Pie-Bolar Served w/ 3 Flavors of Anksia Tea

Another Maze Game: Tsuro

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:34:00 +0000

http://www.gametableonline.com/ Game Table Online has a variety of board and card games to play; you can play most or all of them for free against the AI (computer).

I've heard about a board game called Tsuro recently on some board gaming blogs (here's one review: Major Fun.com's review of Tsuro), and thought it was right up my alley.

"Create your path without your opponents steering you in the wrong direction - or off the board! Tsuro is the quick-playing game in which directions can change as easily as the game plays.
The rules are simple: You place a tile to build the next step for your stone to follow. Paths will cross and connect, and the choices you make all affect the journeys across the board. Stay on the right path - your journey begins here."

Quoted from http://www.tsuro.com/.

Gametable Online says, "You can play premium games for free during beta testing or against the computer (as long as AI play is available for that game). Play them against other humans with a small, one-time activation fee."

I take this to mean that during beta testing you can play with other people online, or against the computer (if available, and it is for Tsuro). I believe I've read elsewhere on the site that Premium games are free against the computer (AI).

Anyway, Tsuro is currently in beta testing, as well as it also has an AI to play against. It would be fun to play against someone! I'm not sure if any download is needed to do that, though.

Okay, correction: I just tried to play it in the lobby, and it said 40 GTO coins were needed but that I could play it against the computer if I wanted for free. Click Enter the Gathering Place to play this game, and that'll pop up. Just continue. You can select the number of AI players, ignore the Live Players part. You can set the difficulty of the AI. When ready, click Start to start the game. OR you can just click on Launch Demo and play that way; I'm guessing the AI is set to Intermediate there.

http://www.gametableonline.com/gameinfo.php?gid=34 Is the link to the Tsuro page, without needing to be logged in (registering is free though).

I found this to be quite fun; so much so that the free GTO coins I've earned by filling out surveys and stuff, no $ spent at all, may get some spent on this to activate being able to play with real people. If anyone else earns some free GTO coins and wants to play this with me (you only spend the coins once, can play then with other people who have also paid once, whenever you want without paying again) I'd love to play you!

Yeah, not likely anyone will go through all that, but hey, it's fun even against the AI, and it's a maze game in a way, so I thought I'd let you know about it! I get no benefits from Gametable Online or anywhere else for posting this; I just wanted to throw another maze game out there!

Might have to evacuate for wild fire

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:36:00 +0000

There is a fire burning in the foothills and closer, there is voluntary evacuation just a few blocks east of here; we are packing up clothes, toiletries, medication in case we need to go. Wish I had our important papers more consolidated, the best I can probably do is birth and marriage certs. I don't think we'll have to evacuate though but the videos of the wildfire are scary, I haven't gone out to look yet.

Trying to manage my daughter's panic, don't know what to do.

Update: No more evacuations needed. Considering that the evacuations were closer to 5 than 10 blocks away, I didn't figure we'd have to but it was uncertain, and prudence to get ready just in case.

We went outside and looked through binoculars, took some pics and video. The HUGEST forest fire scale flames are at the bottom of the mountain, a stone's throw from the biggest cluster of fire trucks. We saw three more fire trucks head up the street, no sirens or lights though; with a fire this big it'll just do what it does til you get there.

It's a big inverted V on the mountain. I'll post pics tomorrow though if any didn't turn out too blurry.

They JUST got this news in: Police are questioning a man who earlier had been seen in the area before the fire started; he'd been following news crews around, and when he purposefully stepped out of a live shot when it swung that direction, the police cuffed him and took him away.

I'm relieved but a lesson learned, one that our church tries to teach us, is to be prepared for situations like this with a bag with clothes and other stuff to grab in haste.

Now we have a State GUN???

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 06:00:00 +0000

I am SO embarrassed to be a Utahn right now. An official State GUN? WHO on EARTH thought this was a good idea? NO other state has a state GUN! THIS is a stupid idea.

So WHAT if Mr. Browning, a famous gun inventor, was from Utah, or lived part of his life here. Why immortalize that by making one of his pistols our State Gun?

So we can become the laughingstock of the country? "Gee, what about those gun-crazy lunkheads out west, huh, they went and declared themselves an O-ficial State Gun. Jumpin' Jehosephat!"

STUPID. There's much better things the legislature could have spent their time on. UGH!

All in Fun or Promoting Stigma? Card Games called The Looney Bin and Tourettes

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:49:00 +0000

sThe name itself is stigma-promoting, and the cover art for the game isn't so swell, but lets get past that. What do you think of the game itself, and it's expansion, Looney Bin: The North Wing, from Board Game Geek.com?

The Looney Bin:

The Looney Bin is a deduction game with fast action - reaction card play that depicts the uproarious occurrences of an insane asylum. The object is to be the first to heal all the patients in your ward by treatment with various therapies. Non phasing player action ability keeps everyone involved for very little down time. Contains 35 patients, 90 staff and action cards, 35 symptom tiles and plenty of therapy chits.

Looney Bin: The North Wing:

Looney Bin: The North Wing allows you to continue the insanity by expanding The Looney Bin game for further fun. Expansion set includes 27 new patient cards and 36 new staff and action cards. One more therapy, Rorschach Ink Blot, doubles the amount of possible cures with 70 new symptom tiles. Also included are more therapy tokens for up to 10 players.

There have been other hospital-based games like Theme Hospital for the computer, and a similar version for Facebook, called Simply Hospital, or something like that, that have "funny" brain or "mental" illnesses; things like King Syndrome, where the person thinks and acts and looks like Elvis, etcetera, and has to get cured by the shrink.

Those two computer games, I've had much more experience with Theme Hospital than Simply Hospital, but I was starting to get bothered by some of the "mental" cases in the latter. In Theme Hospital there were so cartoonish as to be so far removed from real life, although I suppose there are mental patients who believe they are all kinds of famous people, I guess. At least I've seen illness portrayed that way in the movies; I don't know if it's really so.

This Looney Bin game, on the other hand, seems to be much more stigmatizing than the computer games. Then again, I've played an online game called The Asylum for Cuddly Toys; it's in my right-hand sidebar. You try to cure a soft toy of a mysterious mental illness using various therapies. You have to try and deduce things based on what behaviors the treatments cause. Is this game stigmatizing or fun or somewhere in between?

Looney Bin just seemed to set off something in me though. Let me know what you all think, about any of it!

Edited to add: I just found one called Tourettes, which I think is DEFINITELY stigmatizing, or at the very least EXTREMELY tacky.

Description:

Tourettes is a game of quick thinking and quicker blurting.

Players take turns flipping over the top card of the deck. The card will have a letter, number, prefix, or symbol, and everyone tries to shout out a word that starts with the same letter as whatever is on the card. The fastest person wins the card.

Collaborative Games

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 06:59:00 +0000

I've been enjoying some collaborative games. One my sister has is called Break the Safe, a game where you are taking back some items that have been stolen and placed in a museum-like place, but they were taken from you so you aren't stealing. Or so it goes, to make it "okay". Anyway, you cooperate together, trading the solutions to solve the booby traps that get revealed beneath red pieces in various rooms, if there's not a key beneath the red piece; you trade for the solution to that particular booby trap. You also get each other out of jail if the dog or guard has seen or smelt you on their rounds; you roll two dice, one is for the guard or dog to get out of their rooms, as well as that same die is your movement die. The other die is the movement die for the guard and dog.

If the "let the guard out of his room" comes up on the one die, you don't move anywhere and the guard comes out and moves how far his movement die says; same for if it says the dog comes out. There's a line of sight rule on the guard, and you have to be more than 6 spaces away from the dog or in a room to avoid detection by the dog. There may be line of sight with the dog too, but it can smell around corners within 6 spaces.

Anyway, you are all cooperating to get to the various rooms to work on the booby traps and you aare doing all this against a timer on the safe in the middle of the building. You decide at the beginning of the game if you want hard, easy, or medium level game, which decides how much time you get. Last time we went medium, and we would've just beat the hard time by less than a minute, it was a nail-biter!

What I quite enjoy about these cooperative games is that its a nice flip on the usual competitiveness and even sometimes greed that can come out when playing regular games. Not that there is anything wrong with regular games, but sometimes people can show some of their . . . let's say not the best of themselves under those circumstances. So it's refreshing to play in a manner that reinforces good communication, positive interaction, and all around fun without that level of competing against each other, because you are competing against the game!

The newer game that I've just found, I bought with birthday money. It's called Forbidden Island and it's by Gamewright Games. The island is sinking beneath you as you play and you continually have to shore up the various tiles the island is made up of as you play. If you don't, you risk losing critical places like the places you need to collect the treasures, your extraction point, and such, The goal is to collect four treasures from the island before it sinks, and you get to use action points each turn for various things like giving treasure cards to other players, moving, and shoring up pieces of the island. Also sometimes for special actions based on the special abilities each archetype you get to play, gets, which are all different, and help make the game different each time you play.

The gameboard is set up differently each time you play since you shuffle the game tiles, ie, the tiles that represent the lagoon, the caves, the temples, etc. and the board is then all different each time.

The rule book encourages you to give each other ideas on how you should use your actions each turn; I like that the book acknowledges this. I really like the positive interaction and communication and teamwork that this, and these kind of games foster.

Plus, they're really just plain fun. This particular one is challenging. I hope to find more cooperative games in the future; if you see any, let me know!

Maze/Labyrinth Games

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:32:00 +0000

I love a good game, and maze/labyrinth games can be fun, if they're done right. One that I've played before is by Ravensburger. It is called Labyrinth. Here is the Ravensburger home page, where you can play the online version of Labyrinth, with variable size boards and 3, 5, or 7 goals per game. You click on the tile in the upper left to rotate it, and click on the particular blank square outside the board as to where along the edge of the board you want to insert that path tile into the board, to play it, then you click on the available path to you to move. It's quite strategic and fun! It's possible to "push" yourself off the edge of the board; you pop up on the other edge of the board, and you can help yourself win, that way! Fun as the online version is, it's so much more satisfying in person, to slide the tiles into the playing field and interact with other people.

