We are so excited! This is the house we will be moving in to in about a month. It's our dream house!
September 24, 2009
September 19, 2009
September 16, 2009
CIGNA sucks!
Luckily my stomach pain has improved and we are thinking I must have a torn muscle wall. We also figured out what the bleeding was. Nothing too serious. But with my constant stomach ailments and family history of intestinal problems my doctor thought it was best if I have a CT scan first before possibly having a colonoscopy. A CT scan is less invasive and can see things that might be going on other than in the intestines such as my liver, gallbladder etc. CIGNA did not agree and would not approve my CT scan. CIGNA is making me hate them EVEN MORE than I did before.
I don't want to sound ungrateful. I am happy I have insurance. I know not everybody does and things could be worse but the whole insurance propaganda bullshit is starting to get to me.
Here is an interesting article:
LIVING WITH CANCER, DYING WITH
INSURANCE.
A very long month ago, I woke up in my sunny Brooklyn apartment with this thought: I am going to die. The next thought was no less comforting: I am dying.
I am turning thirty in a few days, but i have had cancer for ten years. I went for my regular test at Sloan-Kettering a month ago, and I thought to myself over and over before submitting to the general anesthesia, "All I want for my 30th birthday is a clean scan. Good news, good news, good new--" and that's where I stop remembering. When I came to, four hours later, some part of my brain was still repeating "Good news good news good news." But I was wrong.
I found out that I have to start chemotherapy again. I remember 2001, having a biopsy of a large tumor in my hip joint on my birthday. I remember singing a dirge-like "Happy Birthday" under my breath to myself, alone with the doctors, shaking uncontrollably from the medication coursing through my veins in that freezing cold operating room.
But it was not having cancer for a decade, not finding out I had more cancer after already dealing with cancer every day, that made me think I was dying.
I was wondering how to pay Oxford.
A month ago, I did not know what would happen if I lost my medical insurance. Maintaining it seemed so necessary, it had such a stranglehold on my life, that it was and is all that I think about. My coverage was running out fast. Without it, and with my bank account already drained from a year and a half of COBRA payments, I thought the only possible resolution to my situation was that I would slip through the cracks, and I would die. Now, I was looking at an individual insurance policy on the open market and finding it would cost $2,600 a month. Now, I was talking to a social worker who told me I would have to move into a shelter to qualify for Medicaid.
And now, I was talking to a woman in Arkansas on the phone, whom I called as part of a phone bank to urge her to call her senator, Blanche Lincoln, and ask her to support a public opinion. Now I listened as she told me that she "did not believe in anything Obama stood for "and that the answer to my predicament was not the government insuring it's citizens, treating health care as a UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT, but instead that God would help me.
I don't exactly know why I can live and thrive with cancer, but am reduced to such unadulterated fear when it comes to maintaining my insurance coverage. Having cancer? I've been brave and strong and fierce. Losing the only way to maintain my fleeting health? I can't face it. I'm reading this blog, reading about people who have died because they do not have insurance, who have died trying. Will I be one of them?
I don't want to sound ungrateful. I am happy I have insurance. I know not everybody does and things could be worse but the whole insurance propaganda bullshit is starting to get to me.
Here is an interesting article:
LIVING WITH CANCER, DYING WITH
INSURANCE.
A very long month ago, I woke up in my sunny Brooklyn apartment with this thought: I am going to die. The next thought was no less comforting: I am dying.I am turning thirty in a few days, but i have had cancer for ten years. I went for my regular test at Sloan-Kettering a month ago, and I thought to myself over and over before submitting to the general anesthesia, "All I want for my 30th birthday is a clean scan. Good news, good news, good new--" and that's where I stop remembering. When I came to, four hours later, some part of my brain was still repeating "Good news good news good news." But I was wrong.
I found out that I have to start chemotherapy again. I remember 2001, having a biopsy of a large tumor in my hip joint on my birthday. I remember singing a dirge-like "Happy Birthday" under my breath to myself, alone with the doctors, shaking uncontrollably from the medication coursing through my veins in that freezing cold operating room.
But it was not having cancer for a decade, not finding out I had more cancer after already dealing with cancer every day, that made me think I was dying.
I was wondering how to pay Oxford.
A month ago, I did not know what would happen if I lost my medical insurance. Maintaining it seemed so necessary, it had such a stranglehold on my life, that it was and is all that I think about. My coverage was running out fast. Without it, and with my bank account already drained from a year and a half of COBRA payments, I thought the only possible resolution to my situation was that I would slip through the cracks, and I would die. Now, I was looking at an individual insurance policy on the open market and finding it would cost $2,600 a month. Now, I was talking to a social worker who told me I would have to move into a shelter to qualify for Medicaid.
And now, I was talking to a woman in Arkansas on the phone, whom I called as part of a phone bank to urge her to call her senator, Blanche Lincoln, and ask her to support a public opinion. Now I listened as she told me that she "did not believe in anything Obama stood for "and that the answer to my predicament was not the government insuring it's citizens, treating health care as a UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT, but instead that God would help me.
I don't exactly know why I can live and thrive with cancer, but am reduced to such unadulterated fear when it comes to maintaining my insurance coverage. Having cancer? I've been brave and strong and fierce. Losing the only way to maintain my fleeting health? I can't face it. I'm reading this blog, reading about people who have died because they do not have insurance, who have died trying. Will I be one of them?
September 9, 2009
Hoping for a hemorrhoid
It's time. Time to face my BIGGEST FEAR ever! I have to have a colonoscopy. I have symptoms that are raising red flags and need further investigation. We need to rule out the bad stuff like colon cancer, rectal cancer, crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome. I've had abdominal pain for a week now and bleeding off and on for a month. Plus other lovely things that go on daily that I won't get in to here. Being abnormal is normal to me.My mother had crohn's disease. She died when she was only 42. I was 19. I spent my entire childhood worrying about her and watching her suffer horribly. I saw her lose weight, vomit uncontrollably, have over 20 surgeries and deal with a colostomy bag. She had tumors and ulcers and was in a coma for 3 days. She went through hell. I went through hell with her. The thought of me ever being sick, terminally ill, terrifies me to tears.
So I must have a colonoscopy whether I want one or not. I am hoping it's just a hemorrhoid that is causing the bleeding. I am hoping it's just irritable bowel causing the pain but I am scared to death that it's more than that. That it's something that will torture me and eventually kill me someday.
I have my consultation appointment with doctor number 2 tomorrow and I think I'll make my colonoscopy appointment then. Sounds like a blast! I can't eat at all the day before. I can only drink water. I will also have to drink something that makes me clean my intestines out and they might give me an additional enema before the procedure. Oh what fun!
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