DarkSydOtheMoon/at/aol-C/O/M

I do believe my health is stabilizing. There’s always some bruising when one is on blood thinners. But over the last few weeks the ease with which I would bruise has diminished, and what bruises I do get seem to resolve over a shorter, more familiar period of time than they did in Sep and Oct. Plus, I did the fun shock the face-and-arm-muscles test, which checks for nerve damage in case I had suffered a mini-stroke during the Great Blood Disease of aught ’13 and those result were encouraging.

If I wasn’t now approaching dead broke, being shit-canned over this stuff and losing my critical less-than-minimum wage disability and health insurance this week, for the sin of falling ill and suffering a heart attack and other scary complications this year, I’d be pretty damn happy, too. I would not ask for change in your Paypal account if there were any other viable options, but there’s not. Guys and gals, five bucks matters to me right now. If you’re wondering, below is a thumbnail sketch of how it came to this. [Read more…]

Being skeptical means one foot on the open-minded  side of the fence, and one foot firmly in the That’s-Bullshit side of the property line. it’s a tough straddle sometimes. But here’s how it pays off. See that image above? It’s a group of pro-gun demonstrators, that showed up uninvited at a Mothers against gun violence meeting. Which is kinda inappropriate and even a little bit creepy. BUT — it’s not quite as bad as it appears. Go below.
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Update 2:30 AM Central: Jebus I fell asleep, sorry. Looks like the exit polls were right and McAuliffe pulled ahead in VA after all. But by about 1 to 2 points instead of the 4 or 5 confidently predicted. That’s worrisome, Cooch was running not just to curtail reproductive rights, he’s was hoping to make it harder for women in abusive marriages to get divorced and he was running in the wake of Bob McDonell, who is facing possible indictment and prison time. But a win is a win and that point and a half will mean thousand of Virginians won’t needlessly suffer or die when healthcare is expanded to include them. We should all be so lucky. Christie won as expected in NJ but his coattails were non existent.

Update: Networks now calling NJ for Christie. VA too close to call but MSNBC says as yet unseen exit polls show McAuliffe ahead. Know idea why, looks to me like Cooch has a solid lead. That would be sad for a lot of people in VA and really weird with no clear winner in Teaparty vs Establishment.

It remains to be seen if McAuliffe will live up to the polling hype in VA. But the result in NJ is assured: Christie will win in a landslide. What’s interesting to me is Christie supported the ACA, allowed a state exchange to be set up, and went ahead with the state legislature’s desire to accept the Medicaid expansion. Presumably McAuliffe would do the same (There are an estimated one-million residents of Virginia who currently lack health insurance). If so, a win for McAuliffe and Christie could easily be construed as a sweep for Obamacare. I’ll post results as they come in.

These days, every-time I read about or hear someone refer to our bodies as “miracles” it makes me sick to my stomach. Our bodies aren’t miracles, they’re hopelessly bugged-out collections of molecular Rube Goldberg contraptions which seem to excel solely at delivering intractable pain to a helpless brain. The only miracle is they can operate for any time at all without breaking down. Last Sunday was the first day I felt anywhere close to normal in the last three goddamn months. It felt like, finally, the blood-cell counts were getting back to normal, I didn’t have the spins as bad, night sweats and the aches and pains had eased up. It had been so long since I’d felt that good it was almost like being high on some kind of designer drug. Well, we know that can’t be allowed to continue huh?

By that same night, the very same fucking night — I didn’t even get one full 24 hour pitiful goddamn day of relief — completely out of the blue, completely unrelated to anything else, I came down with the worst sore throat I’ve ever experienced. Calling it a sore throat is laughably inadequate, it’s more like having a lit blowtorch waved over hornet stings, wave after wave of raw fiery intense pain combined with a high fever. One side, from jaw to collar bone, has swollen up like a football, so much I am now physically deformed and too self conscious to be seen in public. I cannot talk or eat, I haven’t been able to sleep for more than an hour at a stretch all week, and I can barely even swallow. Only vicodan taken by the handful has kept me halfway sane with the pain while the antibiotics slowly work — and they are working very, very slowly if at all.

This came completely out of the blue, just my bad luck, probably some bug I picked up in one of the many, many doctor’s offices I’ve been in over the last few weeks, combined with being on immune-suppresant drugs for a rheumatoid disorder.

I’m just fucking goddamn furious about it, so angry at how shitty someone’s luck, my luck, has to be to suffer that kind of timing, so near enraged I want to start smashing shit like a rabid chimp. It’s clear this will utterly dominate my entire fucking week now, another week wasted, on top of the last 12 wasted weeks, another week spent in complete misery, another week where all I can think and talk about is how much it hurts. In fact based on recent experience I fully expect it will stretch into next week, or maybe suck down the entire month of November, or maybe I’ll hit the jackpot and it will become some kind of super-duper expensive chronic immensely painful deformity that never, ever goes away. For no other reason than 4 billion years of evolution haven’t come up with a better defense against a dumb microbe 100 times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. What a sad excuse for a fucking miracle.

My blood chemistry and cell counts are still iffy, but they’ve improved, presumably by not taking the meds suspected in contributing to the condition. The over all condition is called hemochromatosis w/complications, and in my case it’s a serious version; they’ve told me to have two pints of blood removed asap, it has to be done on a lab/outpax facility while wearing a pressure cuff to make sure it doesn’t get too low. Sooner or later though, I have to take these meds or something like them.

So, with all that, the recent heart attack and the mild pneumonia, and the lingering chance there could be a serious marrow or lymph issue going on as yet undetected, I was able to get CIGNA to generate a short term disability case number and begin that process. Which may or may not be approved, meaning I’ll have to fight for it, again. If it gets approved in the end, I assume my job and health benefits are safe for the duration of recovery, plus I’ll get some STD pay. If not, I’ll be tossed to the curb by my employer in the midst of all this shit while pretty close to dead broke. Hoping for the best and just knowing I probably don’t have cancer makes it much more bearable.

I’ve been sitting here all weekend waiting for money in Paypal to hit my checking account so I can actually use it, budgeting out doc appointments and stressed that I’ll lose my health insurance along with my job this week, and it just struck me as I see the transfer has still not posted: how is Paypal still in business? There’s no other financial institution I have to deal with that delivers such shitty service as those assholes. Nothing even close. I can move money from a savings and loan to a checking account at another bank in another state over night, but Paypal can take up to a week or more to do it. [Read more…]