There is, I discovered on the site, another version of the game called Labyrinth - The Duel, which can be played with two players or solo. I'd never seen this version before. I also discovered Master Labyrinth, which is ages 10+; Labyrinth is 7+, and Labyrinth - The Duel is 8+. The original is a VERY fun game, so I can see why they'd capitalize on it with new versions. Edited 2/18: Just discovered a card version of the game that plays differently by nature, with a 5 star review by people on Amazon.com. Ravensburger Labyrinth Card Game.

I remembered this game but hadn't remembered the name, so I Googled maze games, and I came upon this page on About.com, listing what they've reviewed as the top 5 maze games, and they all sound intriguing! I wasn't surprised that Labryinth was number one! Top 5 Maze Games, according to About.com

Further, I was interested to find a discussion asking about other maze-like games people who liked these top 5, might be interested in. I'll summarize what they discussed, leaving out the ones that people say remarks like, oh, it's not a "best" game, it's only "ok", or, it wouldn't make my favorites list, etc. Those types of comments, I'll leave those games out.

First, one game stood out that came up later in the discussion, as being the "granddaddy" of all maze games, although complex (with a variety of Monster counters, Attack counters, Spell Counters, Treasure counters, etc.) It received so many rave reviews, though, that it seems like it may be worth the effort of all those counters, and learning the rules. As well, they put out a second edition that revised the rules to be a bit easier, though still complex. There's also a third edition of rules online, in .PDF and MSWord format, that can be downloaded, here, along with access to a variety of software tools to aid in the game, such as MR Evening Flow Charts, Printable Setup Card, a Board Builder, and a Setup Stooge. Any game that inspires people to make such tools to aid in playing the game, makes me think it might be fun to play, possibly. It takes alot of work to come up with these things! A page of links relating to the game. Here's the Wikipedia entry for it, which really makes it sound interesting (and makes it sound right up a certain brother-in-law's alley!)

I DO like a good Maze game! I don't know if any of you have ever played this, or any of the other games I'll mention; if you have, let me know what you thought of them! I'm considering birthday ideas for my birthday in a few months!

This Magic Realm game was last published in the mid-90's, so it'd be hard to find, but probably not impossible. Price would be another matter, if it's that popular with players, however. I currently see one here, Amazon Marketplace, used, for $49.91, but I don't know if it's the 1986-1998 Second Edition version, which is a must, as opposed to the 1978-1985 version. Sometimes they say it pops up on Ebay, but the only one there right now is an incomplete, 1978 version.

Well, to continue this very long post, the other games I found in that discussion found here are:

Quoridor (play online by yourself, with others, or download to devices) (Wikipedia)
Kimbo (The Game of Fences) Vintage 1960's Parker Brothers Game (How to play)
Wizwar (Wikipedia)
Pathfinder (Vintage 1977 Milton Bradley) Like Battleship, but with mazes!
Tunnel Rats - Escape from Terror Maze

"Four anthropomorphic rat characters exploring an underground Inca cave temple (don't ask!)

Cave-in blocks entrances, have to use an electronic compass to detect and get past a maze of invisible walls (I said, don't ASK!).

The "Electronic compass" in the game is a plastic Inca step pyramid with a simple one-chip computer in the base. It uses simple light and sound cues to indicate where the invisible walls are on the board. It has 16 different mazes in its memory. Players would place clear plastic markers to show where the walls are on the board. First to escape through the central escape tunnel wins.

So it basically turns out to be an electronic Rat Maze!

Mike Evans"

DungeonQuest (Wikipedia)

Wizwar sounds like it's rather simpler than Magic Realm, and very fun! Sounds like it should be inexpensive, too . . .

Creatine for Depression & Uradine for Bipolar?

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 06:51:00 +0000

Natural substances treat depression (and bipolar), parentheses and contents added by me, story on KSL.com, it looks like some study results released today by the University of Utah on two natural substances the body makes or uses; they say creatine is in every cell in the body, and uradine is usually found in breast milk.

The story leads me to feel that these sound really promising, especially since they treated adolescents (granted, I'm not one of those) with bipolar with uradine alone, even, after having treated them with these as supplements to the regular medication.

I'm so excited about this I had to post it before going to bed, staying up a little late but I'm too excited even though it'll be years before this makes it to approval, if it does, for use for people like me. Hopefully there's alot fewer side effects with things like this than with current medications.

"Your boots have decayed because of scurvy."

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 04:31:00 +0000

Bwa ha ha haha.

My husband was playing a free online pirate MMO that he likes, and they incorporate item decay into the game. When something decays, it pops up a message with a reason for the decay, although he complains that things decay too fast.

Well, as the post title says, he got a particularly ridiculous reason for his virtual nautical boots to decay, and I just couldn't help but post the absurdity of it here for your amusement . . . . .

Should you ever find yourself in a scurvious (not a word, heh) situation, please watch out for your footwear!

Oh yes, he also became suitably nervous for his ship's welfare when he dredged up a treasure chest that contained, among other things, a Kraken-Repellant Necklace . . . . .

I am Impressed!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:22:00 +0000

My last appointment with the psychiatrist was a few days ago, and we really clicked this time. So I opened up to her more than I have at any previous appointment.

She prescribed a practice for me that would pleasantly surprise my mother, and surprise the hell out of alot of people, it's rather unconventional. Then again, this psychiatrist is a bit different.

The appointment got really personal, so I'm not going to discuss it this time, other than to say that I was impressed.

Afterwards, when I said I didn't know when or if I could come back, with the insurance ending, she said I could call in when/if I needed prescriptions (I'm stable on my current ones, so it's not like I need constant supervision on them at the moment, although I could use a trial of a new anti-depressant, but with the insurance ending, now is not the time), which I thought was really great of her. As we walked out of her office, she gave me a hug, which startled me at first but then I returned it; it really had been an intense "mini-session", and I had opened up to her more than I ever had before. I really appreciated the hug, because it meant that she valued me as a patient and a person, and was sad to see me "go" for awhile, without being able to come back.

I was just really impressed this time. I'm really glad about that, too.

No Insurance, No Job, No Therapy, No Hope, No Nothin'

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:16:00 +0000

My husband's out of work, the insurance is coming to an end, my physical therapy is coming to an end, and my last two sessions of mental health therapy are this week. I also have my last psychiatrist appointment this week as well, along with an appointment with the surgeon's PA, as the surgeon is on vacation until August 11th, and my insurance doesn't go into August.

I feel a HUGE sense of pain and loss that I can't have therapy anymore. I have a quite large supply of my mood stabilizer, so I'm fine there, and the clonazepam I probably have 2-3 months worth, if I fill the last prescription and then get the next prescription from the next appointment when it's able to be filled, I might have close to 4 months worth. About 3 and a half.

So I'm okay, assuming the husband gets a job soon and it's 90 days thereafter until insurance. Of course, I have Medicaid which, if we get my medications approved, will cover them, but the problem is accessing my psychiatrist. I don't want to have to switch psychiatrists all over AGAIN when I barely started with THIS one in MARCH of THIS YEAR. Even if she's not a great fit, yet.

I am feeling really hopeless about the loss of therapy. REALLY HOPELESS.

Add to that the stress of no job for my husband and everything else and life is really over the edge for me, for us right now. The title of the post says it all. (Almost.)

I Wrote Myself a Letter Incorrectly

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:17:00 +0000

Well, so I've been working on heavy material from my childhood in therapy, recently.

I was supposed to write a letter to myself - a letter, to my younger self.

Apparently it was a bit too . . . intellectual, not that he outright criticized it like that; he was more kindly about it. He said I read it out very . . . emotionlessly, which I agreed with, and we talked further about why that might be, and the issue of the letter being written from too intellectual a point a view came up.

The letter was too "safe". Me, I'm really good at running from my emotions. It's no surprise that this first attempt at addressing a difficult, emotional subject should have ended up rather timid and safe.

So, my homework is, after listening to the two most recent sessions of therapy again, is to write another letter to my younger self, this time talking more about the stuff that those mean kids did to me when I was young. This is hard and painful for me, but if I'm going to heal, I need to deal with it.

This sucks. It's been difficult to re-hear myself breaking down and sobbing in these particular sessions of therapy; sometimes therapy is alot easier to listen to than this. These ones are definitely NOT easy for me to listen to, but I'll get through them. It IS cleansing and healing, especially since I am hearing things that didn't come through the sobbing clearly at the time.

I just don't know how I am going to handle life when therapy is suddenly cut off with the insurance ending; I'm going to feel like an arm or leg has been torn away. I feel like therapy is essential for me at this point in my life, and that I can't do without it, but I'm going to have to figure out how to stuff things back inside for awhile without exploding. I don't know how I'm going to do that, because I'm kind of volatile right now.

In Which the Psychiatrist is Late, & Initially Very Confusing

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:28:00 +0000

My psychiatrist was twenty minutes late today, which means that she got in to the office at 9:20, which was when she was supposed to see ME, but her FIRST appointment, her 9:00, was still waiting to be seen, so I had to wait longer. UGH!! She said, "I'm sorry I'm so late!!", and the other patient said, "Don't worry about it", but I said absolutely nothing . . . . . lol.

Can you tell I was a little peeved? In early morning traffic, it takes about 35 minutes to get there, so we had gotten up early, and had gotten there 10 minutes early, even, not wanting to shave it right to the minute.

I suppose everyone has an off day, though. It's still annoying for me, as the patient! Guess I wasn't very "patient", heh.

While I waited, just after the first patient went in, a pair of drug reps, one in training, came in, and dropped off some samples in her back room, then sat down to wait. I vowed that I'd get seen before them, because patients are more important.

They talked alot of business, and about where each of them had worked, and some of the details of the software they were using on the laptop, that they wish they'd had at the previous place, and stuff. It was interesting to listen to them talk.

