Better or Worse?

So thanks to our State of Ohio social safety net of welfare I was able to get an eye exam.  I picked the doctor out of the provider directory because he had the same name as Deep Purple's bass player back in the Seventies and the office was close by.  When you look through this machine they flip different lense combinations back and forth and ask "Better or worse?"  until it gets so close you can hardly tell the difference.  It makes me think of all the political ads that are infesting TV lately.  Better or worse?  A thief or a creep?  A Commie or a Nazi?    I want more choices, or even a "None of the above" selection.

They put drops in the eyes to dilate the pupils so they can look inside.  It makes you very light-sensitive so they give you a little sunglass panel to help shield the peepers.  It takes a long while for the dilation to wear off and it was a beautiful sunny day.  Women used to do the same thing with belladonna (deadly nightshade) so their eyes would be big, dark, and beautiful.  I'm not sure if they used the same stuff on me or not.

By the way, a couple of days later I also got a colonoscopy but I left my camera in my pants in the locker, plus I was narcotized/sedated, so no pics.  But they tell me it was something like this.  Except they didn't find any gerbil adventures, nor polyps neither, just a bit of diverticulosis.  That's right, I got me some pouchy chitlins.  I need less stress, more fiber.

Health Care At Last!

So we're finally broke enough to get welfare.  I've had zero medical care since corporate America chewed me up and shat me out about three years ago.  I've had zero infectious disease since I've not been cooped up in an office breathing other people's air, touching other people's keyboards, or sharing cells in a call center.  But now we're covered and we're catching up on those over-fifty type things we're supposed to worry about.  Dig that generationally appropriate Bugs Bunny bandaid I'm sporting.  Nobody ever messed with Bugs without paying a heavy price.  Mel Blanc, one of the most under-rated actors ever.  Anyway, they gave me a tetanus shot and threw in an adult pertussis booster, since we have baby Logan in the house.  My arm swelled up like Popeye and I felt kinda crappy for a couple of days.  I did it for little Peewee!

Speak of the devil!  That child loves to be nakey.  I don't know where she gets it ;-)  Logan recently had her 3-month checkup, can you believe it?  Her growth is in the 80th percentile for girls her age.  She's doing great, learning to coo and starting to roll over, switched to soy formula and gulping it 6 ounces at a pop.  We'll do a feature on Logan and relatives again soon.

This is the view of Clifton from the window of Good Samaritan hospital where Marcy had her colonoscopy.  They snipped out one polyp and the biopsy came back OK.  She also had a mammogram at Mercy Mt. Airy.  They had some concern about one of the images so they called her back for a retake.  After a closer look they decided it was granular tissue, not to worry.  Marcy goes back to her doctor later this month for a followup.

OK, back to yours truly.  My blood pressure had been reading pretty high at those machines in Kroger and the doctor verified that.  They did an electrocardiogram in the office and showed me a big spike on one of the charts that was about twice as big as they like to see.  They said it was a sign of left ventricular hypertrophy, basically an enlargement of part of my heart from pumping against that untreated high blood pressure all this time.  To determine the extent of the enlargement, they sent me to Mercy Fairfield for an echocardiogram of my heart.  I had seen sonograms of Logan in utero, and this was pretty much the same.  They even have a doppler funtion that can shade different directions of blood flow red and blue to make sure the valves are working properly.  Really neat.  I guess I'll get the results when I go back to my doc later this month.  By the way, my doc prescribed lisinopril for the high blood pressure, and it seems to be working well.  The Kroger machine recently said about 104/74, the lowest reading I can remember in my life!

After the echocardiogram I figured I had fasted long enough so I stopped back in the doctor's office to have blood drawn for my lipid profile.  From my own past tests and current family conditions I expected my cholesterol and/or triglycerides to read high.  I've even been trying to write a song, "My Cholesterol Is Higher Than My Credit Score," but my doc called and said it was fine.  Must be from eating lots of olive oil, avocados, nuts, whole grains, and sushi.  I still need to get the numbers when I go back so I can compare to my credit score, just for kicks.  I also have appointments scheduled for an eye exam and my own colonoscopy - I can't wait!  I'll keep you posted.

