It’s All Connected

It’s All Connected

Everything is connected. It’s so cliche that it’s meaningless, and yet pulling a single strand in this delicate mess can undo the entire works.

A lot of things happened all at once.

I lost my insurance through work, because I’m not employed full-time anymore. I also lost my Medicaid, but they processed my recertification just in the nick of time.

That didn’t matter one bit, because all of the systems- at the pharmacy, physical therapy, Dr. Handjob’s office- couldn’t bill my Medicaid without billing my other insurance first, and I no long had my other insurance, so none of them could bill Medicaid, even though I had recertified in time, and provided all of the necessary paperwork, and made it to extra appointments just to do so.

For the first two weeks of September I couldn’t pick up any of my medications. I had to cancel all of my appointments and I’ve been out of physical therapy for the entire month so far.

Remember- I need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they will allow me the MRI necessary to allow pain injections in my lower back.

Oh well. Too bad?

Then again, that rule was made by the insurance company that dropped me. So next week I’ll find out what new set of hoops have to be jumped through for Medicaid.

In addition, I had to have a tooth pulled on 8/31 and needed to have my two week follow up, which also couldn’t happen because of this insurance billing conundrum.

Don’t worry. There is a lengthy post underway to relate the relevance of the pulled tooth.

I spent all of my days off last week trying to get it all working again. Due to the shift in my hours, I have to submit disability paperwork, which is intimidating, invalidating, and time consuming.

It’s like trying to quantify this magical capitalist boundary between how many hours of work completely blow out my body, and how many I can work and just exist in extreme pain, dedicating the rest of my existence to recovering enough to get back in there.

What if I work a number of hours that actually reduces my symptoms?

What if working two days a week means that my pain level (with daily medication) is only at a 4?

What if that alone has given me tremendous quality of life back, and I feel guilty every single day that I haven’t maxed out my system in one way or another?

Am I obligated through my existence to work an extra day, because I’m not in the level of agony that I was when working 40+ hours per week?

I only have until the 19th to submit the paperwork, or everything I’ve worked to patch back together will fall apart again.

One of those pages has to come from my Dr’s office. I sent it to them on 9.13. I have not heard back from them about it. One page asks me for a case number that I don’t have, and nobody is returning my emails about it.

I’ve done as much of it as I can do, and it may really still not be enough.

I’m trying desperately to tie the ends of this together in some way that makes sense. The harder I try, the more it all seems to come apart.

It’s crap that the system keeps us absolutely spent by jumping through their hoops. None of this is about improving quality of life, or patient care.