performed the ordinary function, earlier that day at the library.

Although I’m surprised, I’m not amazed. It’s rather small to be so enchanted, but my daughter has been reading fantasy books, so it must be bewitched and I’m bewildered![1]

I have been aware of the magic of plastic cards for some time, but I’m surprised to find that library cards are included. Until now, I had thought that such transformations were only performed by credit cards.

It’s magic how credit cards work. They’re captivating, just flip them out and buy anything. You can get some pretty great things with a flip of the card and a signature.

To me,
The little one is impressed that we can pay with only a toss of a card. For him, credit is incredible! I too, am aghast at the statement at end of the month. It grows magically after I whip it out only once or twice. Poorer, T.

Reality Bite: Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. A. Weasley

[1] A song title I am unaware of, but the editor insists that credit is due.

…credit casual

I’m casual with credit cards. My financial manager (husband) prefers that I use other people’s money all month, and then he only has to pay one bill and spend one day in gastric disturbance. But I use them so much that I become cavalier.

Credit cards don’t like to be taken for granted. In a vain effort to make me more appreciative, the cards disappear in a myriad of different ways. Their favorite method is evaporation. A credit card can just disappear while traveling from one store to another. Calling after it, like the concerned parent after a wayward child, the store tragically confirms that they do not have it. I then spend the day canceling it. Days later, it’s wonderful to be forgiven and have it reappear in the store’s cash register and hear a clerk’s reassuring, “Don’t stress out! We have your card.”
But it’s too late; the stress is out! The husband has been gone on business, unable to charge until a new card is Discovered.[1]

The husband complains about my card’s perfidy, but if he used his card as often as I use mine, his card would take a break! I know, because his card has done it to me before!

Reality Bite: Tripping in Tahiti, I tell you!

[1] It’s all in the vainglorious name and don’t you forget it!

…credit connoisseur

I shouldn’t worry; as a financial whiz, the husband is a connoisseur of credit and has a plethora of magical cards, most of them with pretty pictures and some with funky holographic designs. Each card functions uniquely and at different levels of interest.[1]

Oh, the magic is not just in credit cards, there are debit cards that remove money automatically from checking. As someone who was once a bookkeeper in the distant past, I’m not even sure how that works. It’s magic!

To me,
Cards tire when they are overused and disappear or they go on strike. We try to use them and are refused. “Your card is declined,” is credit code for “Your card has reclined, on a beach chair in Bora, Bora. Stop using me so much and I’ll again grace you with my power when I return.” Watch and see, T.

When a card is gone I call diligently, every day for the balance, so that I’ll know if the card’s gone on vacation, charging on itself in Tahiti.

And suddenly, it’s back—after a week’s absence, without a note or even a postcard. Quite mysteriously, like the library card, it reappears in a pocket in my purse which I have searched three or four times.


Reality Bite: I am suitably chastened

[1] Don’t even risk an interest in interest!

…credit perception

Dear me,
While delving my inner depths, I’m unearthing all kinds of noxious gas. To release it might be healthy but the cracks and fissures are deep and one never knows what might split off and go flying. It’s not my fault. Just so you know. Whatever comes of this, it is truth, as I see it.
Still tormented T.

I’ve decided that rogue credit cards are also responsible for messing up your credit rating. If they have the ability to get out of your wallet, they must be able to get inside your credit bureau, and what a time they are having there!

On any vagarious whim, the credit card company dials the roulette wheel and calls your balance due and payable. They can increase your interest rate at random for no other reason than you hit the lottery and decided to pay off the running balance of another card. Go figure?

It seems that the credit card companies know more about me than my closest girlfriend and certainly more than I think is safe even for the husband to know. I'm just sure that this is related to the alien plan to invade the world, and Mexico’s plan to wreak our economy.

What I know for certain, is that it does go far to advance my insanity, if they only knew. Oops, now they do.

I’m going to pretend that credit card companies really are a service industry with my best interests at heart, and that ignorance is blissful and not necessarily a bad thing.

Reality Bite: The real worry starts when I begin to believe myself.