Wait, there's a monkey...

...I stand corrected.  In the "About Me" section of this blog I used to say "Uninsured" but no more, as evidenced by my insurance card pictured above.  We are still waiting for Marcy's insurance card but she does have her monthly Medicaid card with no spend-down.  I actually had to schedule a state hearing against Hamilton County Job & Family Services (well, their call center agent practically dared me to do it) to get the answers we wanted.  After I had the state hearing scheduled, Mr. K of HCJ&FS (but based at University Hospital, how about that?) called and said "Why'd you have to go and do that?  You got your approval and I did you a favor by backdating coverage to Marcy's hospital stay last October."  I said "I received the first approval letter back in April and after I selected her insurance carrier, somebody cancelled it and nobody will explain why, including the Section Chief Ms. C.G.  who was supposed to call within 48 hours but failed to do so.  Maybe I'll get my answers in the state hearing.  If I get Marcy's insurance card, I'll cancel the hearing."  Besides, Marcy and I have both been paying taxes since we were teenagers and neither of us expects our social services to be based on "favors", but upon need and following the rules.  Well, I got a follow-up call from Mrs. Cottrell of HCJ&FS (also based at University Hospital).  Mr. K must have asked her to talk me down to get him off the hook for the hearing.  At first it seemed that she wanted to brush me off with a short call but I was calmly insistent ("you DO want to listen to me and sort this out and give me some answers, RIGHT?") so she spent about 45 minutes on the phone with me, about half of that time spent by her retracing the story in the computer system.

Yeah, what a tangled web we weave.  Mrs. C told me a lot of technical details and rules about income levels and time periods and stays in hospital vs. nursing home vs. home that a case worker would use to make coverage decisions and I have to take her word for that.  But here is my viewpoint:  After we closed our business at the end of July 2009 I had to watch Marcy's health spiral downward because she refused to seek medical care that we could not pay for.  I applied to HCJ&FS for assistance.  Shortly after that she collapsed and had to be taken to University Hospital for a week in intensive care.  I visited the financial assistance office there and they insisted on filing an additional application for assistance with HCJ&FS, knowing that I had already done so, claiming thay had some kind of inside track on getting us help.  Marcy was then transferred to Veranda Gardens nursing home to build her strength and continue treatment for an infection she got in the hospital.  Veranda Gardens financial office also insisted that the had some kind of inside track on getting us help and filed a THIRD application to HCJ&FS, knowing that I had already done so, as well as the hospital's action.  Mrs. C commented that ideally these 3 cases all should have been assigned to just one case worker, but they were not.  Apparently, the applications filed by University Hospital and Veranda Gardens were both approved and those two institutions were taken care of, and to my limited understanding we were never informed until now.  I thought the case workers and the system were working on OUR behalf, silly me.  We filed bankruptcy thinking we owed over $100,000 in medical bills.  It may not have been necessary.  Mrs. C said "These decisions do take some time.  Maybe you can go back to your lawyer and have the bankruptcy court do it over."  I guess I could run it by him but I have zero expectation of success.  I did thank Mrs. C profusely for listening to me and for digging into the case history as she did.  She has a few loose ends she said she is going to look into and follow up with me, and she suggested that I contact the Medicaid-related insurance carrier to verify Marcy's enrollment.  I did that very thing and expect delivery of her insurance card this week.  I called and cancelled the state hearing but I expect to speak with Mrs. C again.  I still don't understand why we got a letter back in April telling us to pick an insurance carrier and then after we di it, coverage was denied.  But our schedule is now filling up with doctor visits, mammograms, colonoscopies, dental exams, eye exams, dermatologist referrals, all the things that us over-50 people have to take care of.