Drug reps are a sadly necessary "evil" of the medical practice, because they provide drug samples for the doctors, without which you wouldn't be able to start some of the initial doses of certain medications, and sometimes the samples are used to help some patients afford the medications, although they do NOT replace the pharmacy, not at ALL. The drug reps also provide coupons and promotions for the patients to redeem for free two week or one month supplies of the medication, with prescription, at the pharmacy, whenever their companies are offering such coupons and promotions, so again, these things are good for the patient's pocketbook, their bottom line, for being able to afford the medications, when the insurance situation isn't ideal. Obviously some of these don't last very long, while other programs will, say, take half off the cost of the medication for a year, but whatever can help the patient, is a GOOD thing.

It's just, the whole salesman aspect of the thing, seems a little . . . smarmy. It also feels a bit intrusive, to have salesmen in the medical setting like that, but as I say, it is a necessary "evil", even if one wonders about the influence that they may have over a doctor's prescribing practices. The most ethical doctors will not be influenced, but no one is perfect.

Anyway, sitting there for awhile, listening to them, I didn't think they worked for Pfizer, the makers of Geodon, the medication I had been reduced in dose after my recent bad experience on, and was here today to be likely removed off of and put on possibly something else, but if they did, I wanted to tell them I thought it sucked. So, I asked them eventually, "Do you work for Pfizer?" They said, "No", so I continued anyway, since they'd still have an interest, and they did, and I said, "Well, Geodon sucks". They said, "We think so too, we sell a competing product." I said "Oh, okay. I hate it, because I had unexpected side effects." They then expressed their regrets to me that I'd had a hard time, and again said that they didn't like the med.

I thought the whole interaction was a little bit funny, hee. Normally I wouldn't, as a patient, have any kind of interaction with drug reps at all, but since my psychiatrist was late, and since they'd been chatting for awhile so freely in front of my husband, daughter and I in the waiting room (after all, this is the type of location that is basically their workspace for the whole day; that, and their car, so one can't expect them to just sit there silently), so their chatting had encouraged me to eventually strike up a conversation, since there was nothing else to do while I waited for the doctor.

When she eventually came out, as she walked past them to the front desk, she asked them if she needed to sign something, (I assume as in, to sign for the samples they'd dropped off in her back room) and they stood up and handed her a clipboard and started talking with her, the one in training did. I wondered if he'd bring up with her anything about the competing product for Geodon, since he knew she'd be bringing me off of that one, and potentially on something else, but it seems they had enough discretion NOT to go there, which amazed me slightly, for salesmen. They just brought up the coupons and promotions that are so helpful for patients, and got the signed clipboard back, and in the middle of signing it, she called me in to the office, which helped let the drug reps know that she'd not be spending a lot of time with them, and made me feel like I was her priority. I didn't feel badly that she'd signed for the samples, because otherwise these men would just be sitting around for another 25 minutes doing nothing, when just 2 minutes of her time took care of the whole matter.

So, the appointment starts, and I'm not sure how we get started talking about body issues, except for maybe I mention the weight loss and the fact that my knees have been hurting more than usual lately. She then starts in with, "Well, what has your body done for you your whole life?"

I'm like, "What??" She repeats, "What has your body done for you, ever since you were born, ever since you were a child, what has it been doing for you?"

I stammer out something like, "Well, it exists . . . . "

She repeats the question. I am completely confused. I start talking about how lately it sucks with the arthritis diagnosis but that's not really what she means. As far as the face goes, I start getting emotional and talk about how, for most of my life (and then I amend that, to up through the end of high school), I had a HUGE overbite. It was so bad, I was in braces a lot, although the first orthodontist was an idiot, because when we moved to Utah, the orthodontist here took one look at my face and knew that, while I'd need braces, they would be in preparation for jaw surgery, because my jaws were mis-aligned; ie, I'd been born that way, and they'd need to be broken and moved and reset to be fixed. But, preparatory to that, I'd need about 2 years of braces first, to get the teeth lined up first, since what the first orthodontist had done had been ineffectual, and NOT with surgery in mind as the end-game.

So, I began the two years of braces, and then in the spring of my senior year of high school, I had jaw surgery, that changed my face a good bit. They broke both jaws. They moved the upper one down and farther back in, and moved the lower one up and forward. This changed my nasal cavity and nose a little bit as a result, though they didn't break the nose at all, but the upper jaw was changed in a way that it was broken behind the nose, if you get what I'm saying. This made breathing after surgery a bit hairy, since everything was swollen up, and my jaws were wired shut. I sounded like Darth Vader, breathing through my teeth.

Anyway, in January of my senior year in high school, I had been having suicidal thoughts and had broken down and told my parents, and said, "I need counseling, psychological help. I need help, mom, dad." So I got help through LDS Social Services, where a psychiatrist put me on Prozac, and a counselor started seeing me once a week. As the surgery approached, though, I started getting nervous about all the "issues" involved with changing my face, and I was not sophisticated enough, in hindsight, to deal with them at the time, so I never resumed counseling nor the Prozac (at that time, on the med), after I had the surgery, because I was afraid of all the issues involved with the whole changing of my face. It was a VERY complicated and EMOTIONAL issue, because ever since I was TINY, I had been called a BUCK-TOOTHED BEAVER, and all sorts of horrible names, by other children whilst growing up. I had been ostracized, I had had stuff thrown at me, I had been "pretend kidnapped", I had had to walk the gauntlet of the bus every day where kids would slam books down on my head, throw stuff at me, spit spit balls . . . . I had had other kids spit in my face, which is a dehumanizing thing that NO ONE should have to suffer . . . . I had been beaten up TWICE on the way home from junior high school, which I can still see vividly . . . I had been WHIPPED, in elementary school, with one of those jump ropes that have the plastic thingies on, well, you don't know pain until you've been whipped with one of these, the military should employ them, it was that painful. That whip was one of the few times I couldn't keep the tears off my face coming back in from recess, and so the teacher sent me to the principal and I had to tell what happened. You NEVER tell what happens, not EVER. But that one was beyond my physical limits to contain, so I paid for that one.

All because of my stupid FACE.

So you want to know what my body has done for me? Bloody NOTHING, that is what my body has done for me!

Not what she wanted to hear, lol. This isn't what we got to, we ended up starting at the toes, and starting to work our way up, we only got to the feet, and settled on mindful walking, as a way to start taking care of my body.

It was partway into this discussion that I decided that this confusing discussion wasn't any harmful New Agey crap and was really just mindfulness, which IS a helpful tool, because I tend to, with my anxieties, live too much in the future, and not enough in the PRESENT. I DO believe that the mind and body can have a powerful connection, so I decided to be more open-minded and get "into" the discussion, so I settled into the groove and began to get something out of what we were discussing.

After talking about mindful walking, which involves concentrating on the feet, and their surroundings, and the sensations involved in walking, and such, we finally got to talking about the medications, through a really clever segueway on my part, heh.

We'll be discontinuing the Geodon, and thus discontinuing the lorazepam which has only been on an as-needed basis, but OH how I've been on the "edge" of freaking out, or getting "agitated", about many things, on the Geodon; this is one of the reported side effects of the medication that has been driving me BATTY! I've only taken the lorazepam about 4 times, as I only felt it got extreme that many times, but . . . UGH. I'll be chucking this benzodiazepine, as I'll be resuming my old one, the clonazepam, for taking care of the odd things I do in my sleep sometimes. This should also help take care of the getting me to sleep thing, that the Geodon had been making me sleepy. As painful as my legs can be, getting sleep can be an issue if I don't have an additional aid, so I'm glad to have one. I know as my recovery continues that that won't always be the case, ie, that if I didn't do odd things in my sleep, I wouldn't need the Clonazepam, that I'd be able to get to sleep on my own, that it is for the odd things in my sleep, but for now, while my legs are painful, the additional effect of it making me sleepy is a handy additional side effect, that I bless it for.

The replacement for the Geodon is . . . the medication that she'd lowered that caused her to want to add Geodon in the first place. She'd lowered my topirimate from 150mg a day to 100, and I'd reported feeling less stable on it. Thus, she'd added a more traditional mood stabilizer. She's not the psychiatrist who had initially prescribed topamax, now topirimate as generic, for mood stabilizing as an off-label use, and so I hadn't thought she'd be up for raising it back up. But she said that, "You know how you feel, you know what had been working, and how it felt when it was lowered, so we'll go back up." Or something like that. I'm guessing that after the last couple years of my having been tried on a couple different things, that the stable of mood stabilizers is getting down to things that would potentially cause a raise in blood sugar and/or even diabetes, which, for someone at my (yes, it's reduced, but still not a great weight for this) weight of 225-235 and 5 foot 7", is not the best idea.

So, I apologize for the long post, but there you have today's experience at the psychiatrist's office, with a little back history on the face. It's funny how the knee surgeries have brought up all the old issues with the face again, obviously I need to spend some time in therapy working through the face-changing issues that I never worked through at age 18. Working through all the baggage from growing up with the face that I was born with, which I'm sure my parents would say wasn't a bad face, but of course I couldn't get that surgery fast enough. I went through the equivalent of torture, in my young life. Both emotional, and physical. It's probably why I developed mental illnesses, in the first place, although maybe some was in the DNA, since my 2nd oldest brother also has ADD. I've read that untreated ADD can lead to developing bipolar, but there's no blame to my parents, because they didn't know about such things back then, and even when they did, it was more recognized in boys, than in girls. But it certainly wasn' t recognized in the 70's and early 80's, in girls. And who'd have had a clue about anxiety disorders, either? I'm pretty certain that I had THOSE before I was even 13, just thinking about how I was, but when you think about having to worry about being hit by a book or other stuff every day getting on the bus, you get battle weary pretty quick.

That phrase makes me wonder about PTSD . . . . like I need something else, anyway.

Nowadays if some kid was "pretend kidnapped" like me and my brother were, the two kids responsible for it, they were teenagers, they'd be arrested as juvies, for the circumstances and actions I remember. They seriously would be, nowadays. For treating us the way they did, burying us in leaves, taking us against our will, holding us against our will, telling us they'd kill us if we left, burying us until it was dark under the leaves, and saying they'd kill us until we were dead (the boys involved were 14 and 15, or 16, I believe, we were 11 and 12, I think) . . . . I can't remember how long we laid there, but it was a LONG time. They hauled us over a block, into the woods, against our will, and stood guard over us for awhile. I believe our parents spoke to the parents of one of the boys, but I can't remember, I was just terrified out of my skull. I never jumped in a leaf pile again, after that. Can't stand them.

