Fuck cancer.
Also fuck dementia.

Sorry, limey. :(

Sorry Limey.
I just found out its come back to fuck with my Godfather - the sweetest man on earth. Fuck you cancer, you fucking fuck!

Just found out that either,
a) my health insurance was cancelled because I did not re-enroll during the open enrollment period, or
b) my health insurance automatically renewed and I'm all good, or
c) my health insurance was cancelled AND I am not eligible to buy a plan because open enrollment ended, or
d) The New York State of Health website is one of the, if not THE worst, most poorly designed, piece of shit websites.
e) if you told me some politician's nephew or girlfriend wanted to start a web design business and got the job through nepotism I wouldn't be surprised.

For starters there is no way to log in to your account from the home page, nor is there any indication of what link to click to get to a log in page. What you have to do to log into an existing account is click on the link to begin the application process. Of course, why didn't I think of that? You know, just like how every other website in the world has a link to REGISTER but not a link to LOG IN, because why have a LOG IN for existing users?

Now it's more bullshit that I have to deal with on Monday or maybe not or maybe I won't have insurance until next year.

You won't have to wait until next year, open enrollment is when you can change plans or change your coverage. This guarantees the insurance company they've got you for a whole year, and the government that you don't have to pay a penalty for non-coverage, They were trying to prevent the car insurance scam of buying a month of insurance to renew your plates then driving without for eleven months. Worst case, a fine for missing the window.

Caution: That's the way I understand it but I'm not an authority, nor play one on TV... only the internet. ;)

I'm going with (b)

I'm with monster. It automatically renews ... sometimes even when you cancel.

I switched jobs starting in Nov of last year and got a plan through the exchange for the last two months of 2015. I canceled it on 12/31/15 as another plan was much cheapre (relatively speaking) with a different carrier.
So I canceled the one and started the other which I've been paying for. I got a letter about 2 weeks ago that my plan with company A which I canceled, will terminate on 4/30 and oh by the way, you owe us $1800+ in back premiums.
We are still discussing the definition of "terminated"

yay I knew something about insurance! I R all growed up now I had to get my own. which is costing us a fucking bomb. #grrrrr (so I guess that's what's upsetting me. Beest's chemo wiped through our family deductable in the first couple of weeks of the year so everything is free for all.... except that his company dictates that when spouse can get insurance through own job, they must. so I have my own stinking huge deductible. And torn cartilage in my shoulder.

His company doesn't give you the option of paying your portion of his insurance? I've worked for two companies that did that, and group plans cover much more than individual plans. Or is this a group plan through your company?

Not anymore Bruce. They are all trying their damnedest to get everyone onto their ow plan with a nice big fat deductible.

So I spoke with NYS of Health today about my coverage and I spoke with a young woman who had, for want of a better description, an 'inner city' accent which was a combination of soft spoken, a-tonal, and a continuous slur of sounds that vaguely resembled syllables.

Her voice was like the aural equivalent of when someone used a xerox machine to make a copy of a copy and then that was copied and so on until the result was a blurry simulacrum of text.

Her speech was very impressionistic. I found myself sort of lazily following her sounds until she'd ask, "Do you agree?" and then I'd have to ask her to repeat herself. I have had a far easier time understanding Bharati Mukherjee from Dogsbody Customer Service than her. Nonetheless, she was nice and sweet and if I'm not mistaken we were able to renew my coverage based on my best estimation of my earnings so far this year, considering I haven't gotten any 1099s or W2s yet for 2016.


I think I might have caught about 35% of what she said, so I believe I also elected to auto renew for the next five years.*

*Unless anything at all changes in my life, in which case I must tell them and re-apply and re-apply to auto renew.

Glad I did because as the letter clearly stated: "As of 4/30/2016 your insurance coverage was cancelled." Bold mine. I guess they underestimated how quickly the post office would deliver that letter.

The letter says was because they had determined you hadn't jumped through the hoops so you was cancelled. :haha:

I axed the computer an it say nu-huh.

what?

Mum's friend who has leukemia?
He goes into the hospice today. The cancer has reached his brain.