...And Back Again

One advantage of not running your home's central air conditioning is that you get to connect with the big world right outside your house.  I heard the "scree-EEE" of the hawks and ran outside with the camera to squint teary eyed up into the bright sky to find these two spiraling upward on the day's first thermal updraft, probably from the pavement of our cul-de-sac.  I think hawks are my spirit animals - I keep having encounters like Blood On The Snow and Raptor Synchronicity.  But these two are the top of the food chain around here and are the terror of the neighborhood.  You can hear the bluejays squawking their alert all the time.  And I just realized that I haven't seen a lot of rabbits lately.  There has been a lot a varied air traffic lately - different helicopters, some circling an area repeatedly, small single-prop planes, and one weird one that looked like a combination hang glider, dragster, and space shuttle.

We babysat for grand-daughter Logan quite a bit this week.  I just love that baby!  8 Weeks old Friday.  Feast your eyes.

There is nothing like a cute baby to get everyone in a positive attitude.  At our last visit to Job & Family Services. I went in with Sarina to help get our various applications for assistance sorted out for all of us under one roof.  We met with a very good case worker (bless you, Ms. C) who was able to get things on the right track and she asked for Dylan to come to her office as well.  They worked on the application while I stood and did The Loving Grandpa role (what a stretch, eh?).  The mood seemed so positive that I thanked her profusely and asked if she could look at Marcy's case while we were there.

Back in April we had received a letter from J&FS that said she had been approved for Medicaid for the Aged, Blind, or Disabled, and to call and enroll with an insurance carrier.  I did that right away and then The System acted as if we had never gotten approval and never enrolled.  No call center agent or case worker would acknowledge that we had been ever approved or why we were now denied.  I would ask them to please explain the approval letter that I clutched in my paw and all they would tell me was the scripted response.  I began to suspect that they were trying to provoke me into losing my cool so they could close the case permanently.  I felt like a character in a Kafka novel one of those sci-fi movies with memory implant/erase like Total Recall.

She makes me laugh.

I must have somehow communicated my exasperation to one agent who stated that she was emailing the Section Chief and she is allowed by law to take up to 48 hours to contact us. She never called.  I gave them one more "courtesy" call and said I wanted to give them one more chance to do their jobs without the State policing everything.  Um, maybe not the most diplomatic thing to say but I said it politely, really in kind of a friendly "just between us folks" way.  Needless to say, I ended up calling the State to get a hearing scheduled.  But then...

The antidote to a toxic world!

...that's when I went with Sarina for her application just in case they needed info about our domestic situation.  Case Worker "C." looked at the records, verified that my unemployment had run out, and assured me that I was not crazy: Marcy really had been approved for Medicaid back in April.  And with the new domestic and financial status we were approved for everything. Everybody in the family, all 3 generations, will get medical coverage, food stamps, and cash assistance.  Marcy and I both worked non-stop since our teens paying for these kinds of services, now we need them and use them, gratefully.  Thank you!  But I'll probably wait until I get the insurance card in my hand before I cancel that State hearing...

I don't know the meaning of the word "No."

Grandpa let Logan taste a mashed up banana for the first time last night.  She seemed to like the taste but her mouth has to learn a non-nursing swallow.

Lips like Cupid

Love that chin...

You want some of these "guns" fool?

Grandpa's wearing me out teaching me how to roll over.

I sincerely believe in my Grandpa heart that molds of this beautiful child's face put on dolls would sell millions.

Last night Grandpa carried Logan outside and pointed up at a moving light in the sky and said, "Look baby, what's that light?  It's the Space Station!  There are people up there riding in it and looking down at us.  Wave hi!"  Then he said, "You gotta get used to grandpa - he might run you outside any old time, pointing at the sky or the ground and lecturing."  In the distance we could hear the marching band play at the Mt. Healthy football game  The International Space Station, with all solar panels and such extended, is about the size of a foot ball field.  We see them as a dot of light - do they see the lights of Mt. Healthy Stadium at all?