Surgery seems to have gone well. Pain meds had to be doubled the first two days, then only Tylenol, and since Friday no meds ! 😀
Swelling was horrifying! Fingers looked like Vienna sausages having no wrinkles at all!
Vienna sausage (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Swelling is now gone. 😀
Post-op visit today to remove stitches and get new permanent cast…
I hope I survive two months of this. The temporary one has had me in moments of delirium because of the suffocating feeling and immobility it induces… I find that to be totally ironical having had bouts of agoraphobia over the last few years. LOL!
*ON CASTROPHOBIA: The real term is cast claustrophobia. I was feeling the need to rip the thing off with my teeth on several occasions this past week. Thankfully it went away spontaneously, by the end of the week, when the last of the swelling went down! I hope it really was swelling induced and will not return. 😯
Meanwhile, Bob will continue to do all my chores that require both hands.
BIG CHEERS FOR BOB!
Comments will of course cheerfully accepted, but won’t be responded to. I’m sorry.
If you live here in the states and have had to rely on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) I would truly like to know how you are managing, or if not, how you are faring. If you wanted it, then are you getting what you thought you were getting? I’m not trying to be flip, I just really am interested to know if you are getting the help you need through this program.
~*~*~*~
When Bob’s previous job realized that they were going to have to give up their current coverage due to the insurance changes, they began paying him a bit extra to help defray the cost. It wasn’t enough.
When he was then a victim of downsizing, he was out of work for months. We had to change our ACA coverage to reflect that he had no income other than unemployment wages. This still cost us about $400 a month and incurred a mammoth deductible for each of us. (About $5,400 total).
We got sick. Very sick. Both of us. The bills piled up, we became overwhelmed and had to take money from our retirement savings to help cover costs. Irritatingly, I had a TSA that had matured and was worth almost $25,000.00 at the end of the year, but we had to wait to cash it out because we didn’t want to end up owing back all the subsidy money for the ACA coverage we relied on… By the time I cashed it out in January, it had dropped in value to $18,000.00 due to the stock market crash.
Bob finished the taxes today.
Bob:You don’t want to know how much I am hating Obama care right now.
Me:What? We don’t get anything back?
Bob: I really don’t want to tell you.
Me:We owe some?
Bob:Sigh… We have to pay all of the subsidy back and we don’t get anything from the Federal at all!
Me: How much?!
Bob:$8,000.00!
He explained that in the midst of trying to make ends meet and paying the regular bills and necessities, plus the ACA payments, plus the deductibles, plus the co-pays, plus being out of work and being sick, we managed to make about $1,500.00 too much (remember that was the money we socked away for retirement!) and now they want all the subsidy monies back.
In the past week we have sprung a leak in the roof and need a new roof. The roofer has patched us up and it stopped the rain from running down the stove-pipe, into my cupboards and out onto my stove and counter tops, but the roof needs replacing. $8,600.00. He found hail damage and we are waiting to see if the insurance company will cover the new roof…
Are you keeping count? We need $16,600.00 to pay for it all. There goes the left over from my TSA monies and Bob’s IRA ++++++
After our talk, I felt awful. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. I felt sick to my stomach and just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up. I wouldn’t. After I calmed down some and began to feel better I suddenly flashed on a scene from my favorite movie of all time:
My Man Godfry
It is one of those madcap BW comedies from 1936, staring William Powel and Carole Lombard. If you haven’t seen it you must, and if you do want to see it , well look up the copy from the Criterion Collection (<— link to synopsis, etc) because it has a missing scene that makes the whole thing make sense!!!
Here is the scene I remembered and which gave me a chuckle in spite of it all!
In the meantime I am grateful to God that we are once again in better health. Feeling better makes it easier to take things in stride, although it doesn’t preclude the changes we will need to make over the next year. We are talking it out, and thinking about our options, but we don’t have a definite plan as yet.
Poor Bob has been very sick from all the pollen in the air. Outside everything is covered with a dusty, yellow haze. He has been trying to sleep sitting up for almost a week now, and had to take off work Thursday and Friday. He is taking five prescription medications, and using my old nebulizer to give himself breathing treatments. I saved it for emergencies and have only used it twice since we moved. Glad I did!
It is hell for him, but equally so for me. Last night at dinner I thought I might have to call 911 when he began coughing, wheezing and gasping for air. Eventually, he was able to calm down the spasms, but was still unable to sleep laying down.
He is exhausted and his ribs hurt.
If you are the praying type please think of him today.
Today’s post is lackluster, but I just need to get it out and haven’t the energy to go beyond the facts of the matter.
Bob had been complaining about how tired he was all the time. It has been going on for about a year now. He finally mentioned it to the doctor and told her about is sleep apnea.
The Dr. sent him in for a chest ex ray which was unrevealing. She sent him to a pulmonologist and after testing found that his is suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD. He was told his lungs are only working at 50%. He is now taking three new drugs one of which costs $300.00. He’d been given a coupon from the specialist but forgot to turn it in, so I went back to the pharmacy and they looked into it for us. Glad I took the time to do this too, because he got the drug free of charge!
Apparently, there is no cure for COPD and it gets progressively worse over time. So far the medicines are making him cough more, but not really helping him feel better.
Tonight his is having a sleep study done for the sleep apnea.
I have no words for how I am feeling at the moment. Overwhelmed and sad don’t really seem to cover it.
Life on the Farmlet 