I had hoped I'd at least be able to see him him when I finished my residential stay.

Fuck cancer.

Sorry, Sundae. :(

Damn. Fuck. So sorry.

Bloodyhell, that's rough. Sorry Sundae :(

God that's awful Sundae. My thoughts are with you and your mum.

Probably not much consolation, but he probably prefers that your last memory of him is from a little earlier

That's why I don't go to the coffin at a funeral. I don't want my last memory of someone to be them dead-in-a-box.

:headshake

I was just tipped off by my agent that the book is not selling as well as they had hoped, so far. :( Reviews are universally stellar, interviews are happening on a steady basis, but it doesn't seem to be translating into actual sales. And the way these things go, the less initial sales there are, the less effort they put into more sales down the road.

I don't want anyone to become a shill, and it's super hard even typing this here because I'm very anti-self-promotion, but... if you enjoyed it, and if you know someone else who might enjoy it, it would be really cool if you could tell them about it. Por favor.

Beyoncé's concert at the baseball stadium is generating extra heavy traffic, and the ferry dock is just a couple blocks away. I have no other route options.

Cancer? Torn cartilage? Pfft.


Just. Kidding. Really, just kidding. .
I'm glad I have my problems and none of y'all's.

Thought I did learn that a SHOT of cortisone made my shoulder all better, but only after a couple MRIs. The pain was so omnipresent that I was unable to sleep normally. Just in short periods. Shift, and wince and yelp and wake up, and wake TWIL too. Sux. Cortisone is teh bomb.

Popdigr has been having a shoulder problem for going on a couple years now.

The doc has him on Pennsaid. Popdigr says it's a miracle drug. At $1400 per 3.8 oz of cream, it should be a miracle drug.

Bloody hell. The pennsaid solution (I think under the name diclofenac) is available here at £20 per 60ml. Applied as drops and rubbed into the skin - don't know if the cream is available.

I dunno how this works but it's $40 at Walmart??


eta: or "pay as little as $0"?

The walmart stuff is 1.5% solution, I wonder what the cream is?

What Popdigr uses is diclofenac sodium topical solution, 2% w/w (whatever "w/w" means. He has talked to the Walmart pharmacist, and they either didn't carry it, period, or they didn't have the generic, or the brand name or something.

Thanks guys, I'll pass all this along to Popdigr.




I should probably add that Popdigr's doc has been giving him this stuff as samples. He said "When ya run out, just come back for another sample."

w/w = weight per weight

Thx.:)

Ugh. I never want to attend another conference in my life.

It's exactly like I thought it would be. Just crowds and crowds of self-promoters, everyone having big-smile conversations to promote their thing, and not realizing that the people they're talking to don't give a damn and are just waiting for their turn to promote their thing.

One of the women on the panel I was on was an "energy practitioner" who had "healed" her daughter in three years after her "regression"--which covered ages 12 to 15. Basically the kid went through puberty and she was desperate to take credit for it. An audience member asked about tips for cooking in bulk, and this woman's mic-grabbing answer was "bring your child to my 'clinic' so I can help him achieve energy balance." Bitch, what? Stay on topic!

I find myself mentioning again and again that my kids were diagnosed by actual professionals at ages 2.5 and 15 months, respectively, because I'm sorry but if your kid wasn't diagnosed until 11 his problems aren't that damn big, and you are the reason everyone thinks this diagnosis is no big deal.

So okay, the vendors suck, but I thought at least I'd get to sneak into some good presentations when I wasn't at the table--except this year they've separated out 90% of the medical talks into CME-only presentations (i.e., you have to be a physician to get in,) and the talks the doctors are giving to the general public are super-generic overview stuff, none of the detailed stuff you have to have taken chemistry to understand. Which makes sense, because half the people here are absolute idiots, like the audience member who highjacked 20 minutes of our presentation to "ask a question" that wasn't a question at all, it was an entire developmental history of her suicidal, daily-vomiting teen who had been institutionalized several times with significant mental health issues (none of which were autism,) and she tried to play us a video on her phone into the microphone so we could hear her daughter begging to die, except it wouldn't load, and she was crying, and finally she let the panelists respond, the unanimous advice we gave being "go see a damn therapist yourself, woman, you are obviously fucked in the head."