I Have No Pants!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:04:00 +0000

Wow!

Wow what, I have no pants? Lol.

No.

Wow, I am down to 233 pounds! Considering I was 299 when we decided on surgeries last December, this is amazing!

This also explains the title of this post . . . .

I went through my clothing yesterday, and got rid of five pairs of jeans, the two pairs of pants that I owned, and two pairs of capris. This leaves me with one pair of jeans in size 24 (still too big by, I'll get to how many size(s) in a minute, but beltable), and one pair of capris. That's IT! That is not enough to be able to dress oneself and leave the house on a regular basis.

So yesterday I went out looking for something to wear at Target and Wal-Mart, but the pickings are slim as in a few weeks, mid-July, the stores tend to switch over to school and late summer wear. So they aren't restocking what they've got right now.

I found one knit pair of charcoal grey heather capris, which will need long shirts over as, well, you know knit pants, and the other pair I found is also capris, this time a sand or tan color, with cargo pockets on the lower thigh, but they are really flat and don't add bulk; it is in a 97% cotton/3% spandex, a mostly cotton, button and zipper front, but with the delightful addition of a drawstring that ties in a nice bow, to help tie and cinch in the elastic waist in the back that still tends to gap a bit, when sitting. The FIT on these is FAN-tastic!! Especially because of the tie!

The size on these? Well, the grey ones were a 1, out of a 1 2 3 4 system in the plus size section; I put them at an 18/20. The others are, an 18/20. AN 18/20!!!! Do you know how many years, over a decade, maybe eve n 15 years, maybe it's not been that long probably, since I've fit into that size? HOLY smokes, was I stunned!

I wish the tan pair were pants, and not capris, but you can't have everything. I tried on some jeans at Wal-Mart, but they turned out to be Boot-cut, which always are cut in at the calf before they flare out, and the flare is so subtle that I can't tell if they aren't labeled such, so I couldn't tell until I tried them on; with calves like mine, any narrowing in the calf just DOES NOT WORK, and even if you size the pant up, which would make the waist too big, boot-cut makes me look like Popeye in the calf, it really does.

I didn't get a chance to try on the jeans from the folded up section of display; these would be a normal straight leg, but we were past time to be out of there. I can go back another time, because I need to know if a size 20 jean in a regular cut, a straight leg, or at least just a normal cut, will fit me. Since the regular cut of the longer than the grey capris, tan capris fits me so perfectly all the way down to the upper lower calf, I'm sure most other pants in the size, if cut regularly, should do fine.

I did try on a few other capris at Target that didn't have quite enough rise, which is sometimes a problem for plus-size people; come on, you are making plus size clothing! I saw a few pants labels that seemed to address this in the cut, but these were sold out in the sizes I needed to look for, darn it.

I really need to find a pant that is NOT a capris, although I can't really afford much more than what I have. The jeans at Wal-Mart are $20, and that's a stretch. I hope they stretch, heh!

The car bill has stretched our money too far. But, I've got to have pants, and underwear that fits, as well! Also, a shirt or two that goes with gray and is tunic-length. Too bad the lightning one at Wal-Mart is supposed to stretch to fit and looks horrid on my bat-wing arms, because, it is dang cool! The other tunic on the same rack is the same type of fit, so it didn't work either.

Geodon Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:03:00 +0000

Well, the last two days have been NOT FUN.

Having a symptom show up less than twenty-four hours after bumping the Geodon dose up to three pills, was rather suspicious.

When undressing for the evening, I noticed a speckling of tiny bruises on my upper left thigh, in a V and then a dot farther up, almost as if something had traveled a path in my veins, or bled along a path, which freaked me out. I began wondering about strokes and other things, which is rather EXTREME, even for me with my anxiety disorders and panic disorder.

I literally thought I was going to DIE, so I took a Lorazepam, as directed, for agitation. I left a message with her office the next day, because I HAD had my last appointment with her on a Saturday, I figured she might pick it up (I marked it urgent) before she left for the day. Apparently she didn't.

Anxieties in full swing, I applied some cognitive behavioral techniques to calm myself down, a bit, as well as having talked on the phone with my mother-in-law.

Later in the day, I continued with the second day of the new dose of three pills, hoping nothing untoward would happen, but knowing that if it did, I'd be calling the prescribing psychiatrist's cell phone Sunday morning at a decent hour, because TWO symptoms in a row would be too much to ignore.

Well, something happened, within 4 hours of taking the second dose. With apologies for the graphicness, I had a bit of blood before a runny stool. I grew VERY alarmed, and was in panic mode, "I'm gonna die of a stroke, because if it's bleeding in various parts of my body, it could decide to bleed ANYWHERE!", being the type of thoughts I was having.

I took a Lorazepam again this night, as well as I requested for my husband to give me a priesthood blessing. What was said in the blessing calmed me down completely on the score of worrying about further symptoms from the Geodon; there would be no further ill effects, so I had faith that what was said in the blessing was true, because that's what I was raised to believe. To trust in the Lord, and the priesthood that the men in the church have to use in His name. Part of trusting in blessings like these is to also make use of modern medicine, and to not just leave everything up to faith; you are to still see your doctors, and make use of them as you normally would, so I did not cancel my intentions to call her in the morning about the symptoms. It is what a prudent person would do, after having had symptoms of unusual bleeding or bruising after recently upping the dose of a new medication as directed.

I called her this morning, and I'm to lower the dose back down to two 40mg pills, and to keep her informed about how things go.

Let me tell you, spending two days wondering if you might die, has not been fun, even though you KNOW it's the panic disorder, possibly aggravated by agitation-caused side effects of the Geodon, because you normally don't go to such extreme conclusions based on a little side effect or two like that. You would worry alot, but not think you would DIE right off the bat. I am SO grateful for blessings, too.

Now all I've got to worry about is the pain of taking off the tapings they did to my knees at physical therapy . . . oh, and what mood stabilizer are we going to try next?

As well as, getting to sleep is going to be harder, because when I was on two Geodons previously I was on the last of the Seroquel stepping down, and now I'm not, so I won't have as much sleepiness effect from the Geodons without that. Although they do make me a bit sleepy.

The low-dose aspirin I take, half a day away from the Geodon, that the pharmacist had said wouldn't be a problem with the Geodon if I only took ONE, since the Geodon bottle said to not take with aspirin, that I take for up to 6 months post surgery for blood thinning reasons, well, I think there was perhaps some interaction between the two of these to create the symptoms mentioned above. I can't remember if the psychiatrist knows about the aspirin or not, I think she does . . . . I'm going to not take today's, just to be safe, and then resume the aspirin tomorrow.

Mostly Car Stuff, Resolved

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:25:00 +0000

During the car repair hoopla, at first it was just the EGR valve. Then, during tests, and after the oil change we'd requested, the muffler system was sending too much pressure up and forcing the valve to stay open.

So, as things wore on, it was thought that the catalytic converter having gone bad, had caused the valve to get stuck open . . . but as it turns out, in the end . . . it was one of the strangest things he'd ever seen, he said.

Apparently, the EGR valve is what went wrong FIRST, causing the catalytic converters to go bad from the back/lower end of the system FIRST. This is good in this case cause otherwise the upper converter that is of one piece with the emissions manifold (it turns out, our car was originally purchased in California, then the owner moved here and traded it in, and so it's known as a California Emissions car, and why it has such a wierd emissions/muffler system and also more expensive parts in said system, ugh!) would likely have gone bad too, as badly messed up as the lower catalytic converter was.

In fact, it was so badly plugged, they couldn't even TEST the upper one without replacing the lower one, which they had to ask my permission for, and which was a big leap of faith in the Lord and my feelings that I'd been having that He had been prompting me that everything would work out in the end . . . because to pay the $500 for the part and labor on the lower catalytic converter, in addition to the labor and repair on the EGR valve plus the oil change that had already been done, without knowing if the upper catalytic converter was ok or not (which at the point I was being asked to do this, I didn't know was a more majorly expensive, dual part, I naively hoped that it wsa a less expensive part than the lower one, I mean, why would they make the 2nd one MORE expensive? Lol, THERE's logic for you, heh!)

I gave the go ahead to replace the lower and test the upper when they had done so.

You know how it turned out? It turns out, that the upper tested out "Okay.". They say that it ran fine, and that it checks out, but that there's no way to know if the back-up from the lower catalytic converter caused any internal cracks in the upper one. If it did, it could potentially come apart and smack into the lower, and basically total the car, because at this point (the upper catalytic converter which is combined with the emissions manifold, is a $900 part, without labor), we'd have to do the lower all over again, too, and who knows WHAT else, and it's a 10-year old car. At least, THEY say it would be totaled. I'm not sure that $1400 plus a little more for labor on the second part, wouldn't be worth it because it'd take three times that to have a decent down payment on a car, to bring the payment to an affordable place for us . . . on a USED car.

BUT, . . . What do *I* know about cars, ANYWAY? THERE is the argument that at what point to you stop dumping money into an older car, but I'm not quite sure, that if there isn't anything else wrong with it, that around $1500 isn't worth it to keep it going. Because that'd be TEN $150 car payments, but you know we'd have to have a $3k to $4k down payment to GET a payment down to that range on a $10k car. Of course, $1500 is HALF that, but half is alot easier than double . . . which is all hypothetical, since we have NONE of it! Lol.

It'd be good to start saving, if we could. Gotta get some niggling little medical bills from last year out of the way; the ones from this year are going to be taken care of by retroactive Medicaid, so that's a sweet, sweet relief, whew. Although I wish I could get the money back I paid my psychiatrist earlier this year, but she doesn't take Medicaid, and they contract with the local county Behavioral Health anyway, for mental health stuff. So I can't have her bill for that stuff, retroactive to Medicaid, or I would.

The car repairs came to 944.71. OUCH! BUT I feel that the Lord really came through on taking care that that upper converter was NOT messed up; considering how badly the lower one was, that they couldn't even TEST the upper, I was worried that it would be, but still having faith that it'd fit within cost (not knowing the priciness of it at the time, so I still had faith, in a way, despite worrying about it not being okay; having faith that we'd still be able to take care of the cost, which the Lord managed for us by having the upper converter turn out to be okay, which I feel like was a blessing from Him.)

