No, this has nothing to do with the Superb Owl, or the President finding his backbone or all of the other things I missed today. It's not even a GBCW diary. It's just that I will most likely be off Kos (oh no!) for the rest of the week and hopefully not much longer than that. You see, today I woke up to find out I was almost totally blind in my left eye. I'd be ok with that if I didn't know what I was facing, but I lost my right retina about 6 years ago, so I know what comes next.
Peel Me an Orange Please
Up to 8 weeks flat on my face while what is left of my retina heals after surgery. Think about that...2 months FLAT on your face, no TV, no books, NO KOS, and you can't lift anything at ALL for at least 2 weeks........I'll wait. Are you breathing again yet? Good. The crux of my problem is not that the sight in that eye will be reduced to b/w, though believe me, that's enough when you're a reader and writer like I am. The simple fact of it being my left eye makes road trips of the future into a fantasy. The bad part is, like a lot of Americans of my era, the tail of the baby boomers i.e. I'm over 50 and not getting younger. Many of us don't have a partner, spouse or whatever to help care for us and those of us that do find that the current work environment doesn't lend itself to having someone take time off to care for someone. Seriously, who can afford it? Family Medical Leave Act you say? Might as well call it what it is, F My Life Act. And if you're not already financially strapped, this will do it to you, guaranteed.
But Medicare/Medicaid provides in home care if it's needed, you say. Right, try getting a doctor to 1) order that for you and 2) fight your insurance company in order to get it for you all because of a little clause.......and it ain't Santa. Insurance clauses don't bring anything for free except High Blood Pressure, Migraines, Phone Ear and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Their little clause says something along these lines: "If there is a reasonable expectation of family members caring for the patient, that route must be thoroughly pursued before any kind of home health care is authorized. And TriCare, the people who "protect" our military families is the same. And so we come to what I like to call:
The Myth of Spousal Support
You can be married and still not be in a supportive relationship. In fact, today when I got up and realized that I was mostly blind in one eye, I had to call all over the place to find a doctor who would come in to see me to see if it was a detachment so that I could be referred (f'ing insurance) to a hospital. My spousal unequivalency could, if he had so chosen, paid attention to what was going on in the house, but he was holed up upstairs with TV and computer. When I got back from the optometrist with the referral, he was leaving, then coming in, then leaving again. He talked to my daughter, who'd heard the news and driven into town and knew what was what, but he left anyway right after the ice storm to "go for a drive". Without saying one word to me, at ALL. So, my son cancelled his date for the night, and has been "paying" for that all day from his gf. I was in the ER for over 5 hours before I heard from the "spousal equivalent" via text, "What's going on?". Take a wild guess as to what time he posted? ~hint 43-8~ Let's see, I'm in an ER, do I have my phone on me? Am I even allowed to have the phone on? No. is the correct answer. So I didn't get the text until nearly 1130pm when they decided to let me go because, in my case, what's done is done and it's all cosmetic from here on in. I've been home 2 hours now and still nothing. Oh he bumped into me on the stairs as I am feeling my way up looking like someone from "Black Sails". "What'd you go to the hospital for?" from the first landing as he went into the kitchen and I know he can't hear. He's been past our door 3 or 4 times since then and nothing. So, I have resigned myself to my kids having to take time out of their schedules and school and work etc. to help me out. I won't demand it of them, don't have to I don't think. I hope I raised them right, but also, I can't expect them to ruin their lives to take care of me. FML truly is how I feel about things right now. I am so tired of this kind of crap in my life. If you're a Seahawks fan, you're to f'd to read this, but I"m sorry if I bummed you out. If not, look at it this way, someone somewhere has it worse than multi-millionaires who play football.
And so it goes........