Oh, but at least I've sold books! Well, I sold 6, which is all I have. The rest of the boxes are missing. FedEx has a signature for their delivery, the warehouse swears they were then delivered here to the conference building, and after that... no one knows. If the boxes are not found tomorrow, I am not only unable to sell them, I am out $400ish since I won't have anything to send back to the publisher.

But hey, I've given away lots of promotional bookmarks! And now I've been invited to dinner with more self-promoters who want to pretend we're friends so I'll take their bookmarks. Guh. Never, ever again.

Kind of sounds like when you were first starting on this journey, where everyone had THE answer before they knew what the question was. Pity the people who are dazed and confused by the hucksters and promoters. How do they know where the truth will come from, or how to recognize it when the hear it? :(

Wow. I hate conferences too but it's because I'm an introvert.

It's okay. Turns out I was mostly just hangry.

I've had dinner now, my companions were nice and only very minimally promotional, and now that everything's closed up for the night one of the conference organizers is going to let me into the secret warehouse-delivery room that only conference organizers get to go in. They have sworn up and down my boxes are not in there, but have yet to let me inside to check for myself, and this guy has decided I'm trustworthy enough. So with any luck my boxes will be in there after all. (Right where they were supposed to be the whole time, but that's a different rant.)

Deep breaths and fingers crossed and maybe some booze from the hotel bar afterwards.

I don't know why, but, that struck me as very funny.

Go have have a Snickers.

Been to a couple TBI conferences that were similar. avoid them - make yourself an official looking badge, wear it and go into the CME's - no one "really cares" who attends which event. Mumble mumble Dr. Clod here ... TBI, DAI & BFT mumble mumble...

Anon, the CME criteria are to keep out those just hawking their wares. You too found those people to be intolerably irritating (to borrow a phrase). The medical community; however, always has exceptions to policy for those who warrant them. You just need a sponsor, a physician who will send you as their representative since they don't have time to attend every conference of interest.

Consider asking your children's doctor to sponsor your attendance at no cost to their practice. Do it formally, in writing, assuring him/her that you'd audit the CME presentations for updates relevant to the doctor's practice, examples of developments you can direct other parents to physicians for during the course of your book interviews, and information that may put your experiences into more broadly appealing context to promote"awareness" (thanks, UT) in possible future revisions of your book.

NOTE: ALWAYS keep such requests in the context of advancing the mission, in this case dissemination of information for medical professionals, not about you and your personal interests except as an aside. END NOTE.

Assure your potential sponsor that you won't use the CME conference as a sales platform, soapbox for your opinions; or, critiquing other's work.

Assure your potential sponsor that you will do all the leg work insofar as the attendee application and registration fee so all the doctor's practice has to do is sign it, fax it; or, click on submit.

If it's your children's doctor, it wouldn't hurt to give the doc a complimentary copy of your book, with a personal inscription of appreciation, well in advance of any request for sponsorship to establish yourself as a public interface on the subject; but, not have it seen as a bribe.

I've been granted multiple exceptions to policy, including from the American College of Surgeons to attend Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) which is used to qualify physicians (prerequisite) to work in emergency rooms. I didn't just audit it, I tested and passed to physician standards. The exception to policy was granted to those like me (military spec. ops.) because we'd be doing trauma management in places where physicians couldn't go. The key to obtaining such exceptions is to present yourself as a generic physician extender (not to be confused with a PA) in areas where physicians can use a bridge (in your case public awareness) to their advantage. It does require persistence and decorum.

Good luck.

Excellent advice, sexo!


Sent by thought transference

That's why he's so successful at stirring shit, he knows what he's talking about. :haha:

Attempted kidnapping at the end of my street. Not a custody situation, a "Two men luring 10-year-old girls into their van" situation. The girls were smart enough to run away, thank God. No fucking way my kids would have.

argh!

Did they catch the guys?