That make not make sense to any of you, but it surely does to me. I am SO glad that I don't have to try to decipher car-speak anymore; the shop was good about trying to explain stuff to me, and I asked intelligent questions, but oH, am I SO not a car person, lol!

Just a Valve & a Sensor?

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:51:00 +0000

It may very well be!!

Who'd have thought it?

That is most excellent news, because those would be MUCH less expensive than even just a minor clutch adjustment (not that I know the price of sensors, though), or a clutch or transmission problem . . . . at the very least, I'm betting we're talking HALF of the $800 here, for ballpark. Nowhere NEAR $800. He gave my husband the impression it'd be much lower than what we'd been told by other places, when my husband drove over to check on it today.

We couldn't find the phone number for the place, lol! Apparently they're really busy, so that's why it's taking so long, not because they've found a ton wrong with it, like we were worried was why it might be taking so long, even though we HAD been told the place was slow. We'd also been told it would take only about a day, and we left the car there Monday night, and now it is Thursday morning.

That is alright; we just don't want to have to be borrowing the neighbors' very very generous loan of their second car any longer than necessary! If we could afford to return it with double the gas in it than was in it when we borrowed it, we would, but we WILL return it with more than was in it when we got it; yes, it's just a few dollars, but gas is expensive! It had half a tank when we borrowed it, so we'll return it with 3/4 tank. She last filled it in February, which tells everyone that she doesn't drive it much! It does makes us feel less awkward about borrowing it, which was part of the point of them telling us that, too . . .

Still, returning it with more gas in than we got it with is the very least we can do, even with the car repair expense. Besides, I think she'd kill us if we FILLED it up, anyway, lol! They are THAT giving, but I'm going to not let her protest too much and I'm going to INSIST on the extra bit of gas that we put in it when we return it.

I have had faith that the Lord would help things turn out, and things are working out. It is interesting to see how things have come together in unexpected ways to help the situation, and it's been an interesting spiritual journey for me, and an interesting counteraction to my anxiety disorders.

Faith vs. anxiety disorders, and faith wins! I can't say that has been the case in every situation in my life, but, I CAN say that I have used prayer in many moments to call on Him for Peace, as well as to call for a lessening of the burdens on my shoulders, and He has answered my prayers. As well, faith is, in part, a measure of the one who is exercising it, definitely NOT a measure of the One in whom you have faith.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:55:00 +0000

The feeling of a place like the bar in that old TV series, CHEERS (old? if this TV series is old, "I" feel OLD!), is the feeling I get when I walk in to my physical therapy.

The aides are friendly, the front desk personnel are always happy to see me, in a casual way, not stiff and formal, and the physical therapists, even the ones not my own (as various ones have stood in whilst mine has either gone on vacation or as Monday is his day off) are mostly all very familiar with me by now, and, at times, when not busy with another client, we exchange greetings or banter, sometimes about what is on the televisions up at each corner of the long room.

Whenever they seem to have hired a new aide, I've tried to introduce myself, as I feel most comfortable in this environment knowing the names of those working around me, since that is how it has been for most of my relationship with the place; it did take some time for me to work up the courage to do this, however, but once I did, I found it personally gratifying and rewarding to have done so. Breaking out of my comfort zone to introduce myself to someone else, and then explaining that I feel most comfortable there when I know the names of everyone, informs the aids that, hey, this is one way we can make the clients more comfortable, too. At least, in my case, anyway. It's good for me to do something outside of my comfort zone, as well.

Part of what gave me the courage to do so, was all the conversations I've had, over the various weeks and months, with a variety of other clients/patients, as we've sat in our chairs, on our tables, or in our various exercise (or torture, heh, in the case of the knee bender/straightener machine) apparatus near each other.

Often the conversations have been started by the other party, if the other party was older and they had had a knee replacement, or were familiar with them; they'd see me, at my relatively young age, being treated as if for a knee replacement, and they'd inquire. At first I'd be nervous in these conversations, but then I learned that they just happened in physical therapy and to just take the opportunity to talk to people, and so I started starting conversations with people, too!

As the spring and summer have worn on, the patient clientele has thinned out, ESPECIALLY from what it was in the winter and early spring, which makes some sense; there'd be more slip and fall accidents in the colder weather. Still, it's been so sparse lately that it's been getting downright LONELY at physical therapy!

If it weren't for let's say Gregory, who seems to be another knee patient, very optimistic type always happy to see you guy, who always makes me smile when I see him, and we always greet each other and ask after each other's well-being, as well as the two aides, one of whom is newer, who like to talk reality shows like American Idol when it was on, So You Think You Can Dance, and The Bachelorette (I haven't seen Monday's yet, TIVO didn't record it so I'd better HULU it, she said it was GOOD), it'd be dead SILENT at physical therapy!!! Imagine the CHEERS bar, with just the fat guy at the bar . . . . hmm, that's not very flattering, and besides, I've lost a good bit of weight, anyway!

So even though physical therapy involves a bit of pain, it's definitely not the worst place in the world to go. AND this afternoon I am SO relieved to have my kneecaps taped up, as they've been shifting around AWFULLY, mostly the right one, but the left one has been doing it a bit, too . . .

Leaving you with the earworm that is now in my head, the theme to Cheers! Cheers to you! Where everybody knows your name . . . .

Welcome to the Pharmaceutical Hassle of Utah's Medicaid

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:12:00 +0000

Well, I had my Medicaid orientation last week.

The GREAT news after getting on the horn today with the State Medicaid office is that the retroactive Medicaid cards I was supposed to have gotten, weren't screwed up and I wasn't accidentally applied for not retroactive. They must have gotten lost in the mail. Even better than the 90 days retroactive before my April 13th surgery on my right knee, is that it goes retroactive all the way to January first, which covers the home physical therapy and home rental of the knee machine rental from the FIRST, left knee, surgery, too! I hadn't thought that most of January would be covered! And, after the orientation last week, I had thought that, since I had only received a card for June, it sounded like I might only get the cards for the 90 days prior to JUNE, and not prior to my SURGERY date, and had resigned myself to only getting the last month of my previous surgery's physical therapy paid for, as well as the anesthesia from this surgery, which is the first bill that came through for it and maximized out our deductible . . .

I am also unsure of how to submit pharmacy expenses from earlier in the year, if I even can at all, which I probably can't. That was one thing I forgot to ask the benefits lady at the orientation, but I've got her number, so I can call and ask.

They're sending me new retroactive cards going back to the beginning of the year, but said I can use the number off of June to give to providers. It's a good thing that retroactive expenses do NOT need to be on the provider list with the plan I picked for June and going forward, because the plans they had did NOT have my orthopedic practice (knee, hip doctors), nor my physical therapy place, etc. For retroactive stuff they just pay it straight from the state, without going through a plan.

Anyway, now to the pharmaceutical stuff, which I was looking at today. There was NO NO NO mention in the orientation about something that happened a year ago, in our state legislature, but THAT's no surprise since they are working with printed books that are from 2008!!!! UGH UGH UGH UGH!!!! I mean, REALLY!!!

What happened in 2009, was this:

Preferred Drug List

During the 2007 legislative session, the Utah State Legislature passed Senate Bill 42 allowing Medicaid to adopt a preferred drug list (PDL). During the 2009 legislative session, the State Legislature approved SB 87, which authorizes Utah Medicaid to require a Prior Authorization for non-preferred drugs. The PA requirement became effective May 18, 2009.

Direct from the horse's mouth, as it were. After looking through the two lists, there's only ONE of my medications on the "Preferred" list, and that's generic omeprazole. My other meds are Vyvanse, Geodon (still ramping this up), Lorazepam, topirimate (generic Topamax), and, not prescribed yet by the new psychiatrist but part of an as needed basis prescribed by previous psychiatrists and listed to the new one, and not told to stop, taken as needed when I remember which I usually don't, alprazolam, the generic for Xanax. The Lorazepam is also as needed, which I've only needed it once for agitation in the two and a half weeks I've been on Geodon now, and I suspect that that situation would have aggravated me Geodon or no.

Anyway, so I'm not concerned/worried about the Xanax, since I forget about it most of the time. That leaves four medications for my psychiatrist to get approved by Medicaid. Now, she doesn't TAKE Medicaid so she probably won't be used to this; Medicaid is contracted with Davis Behavioral/Mental Health, in Davis County, where I live.

I wrote once or more about how I had, once upon a time, seen them in the mid-90's for counseling; in fact, the time I tried to kill myself, was the week my counselor went on vacation, although there were MANY other factors at the time as well; THAT, though, was one of them - Having my ear to talk to taken away from me, when I was in the middle of so much . . . but that was a difficult time, when I understood so much LESS . . . I wrote, once or more, about how I had used their services, and then, several years later, tried to turn to Davis Mental Health again, and was told something like, unless you are funded from a certain source (I assumed, Medicaid or Medicare), we can't see you . . . funding cuts . . . They had previously seen me on a sliding scale, but couldn't see me at full price even, at this subsequent time. I then left, disbelieving, that society didn't even care if its citizens had any kind of mental health services . . . .

I eventually related that story, with assurances that I was now currently in treatment with a psychologist and psychiatrist, to my state's then-governor, Jon Huntsman, over the radio, KSL 1160, on a radio call-in show with Doug Wright as the host. I brought the issue of mental health issues and funding up, since it was the fact that the state hadn't picked up the slack in funding brought about by the federal dropping 7 mil in funding; the state had only picked up $2 million of it, and needed to pick up MORE of it, because people like ME had fallen through the cracks, like the story I just illustrated. The responded kindly and nicely and seemed to understand my point. Let me tell you, I was scared to DEATH, lol!

Anyway, back to the stupid Medicaid drug approval process. This is ASININE that it wasn't a part of last week's orientation!!! And then, to have 4 out of 5 medications not on the list? Heck, there wasn't even a category for anti-psychotics, or for mood stabilizers, or for antidepressants, or for ANY kind of mental health medication!!! Probably because of the cost, and probably why they want them approved . . . . stupid bunch of red TAPE!!!