Nope. They know it was a silver van, and they've jacked up police presence in the neighborhood, so I'm sure the fuckers will move on to prowling a different subdivision. This isn't even the first instance since we've lived here--a guy (different? same? who knows) tried to get a kid into a car with him about 4-5 years ago, right outside the school. I don't know if it's because it's a nice neighborhood where the kids are outside a fair amount, or because everyone's close enough that word spreads quickly among the neighbors, but Jesus. It's not a fun time to be a registered sex offender living within a 10-mile radius of this place right now, that's for sure. I bet every one of them is getting checked in on every day.

That's terrifying to think about.

I may post more about this later...but, just want to say something.

Mu brother's family dog (all of us family especially my dad) had to be put to sleep today. We all spent the afternoon with him yesterday. We are all devastated. And not just us, the extensive community of brother and sister in law and nieces' friends all loved him too.

He was a big sweet smart golden retriever. He was a therapy dog and would go to nursing homes and there would be a circle of wheelchairs around him. He just wanted to love and be loved.

Im so sad about so many things. RIP Jack, you were the dog of dogs...the best ever.

I'm so sorry Infi. But glad for you that you had him in your life for the time that you did.

Man, that is the suck.

It's hell losing a pet.

It's so hard to make that decision. He sounds like a wonderful pet who was able to share his gift of love where it was needed. X

sent by thought transference

Sorry Im

Very sad, I am really am sorry for you.

Damn. So sorry Infi.

bummage

Ugghh... Sorry Infi. I still remember losing my Golden. He was awesome too. They really are a special breed.

Thanks all.

Over the course of the years I've lost pets, other members of my family have lost pets. And it's always so very sad. You know going in that you will have to face it someday, but still...

But Jack, I gotta tell you about him. He was the dog of my brother and sis-in-law and their three girls. But he was all our dog. More than any other dog-relation he was at our family events. It would have been unheard of if he didn't come to Christmas when my mom was still here and we spent the day at their house. He was there with us every Sunday for dinner. Recently, my dad would go pick him up from my brother's house just to take him to the land he owns with the lakes, so Jack could swim. He loved to swim. Just jumped right into the deep parts and paddled around, happy as could be. I am trying to get ahold of a copy of a picture my brother took of him coming out of the water with a big stick in his mouth. It's a really good picture.

Every year at Halloween my brother has a big barn party. It's the party of the year. THeir friends, parents of friends, kids of friends...it really is a big community. I always got a kick out of Jack greeting the guests. They'd all be "hey Jack, how ya doin'" and he would say hi in his doggie way and then greet the next guests. You'd see him throughout the night just hanging out with people. He was part of it all.

Never had to leash him. He knew where he was allowed to go and where he wasn't. You could leave him outside and not worry for a second that he would wander off into danger.

I can't say enough about how much he was loved, and how much he deserved it. I feel so badly for everyone. My nieces are ages 11-16, and he was 10 years old, so they basically grew up with him.

I thank you all for understanding how hard it is to lose a pet like that.

Beest's GP/family doctor -now also a co-swim/polo parent and friend, is suddenly undergoing major brain surgery for a large mass that looks like cancer. To a certain extent I'm kind of numb to such horrible news having received so much of it recently and needing to carry on -which is upsetting in itself- but in reality, it's just taking a long time to sink in. And now it is doing, I'm pretty upset :(

That is crapulent.

And in other shitty news, I went over to my hunting mentor's house with the powder horn to find out he was on his way to get a pacemaker installed in preparation for heart surgery two or three days later.

I have to check on him and see how things went.

Sorry to hear about shit piled on top of shit, monster. :(

fucking hell.

gah.

speechless.

What happened V?

I think maybe he's referring to Monster's news. Or Feet's. Or both. Maybe.

:/ still fucking waiting on news of today's procedure... (cut off supply to mass in prep for tomorrow's zillion hour removal....) I kinda figure no news is good news.... that's my public stance.... but really I feel that only applies to life vs death...... IMO the order you hear news is dead, perfect, minor comps, major comps.... So I hope/guess she made it, but there was a stroke risk among others with today's procedure ..... :( wibble

I'm sorry monster. I hope it will be good news.