Even though my insurance doesn't run out until the end of July, I'm going to ask her at the early July appt. to work on it; I'll have to print out copies of the form at the library, as our printer recently died. I hope she doesn't say, YOU do it. SHE has to, if you click through at that page and read the form . . . she's supposed to include a copy in my chart, for audit purposes, too. Not that she takes Medicaid, but since I'll be getting the medications using the Medicaid benefit after July, she'd better fill out the forms, I mean, what choice does she have?

I am not sure how I'll pay her after the insurance goes . . . like I say, Medicaid is contracted through Davis, but I'm a little leery, because what if we suddenly don't qualify, like if my husband gets really lucky with the job search on the pay rate? Yeah, one can wish, but maybe the Lord will bless us. What if that happens, and then I'd have to drop THAT psychiatrist, too? So that's why I'm leery, for one reason, to switch, even though I haven't been THAT happy with this new psychiatrist. Plus, we're currently trying a new medication, and I hate to switch in the middle of a trial.

I REALLY hate red tape, though. I do feel for the extra time an already burdened w/paperwork doctor must feel, BUT . . . I don't have a choice, here. Medicaid ain't much fun for the patient, either, people. I feel like a show dog being led around by the nose - go here, do that, get this treat that tastes like crap, go do that, jump through this hoop . . . . yada yada, etc.

When You BELIEVE - Car Repairs

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 23:48:00 +0000

Calling around to places about the clutch not catching and the engine spinning faster than it should, resulting in us burning through gas A LOT faster than we should be, and not getting much power when pushing the gas pedal, or so it feels from the passenger seat as I "feel" my husband drive, as I haven't driven in years, the repair places have quoted from $800 to $1600 to fix it. Or they've quoted that range . . . OUCH!

Like we have that, . . . . NOT!!

Anyway, so yesterday we go to a barbecue and game night at a neighboring apartment - the couple within had recently married in April - she had lived in the apartment for awhile, he had lived in the adjoining apartment when she moved in to the one next door, and that's how they met. Isn't that sweet? It's a good thing they had such a short distance to move his things, hee hee. It was a long courtship though, nothing fast for her! And she's an angel, too, always willing to pitch in where needed!

Turns out she married a great one, as well, although I didn't think she'd have poor taste. Early in the evening they heard our car woes. Later in the evening, they brought it back up to us, and mentioned that he knows a guy who does car repairs, runs his own garage by himself, so he's not the fastest, but that's one reason he doesn't charge nearly as much as chains or dealerships or other places with staff. I felt something inside, like this was exactly what we'd been looking for . . . . . this kind of honest small place is the kind of place you have to know someone to find out about, almost, and that's exactly how we're finding out about it, and through people I trust completely. My friend's new husband seems to know something about cars, as he asked my husband what was wrong with ours, and he explained it to him, and friend's new husband said, "There's no way that should cost $800 . . . . I can't say for sure, of course, but FIX-IT guy (that's not what he said, but I forget the name) is very reasonably priced, although . . . . he's not very fast, so . . . . Wife and I, well . . . . she never uses her car (she walks to work at the Big Box Store next door) and " . . . somewhere in there one or the both of them said that they'd be willing to lend us her car, with a lot of jokes about candy wrappers in the back that she has to clean out first. So my husband can get to work in the interim, and there was also some boggling at the 1/4 tank of gas it had been using in our car to get hubby to and from work, as that is what it usually uses to go down to Provo and back from here, IF that. That's about an hour south of here, is Provo.

I was just humbly stunned at their gracious generosity, to let us use their car to get to work and back for a couple days, while our car is worked on. They are "salt of the earth" people, definitely. Give the shirts off their backs, and all that. I did say that I didn't want to take advantage of them, ie, didn't want to be taking too much, and they didn't seem to think we were, in that they never replied to that statement, but the statement seemed to be silently acknowledged that I was being respectful; they didn't ignore it rudely. My statement felt silently accepted, respectfully, if you know what I mean; I didn't offer it as a rejection of what they were offering, just as a . . . well, you know. I really didn't want to take advantage.

Anyway, being able to find a good, honest man working for a living at perhaps not the fastest rate since he does it by himself, to fix cars and stuff, in his own niche, at a good deal less than the higher priced for the convenience of getting it done the same or the next day places (as well as the fact they have higher overhead for all the staff, and mark everything up so much etc.), well, that's satisfying in itself, to give ones' business to such a man, if that's what we've found, here, as well, and being enabled to do it by the gift of a loan of our friends' 2nd car for a few days, is humbling and . . . puts me at a loss for words, even.

Being able to find much more affordable auto repair, even if that still puts us in a financial bind, still bolsters my faith, because I KNEW that the Lord had been wanting me to not stress out AS MUCH about the car; I just hadn't known how it would be accomplished that it would be less than the regular routes of doing things would have it be. Then, out of the blue . . . .

There are some other factors at work, but I will not mention those right now.

Just tonight, I found out that we will be dropping the car off Monday night after husband comes home from work, which is quite late at night, around 8:30-9pm, and that, though we had forgotten to tell our friends the make/model of car, the FIX-IT guy (forgot his name lol, not the name of business just convenient substitute), having talked with our friend's new hubby this morning about the problem, thinks it'll take about a day to fix, which is pretty fast (for him), and while he can't say for sure about cost since he didn't know make/model and also won't know 'til he gets in there, didn't think it'd be $800 either. He probably could have said it wouldn't have been NEAR $800 if he'd have had the make/model but he didn't, since those are the biggest factor anyway, but he really doesn't want to estimate till he sees it. As well he'll check to see if anything else is wrong, since of course there could be something else that's about to screw up, you never know. Given how I trust my friends, THIS guy I'll trust if he says there's something else, a lot more than I'd trust a national chain-type of place or what-not. They're trusting my husband with their CAR, for goodness' sake! Like I say, salt of the earth, shirt off their backs, kind of people! The best kind there is.

If you're my parents, ok, my mom, since my dad doesn't read here, this will potentially affect getting someone on the trip next week, how we do that, since I don't know if we'll pick our car up Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning. Tried calling you but no answer, so call me! If more is found wrong in the car, it'd obviously be later.

This whole thing has been an interesting spiritual and cognitive behavioral journey, and a merging of using my spiritual side with some of the cognitive behavioral techniques; not quite a new thing for me, as I've used spiritual thoughts before in the Triple Column technique, sometimes known as the Daily Mood Log, to counter some of the Distorted Thoughts, but if you read my previous post I go into a little detail near the end about how I merge the two things, a little bit, in recent days. Sometimes people think psychotherapy and spirituality are mutually exclusive, or at least, fear that therapists can interfere or want to interfere with a person's spiritual beliefs. I remember when I first went in to therapy I was fearful of that, and wary about it. But my psychologist is very supportive of whatever MY spiritual beliefs are; he wants to support what is important to ME. I think that is the best way for a therapist to be, about a client's spirituality. I will stop here, on the subject, because it could be it's own post, but I think that Shrink Rap could do a variety of posts on the subject, too. I wonder if any of them have ever treated any Mormons . . . .

God Grants a Miracle

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:17:00 +0000

Just when a problem with the car's transmission pops up in the last two days, though my husband tells me that some people tell him that it SOUNDS like it might just be that the clutch needs adjusted (I hope it's that minor, rather than a bigger transmission problem, because SOMETHING isn't catching when we're driving), when my husband is losing his job in a month, with the health insurance running out at the end of July, and medical bills from the last surgery's home and outpatient physical therapy overwhelming us . . . .

I still have the feeling that God doesn't want us to worry overmuch, that He WILL help the job come along for my husband as long as he is diligent in looking.

The miracle doesn't have anything to do with that, although you who aren't family may not have known about the job loss; we learned of it March 15th, but I was hesitant to say something that early. THAT is why I had the second surgery when I did; to have it while there was enough health insurance coverage to last for it and the duration of physical therapy, although I DID worry about what we'd do about the last $1000 of our deductible. It was one of if not THE hardest decision I've ever made, since I was terrified to do it.

The miracle doesn't have anything to do with that either, though. Although I DID get approved for Medicaid, and have my orientation tomorrow; I was told it would go back 90 days from the day I turned in the papers (the day of surgery, May 13th), so it should cover all of my previous surgery's outpatient physical therapy (which are under the limit of number of physical therapy Medicaid will cover, which is 22 I think I heard). Anyway, I'll know more tomorrow about THAT. Especially if any of my notions that I've heard are wrong.

Okay, so the miracle:

The two MRI's that I had on my hip last fall, we've had this huge, $2800 bill outstanding on it, and turned in papers on the last day of March to be considered for a $50 a month payment on the bill, which is MUCH smaller than a payment that would pay it off within a year, which is what they usually want on their bills. It was quite a comprehensive financial assistance consideration packet of papers.

It took them quite some time to get back to us, so I made a payment or three in the meantime. Well, that must have shown them we had heart, because they DID send us a letter about 3 weeks ago accepting the proposal of $50 a month. I was stressed, though, still to have a huge balance like this outstanding, and not knowing how we'd ever cope.

THIS is where the miracle comes.

We come home from my physical therapy today and pick up the mail, which is the first post-agreement bill from them. I open it up, and scan it, and do a double take, and then am stunned.

They've reduced the balance of each MRI bill, one by $1300 and the other by $1200!!!!

God has given me things to believe in just when I could be getting really sick inside from how bad things are, situation-wise, both as things led up to my second surgery, and then now, as things are leading up towards the end of my husband's job. See, being bipolar, with anxiety disorders, panic disorder, and other stress-related disorders like Irritable Bowel Disorder which already has been acting up due to the increased stress, I could get really sick, both physically, emotionally, and mentally, from everything that's going down right now.

My Heavenly Father knows we are doing our best to live right, and obey him, and he knows what we need. He often works through others and I have been humbled, most often by my parents, as he has often worked through them in my life; they have been such an example to me of service, and how they have helped me after my surgeries has been such a testament of love.

Anyway, miracles DO happen. I am blessed. Now back to worrying about the car . . . . . . Heh. Just kidding, God! Teehee. Well, I DO have anxiety disorders . . . . . Ok, I'll try not to worry TOO much, but accept the fact that I am human and can't turn it off ENTIRELY. That, I think, is the best cognitive response to counter the anxiety about the car that I've come up with all week, regardless of whether the Lord had intervened or not, speaking from a mental health point of view, but all things considered, I'm glad the Lord did, and that in thinking upon that, my spiritual feelings work WITH cognitive behavioral techniques to counter the fears I have about the car and potential costs of potential repairs for it!

PsychoPharmacology: Make It Up As You Go, & Damn the Patient!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:24:00 +0000

You want agitation? You got it!

I want to prove this lady WRONG.

WHY do I keep getting psychiatrists who won't LISTEN?

Even worse, being dismissive of my concerns, is rude, hurtful, potentially medically harmful, and insulting, besides being destructive towards the therapeutic relationship, if it can be said that my psychiatrist and I have much of one.

You don't have to DO what I say, but HEAR me, please! Give me the respect of listening; I thought that was part of your job. When it becomes SO obvious that you AREN'T LISTENING, I just want to tear my hair out!

Okay, so I go in today, and say that I feel less stable since she's had me lower my topirimate (generic for Topamax) dose from 150 to 100mg. She wasn't the original prescriber of this; my last psychiatrist was. I talk about why I feel less stable, and this she listens to.

I tel her I don't seem to be feeling any effect from the Seroquel, which had been upped from 300 to 400mg last time, other than the usual bedtime sleepiness; it is decided that the Seroquel isn't working.

She decides to prescribe Geodon, which is especially good for the manic side of bipolar, I'm not sure if it handles both sides . . . . she lists some of the effects, and side effects, noting that "it helps stop cravings for carbs.". She happens to sub-specialize in nutrional issues, not that I've ever mentioned a carb problem, but I respond with the fact that I have PCOS (Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome), which tends to cause its sufferers to crave carbs, and she seems delighted that this little aspect of the medication will be so suited to counter something I have.

Like carbs are a major issue, here. DEFINITELY not a priority, although since we're poor, pasta and rice are often on the menu.

Besides, this medication has the potential to raise my blood sugar, with the potential in some cases for diabetes, I think, as well as it has the potential to cause weight gain (the literature I got listed this weight gain for 7% of the schizophrenic patients and didn't mention anything about it for the bipolar patients, but I doubt the weight gain would discriminate between the two). Now, I may have recently lost some weight, but I weigh enough (around 240, right now) that putting me on a medication with these two potential side effects (which, as a difficulty for the psychiatrist, so many of the bipolar medications seem to have these, which is why I think I've been prescribed such non-traditional mood stabilizers, as a way to avoid those, esp when I was in the 280's and 290's) is a questionable thing to do, in my mind.

Still, I'm not the doctor, and as I mention above, the choices are limited for mood stabilizers that don't have at least one or both of those types of side effects, at least as far as the on-label approved for use goes. The Gabapentin, and then, the topirimate after it, were being used "off-label", ie, the FDA doesn't recognize them for use as mood stabilizers, and, in fact, in Gabapentin's case, I believe had come down on it's manufacturer for trying to promote it as such. I did feel some effect from it though, but topirimate has worked better, I believe.

So, my new psychiatrist prescribes Geodon, and some lorazepam in case I develop agitation on the early, low doses of Geodon, which happens sometime, to counter it.

She told me to stop taking my clonazepam, which makes sense considering she'd just prescribed what I'm guessing is another benzodiazepine, given the "-pam" extension, but it's just a mild sedative, it's not meant for countering the stuff I do when I'm asleep at night.

I asked her, what do I do about THAT? The stuff I do when I'm asleep, like yelling, hitting, etc.?

She said, very dismissively, and in a manner that felt like it was pulled out of thin air, "Up your dose of topirimate to counter that, it will act like the clonazepam did to stop that stuff", or something like that.

I'm assuming she means to up my dose, all at night, right before bed - she wasn't very specific.

I was stunned, though; in my years of taking topirimate, my previous psychiatrist had never mentioned this property, and most psychiatrists don't prescribe clonazepam or any other benzodiazepine casually; of course, he may have been prescribing it additioally for it's anti-anxiety effects, as I was to take a tiny portion in the morning, to help keep a constant level in the blood, and then of course my nighttime dose, but . . . you'd think he would have mentioned that the mood stabilizer I was taking would have substituted for the clonazepam to take care of all the night stuff, if indeed that was one of it's properties.

I absolutely frickin' don't believe it. It's a painkiller, that some people I know take, or took, for migraines; some take as a mood stabilizer, like me, and now it's got an additional property I'd never heard of??

I was just disbelievingly stunned, that she would dismiss my concerns so quickly, with something that sounded like fiction to me. It also sounded like she didn't give a fig what night symptoms I had, either.

Later, it occurred to me, that if I up my dose back to it's mood-stabilizing effective dose of 150, to counter the night stuff (even if it doesn't work for that), then why the hell would I be taking an additional medication to stabilize me? How would I know what effect would be coming from which medication, then? It would be two medications where only one was needed.

This is why I said, at the beginning of the post, you want agitation, you got it! How am I then supposed to tell, as I start taking this medication Geodon, if the agitation is because of IT, or because I'm pissed off at my psychiatrist for being so . . . . . idiotic.

I'm going to take extra topirimate before bed tonight, and hope I have yelling, screaming, kicking nightmares, so I can call her in the morning and tell her how wrong the hell she was, and what now does she recommend?

Cause I'm PISSED, and I can't risk endless nights of possibly punching my recently operated leg (ow), or waking up to it jerking and convulsing, like I did a week after I got out of the hospital (OW), or waking up to me yelling HELP! as if I'm being raped and murdered, liked I believed I was in the nightmare, and then hearing the people in the apartment above wake up and turn over and go deathly still, listening for further signs of attack, me holding my breath against them waking and coming downstairs to pound on the front door, relaxing when they finally relax and turn over back to sleep. I'm hoping I don't throw any left or right hooks though; that behavior seems to be fairly rare, thank goodness, but then I've been on clonazepam for quite some time so who knows how rare it is . . . . . . .

Here's hoping I prove that WOMAN wrong TONIGHT, despite it meaning nasty nightmares for me.

Now, if anyone knows if that med is supposed to have this effect, I'd appreciate a comment, but . . . . yeah, I know it's the internet, grain of salt, not my doctors.

Sucker!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Thu, 20 May 2010 02:53:00 +0000

If anyone can find a link to a mini physical therapy plunger, let me know! I searched and searched, and couldn't find one.

Last knee, they only used it once, and I don't know if that's 'cause they forgot to use it or for what reason, but today I saw it used on someone else, so I asked the therapist, mentioning that I'm at week five, with the incisions being fully healed at week 6, and he said, "This is exactly when we would use it."

So, he fetched one and proceeded to apply suction to my incision. OH, geez . . . . any of you watch a recent Mythbusters episode where they proved that swearing mitigates the level of pain you are feeling? Well, I didn't swear, but I sure felt like it! Came close . . . and I know "bloody" is a swear word in some British or British-related countries . . . .

Some of it wasn't so bad, but there were a couple of . . . . SPECIAL spots, let's say, where I was like, "Oh frickin' geez @#$@# oh man holy crap aw OUCH I guess I asked for it oh heck @#$@#@#$##% . . . . "

Cartoon swearing is substituted for some choice words I was thinking in my HEAD.

"Frickin'" isn't a word I'm proud of either. But ohhh boy HURT is an understatement for those two or three SPECIAL spots . . . .

Afterwards, the incisions looked "better", ie, less puckered, especially in one of the areas I remembered as hurting the worst and having looked the most "pulled in".

Why did I have to go and ask for it?

Well, because I want things to get better properly, but oh boy, they didn't use it quite this early last time. Oh, man.

Great news though, my extension is zero degrees, and my bend went from 100 to 105 in a few days, and he thinks the motion we're getting on this leg is quite better than what we had been getting on the other, so that's great!

I sure was feeling the extra pain later in the day though . . . . such is my lot, that's the way of it. Sucker! Hee Hee Hee, I DID ask for it . . . . looks just like a toilet plunger, in miniature, with a clear handle and a shiny red plunger/sucking part.

I wonder how much, in that Mythbusters test, the part where they were saying/yelling non-swear words, as part of the control, like raspberries, donut, kittens, etc., how much THAT mitigated the pain. It seemed to help a little, but not as much as the swearing.

I guess you could say that today, I sucked it up. Anymore puns? Bring them on!

A New 'Do

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Wed, 19 May 2010 05:13:00 +0000

I had to get rid of that mane of hair I had, the first day I wasn't in agony, that I thought I could handle it, fresh on a pain pill of course, on a day off of hubby's.

I had him drop me off, with new coupon in hand, before the kiddo's got out of school, since I saw no one waiting, one chair/hairdresser occupied, and one seemingly available.

I went in, with her aid, because DANG was that door stuck or am I really that crippled nowadays? That was a tough door!

She's from Russia, and definitely has an opinion, but we had a great time. She definitely helped me choose a hairstyle that I wouldn't have on my own; it has some styling options that I might play with. This picture doesn't show it well, but it's swept from the top to the side with a bit of an up flirty thing going; there's some scrunched action in the hair a bit too, which is easy enough for me to do, or I can skip it if I like.

Wish this pic wasn't so dark!

One of the syling options has alot of the hair swept forward, in a very complimentary, but DIFFERENT for me way, that I'm interested to see how it looks . . . . . I've got enough hair left to play with a bit of my spray/curl enhancing gel (not that my naturally wavy hair really needs it, but up front, where it's thinning, it sometimes does), to scrunch or sweep, but I'm not weighed down by it anymore; and I definitely DON'T dread showering anymore, with almost 15 minutes just to deal with the HAIR (so thick it takes a minute to for water to penetrate it all, everywhere except the front of course . . . . and then washing at least twice, and then conditioning, that huge mane of hair . . . .) . . .

It's gone! You should have seen the floor! I had to sweep it out of the way with my good (heh, neither is that good) leg before I stood up, so I wouldn't fall; it's slippery stuff, hairy floors. Who'da thunk?

A Cross-Country Hug From my Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:44:00 +0000

I've been not looking forward to going through this total knee replacement thing again (substitute the word "hell" for the word "thing" if you like) which I'll be going in the hospital for this Tuesday April 13th.

It's been really hard on me, approaching this surgery; so much so that I've kind of had to pretend that it's not been happening, sort of. Not the most healthy of approaches, but the panic was unlivable. This was the only way I could turn it off. So I've sort of been living in a mini-denial, though I know it is coming, and now just days away.

Well, one big thing is, we've needed a new bed for quite a few years; my parents have given us their guest bedroom bed, which is a queen size, bigger than our old double bed. You'll see part of the gorgeous headboard my dad made for it, with some intarsia woodwork roses in the middle of it, farther down my post. This gift cheered me IMMENSELY, although of course the panic didn't take more than a few days to settle back in again, lol. But I know this is what I'm supposed to do, though it be possibly the hardest decision I've ever made. My left leg still hurts so much at times, depending on what I'm doing.

Well, a big, soft, blue hug, with excellent GEEK credentials, arrived in the mail on Friday. It's big, it's blue, and emblazoned across the front of this big, blue, soft Snuggie, is the word EVERQUEST in gold. This excellent gift is from my good friends Jen and her husband Bill, who live back east, whom I met through her blog, and whom we've played many an hour of Everquest II with.

Thanks to Dinah, of Shrink Rap, who was good to her word of earlier in the year and sent the excess snow they were receiving in her area, back our way, because we need it in our mountains, we have been having a string of spring snow storms, even on Easter! Despite the last few days of temperatures in the 60's, the nights still get nippy and we even can get a frost until as late as May 13th, so the Snuggie will definitely get good use in the evenings, and even the colder days, through the beginning of June.

I was definitely pleasantly surprised to see a package in the mail from Jen & Bill, and eagerly opened it up. When I realized it was the equivalent of a virtual hug sent cross-country, it meant just that much more, because it's the next best thing to being here that they could do. Plus, I get to show my geek-hood to all the world, like this, as modeled by me in a not-so-flattering photo in bed (it'll most often be used in a living room chair, I just wanted a quick photo taken):

On another note, I can't discuss what I'd like to about my psychiatrist. I just don't want parents and parents-in-law to be a part of the audience for what I want to discuss, which means I can't blog it. One thing I CAN say is she has all the empathy of a brick. And yet . . . well, I'll have to leave it there. I am frustrated by not being able to say what I want to say. It's just, I'm picky about who I want to know what information about various information about various aspects of my life, when it comes to the people IN my life, locally, so since I know of 1 sister, 1 sister-in-law, 1 mother, and 1 mother-in-law, who occasionally read the blog, that intersects with certain things sometimes and limits me. I just want the control, is all. I long for a place where I don't have restrictions like that, but if I want to have the control in my personal life, then I've got to live with the restrictions on what I put here. Also, there are some kinds of things I know some people will be understanding of, and some things I know they definitely wouldn't.

Anyway, I need to get about filling out the extensive online surgery registration stuff, I already did two different phone calls w/ nurses Friday and Thursday, one about my medications, and one about other stuff. Also, we're on top of trying to get the rest of the deductible, what bill we will have, since the hospital was the first claim processed last time (though since I left a day early, I hope staying the full time doesn't change it still being the first claim processed this time . . .) . . . we already are applying for their financial consideration department, which is going to try to see if I can get on Medicaid. The last time I checked on that, was around 2003, and it seemed like we SHOULD qualify, especially if I'm getting SSI, if I'm disabled (declared so by a judge) and poor enough to qualify for SSI . . . the SSI people keep insisting whenever I have to go in to update the paperwork that I MUST be at a level that qualifies for Medicaid, but I just keep remembering the last time we tried, where it was so close but no cigar . . . . where it seemed like we SHOULD qualify but it didn't. So let's cross our fingers. If I qualify, it'll go back retroactive 90 days, and cover most of the outpatient physical therapy I've had, and, um, I'm not sure if it covers medications, but if it does, there's roughly $900 of medications in that time period . . . Now, not all the physical therapy was paid for, but $800 was, from the tax return. That place would likely, instead of refunding it, if Medicaid paid my claims, take the portion of the $800 that hadn't already been applied to my husband's physical therapy and apply it to the rest of his (in the mid-$400's is the balance) before refunding the rest to me. Now, that's probably not quite right for them to do, but when I gave them the $800, I didn't specify who it was to be paid on anyway, and I think they split it between our accounts anyway (which I didn't realize were being treated separate but of course it makes sense they are; I just assumed it'd go to an overall balance). In the end, if I get any money back from them, IF I get on Medicaid and it pays the physical therapy for ME, I'll be happy, even if they pay off my husband's balance first. That'd be one less medical bill anyway.

I'd also get a bit over $200 back from the psychiatrist, although I'm not sure my psychologist would refund any; I think he just basically applied money paid to the outstanding balance, and not towards the specific appointments this year that, in my head, I was paying for, but I knew at the time that's how it was kinda going down and I was fine with that. I haven't been paying him recently, since I haven't had the money, so if I DID get on Medicaid those would be paid, but no money back; used some of the tax return to pay him earlier in the year.

The tax return basically went for medications, physical therapy, mental health therapy, the initial psychiatrist appoint, $100 to car repairs, and a couple other medical things. It was GONE, and FAST. Another $255 of those car repairs was a quarterly bonus, even.

Off to fill out online registration. Wish I could get a hair cut tomorrow, even a fairly drastic one! To make hair care much much simpler post surgery, but we are flat broke. Good thing I won't be at home this week, eatin' up food.

Thanks again to my friends! Thanks to my mother-in-law, for a 1.5" memory foam queen size topper for the bed, and a set of sheets, as the bed is a leetle bit hard, heh. It's in great shape, though!

The Little Chocolatiers & Say Yes to The Dress (2 TLC Shows)

noreply@blogger.com (Sarebear) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:43:00 +0000

Well, I'm liking TLC these days . . . . . . .

Tonight, The Little Chocolatiers premiered, and I didn't know they were RIGHT HERE in Salt Lake! Hatch Chocolates! Woo Hoo, they sure look like awesome chocolates . . . .

Aw, wait, I've got GERDs, chocolate is one of the foods that causes more acid, but I've learned in recent days, when I'm more well managed, I can indulge occasionally, as long as I spread out such things. Or, when it comes to chocolates, just a few.

I had my first pineapple in 4 or 5 MONTHS, about 1/3 cup pineapple chunks yesterday and I was in heaven, and I slept fine, it was even with dinner, late in the day.

Now, having a small amount of mandarin oranges tonight, was pushing it. Doing it on back to back days, the citrus.

But OH, man was that pineapple so GOOD!

Anyway, back to the chocolate, and the Chocolatiers . . . . mmm. Moderation, baby. I'll have to stop by there sometime, but I bet it gets popular as all get-out, now.

And OH, what they did on the first episode!!! And the kind of man you could tell that the professor was, that he would inspire that kind of desire of giving back in his students . . . you could just tell. Especially how he reacted, and then what he said, and did . . . hee.

It was so NEAT seeing Salt Lake on the screen, as they showed city scenes, I was like Yippee, that's us, we live right over that ridge, kinda, or Yep, been down that way alot, fun to see it on TV . . . and the thing about the Jello, I was laughing. It's true, though. Ha.

And I laughed when he said he still wouldn't be on time . . . don't know if he or his wife are LDS or not, but I thought instantly of the Mormon Standard Time, which is kind of a joke about being late, among some Mormons. With his last name, even if he's not LDS, he'd be familiar enough with the culture around here that he's probably familiar with that cultural joke . . . I suspect a family connection somewhere, if by a cousin or who knows what, to Senator Hatch. He just LOOKS like he's related, in the eyebrows. He just does. He may not be, but that's what struck us when we saw him.

In the second episode, we just could NOT believe our ears at someone's complete . . . well . . . . geez. Some people.

On another note, there's also a show called Say Yes to the Dress, which is set at Kleinfeld's, a bridal salon in New York City, famous for having a huge selection of fashionable bridal gowns. The brides come in to supposedly 90 minute appointments with a particular consultant, to try on dresses, trying to find "THE" gown for them. They usually show some of the drama that goes on down in the fittings/alterations department as well, when brides come back often up to a year later, when it's closer to the wedding, for adjustments and such as the wedding draws near. Anyway, it's an interesting show, really.

I've decided, to help distract me from the stress of the upcoming surgery, to post photos, of one dress per day, of the dresses I tried on way back when I was about to get married; my soon to be husband took them, as I had no one else to take me, so superstitions were out the window - also, my parents were out of the country at the time, on a service mission for my church, teaching in a school in Tonga, so I wanted to be able to send my mom pictures, so she could feel at least a little bit connected to the process . . . .

So, as soon as I can FIND the photos, I'll post a dress a day, and you can vote for which one you think I chose, or how likely it was or wasn't to be the one, and comment on it (not my figure, heh), since some of them are likely to be more ridiculous than others (at least in my memory, at the moment, I seem to remember some awfully big ruffles on at least one of them . . . . was it the one I wore?? It was going on 15 years ago . . . . hee).

Unlike Say Yes to the Dress, all mine have something they seem to not have heard of: SLEEEEEEVVVEEEES. Heh. We are much more modest around here, lol.

So get ready for some bridal flashbacks, if I can FIND the photos!!! Family or anyone who was at the wedding (and reads this blog, which is pretty much just family), can't vote, or give away which one, but non-giving away comments on the dress are fine!

In a recent episode, a bride who's culture and parentage is from India, recently chose a dress that could be ordered in RED; it was tried on in white, but in their culture, RED is for weddings, and some designers have some dresses available to be made/ordered in red or other colors, for just such reasons as cultural differences or personal preference; I can't wait to see if or when they show her coming back for her fitting, to see what the dress looks like on, in the red! I bet she'll be stunning!