they aint easy to write

And I really, really hate these people. I know that’s not “nice,” but they have absolutely no clue about the people and situations they are passing judgement on. I’m thinking about rewriting the above and posting it on every wingnut forum that is discussing this issue, complete with the challenge. I’m thinking a good subject line would be “Taste of Reality.” I’m also thinking, though, that it would be a waste of time. Because they’ll never get it. Until, as I said, it happens to THEM.

And after I get through this (and Jeebus, it CAN’T last forever! Right? Jeebus? You there?) I hope I don’t turn into one of those “I did it, so you just suck it up!” types. I can’t imagine not being able to at least *sympathize* with someone who’s dealing with anything like this. But then again, I’m not a Malkinoid.

Moxie, gradual school is bad enough as it is, but having this stress on top of it is truly worse than a nightmare. I don’t know what else to say.

I don’t understand this attack on Michelle’s comment section. In the Al Gore-Nobel Prize post, the commenters were simultaneously debunking Global Warming and Evolution with one brain tied behind their backs. It was the most breathtaking display of rhetorical brilliance in the history of blog comments. Sheesh, you guys are just jealous.

Given that brain is in short supply in that fetid swamp, I daresay you’re referring to the lot of them sharing a single organ. Okay, two at most.

To start, let’s assume that your mother suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for 40+ years (I can hear that wingnut tittering already!). Let’s further assume that one fine January morning three years ago her heart failed. Your father elects to keep her heart going with medication, something you’re not happy about but about which you can do nothing (under Texas law, anyway). Let’s also assume that she then has a stroke, placing her in what one of her doctors refers to as “a vegetative state.” But your father is adamant about “keeping her going,” presumably because he can’t stand the thought of being 70 years old and alone. Let’s also assume that she ends up completely bedridden, with a tracheostomy tube (rendering her unable to talk), a feeding tube, and two urinary catheters.

Let’s say that after spending $5000 dollars to renovate his (rather modest) dwelling to accommodate her, your father brings her home. Since she requires round-the-clock care to make sure she doesn’t choke to death (she requires periodic cleaning of the canula in the trache tube), you decide to get nursing help.

Go ahead, wingnuts. Call a nursing service and see what “skilled” nursing help costs. I dare you.

Let’s say that since Medicare will not pay for that, and since it is beyond the financial reach of most anyone outside the Trump tax bracket, you decide to get unskilled help and train them yourself. You still wind up paying $2500 a month for ONE assistant, who is there seven hours a day. Let’s further stipulate that the bill for medical supplies (Jevity, sterile water, peroxide, a wide assortment of Chinese medical plastic, etc.) brings your total medical expenses to around $70,000 a year, NOT including what Medicare covers (hospital stays, physical therapy, etc.).

Does anyone want to up the ante on my story? Who still wants to play with my story?

Okay, one guy. That’s enough to continue the bit…

Let’s say your 70-ish father burns through the remains of his health (none too good to begin with) trying to cover all of the hours that the nurse is not there (pulling 48-hours shifts is hard on an elderly guy, as you might imagine). Further assume that your father winds up in the hospital himself, with a partially collapsed lung. Now, into our incredibly realistic simulation of a medical crisis, let’s throw in a terminal diagnosis of COPD for your father (a 50-year veteran of the smoking wars). Now he requires his own medication and treatment, and you now have to hire round-the-clock assistance, bringing your monthly bill for “unskilled nursing help” to $7500. Let’s assume that your mother has been in this condition for three years, and your father for the last 6 months or so. Let’s also say that there are also all of the usual expenses to deal with; a mortgage on a 1400 sq. ft. home, plus insurance, gas, and maintenance on two cars (one a wheelchair-lift van). [Michelle will be pleased to know, though, that these vehicles are NOT expensive Frostmobiles, being 10 and 13 years old, respectively. They are, in fact, exactly the sort of shit she would approve of. No need to cruise OUR neighborhood, Michelle! (Although she would probably have something to say about the new siding on the house)]

Let’s further assume…wait a minute…

Assume?

This is the REALITY I’ve been living with for the last three years.

No, I’m not going to add it all up. I’m too drunk, and I know Michelle’s people will do all the accounting for me for free, anyway. You know, to make sure that we’re not cheating, and all. I’ll be happy to send them the bills. All of them. Three years worth. (You up for this, you fuckers? Gary? You warming up your calculator?)

But wait, we ARE cheating. My father gets $10,000 a month through a mineral trust, courtesy of an inheritance. He also has $480K in trust, which he unfortunately can’t touch for medical expenses, but he can occasionally beg a few thousand for emergencies, like the time when what remained of my mother’s detention was rotting in her head, and had to be surgically removed. I’m sure that Michelle would conclude from this that my parents are too well-to-do to be benefiting from the socialist nightmare known as Medicare (“And your father shouldn’t have smoked all those years. HAW HAW HAW HAW!”…Love, Michelle).

I think, though, that the rational conclusion is that we would have been screwed even WITHOUT Medicare, and that people who live on a “normal” income would be completely…um, what’s the word?

Oh yeah, fucked. But that’s not the conclusion that they will likely draw, is it?

But wait, there’s more!

I don’t actually live with my parents. I go to graduate school in a town 110 miles away. Nearly every fucking weekend I’ve made the trip, though, because they’re my Mom and Dad. So all of this time I’ve been suffering Thesis Interruptus, not to mention running up my student loan tally (something I’m trying REAL hard not to think about). And now I have a car payment, since I had to put my old one down after putting 100K miles on it in two years (and no, it wasn’t an SUV). And the icing on the cake is my professor looking like she wants to kick me in the nuts every time she sees me.

Gary, buddy, I’m here to tell you, you only think the way you do because it hasn’t happened to you yet. But see all that you have to look forward to, when nature finally kicks your ass?

And I don’t recommend calling an ambulance for the wingnuts unless they’re insured. A ride in the meat wagon costs $1500.

Oh, and in case you haven’t drawn the obvious conclusion from this, I think Malkin and her minions are cunts. Michelle is hereby invited to go fuck herself with one of those cheese-grater style dildos. What’s that? They don’t exist? Well, I’ll invent one, just for her.

[Sorry this is long; I just HAD to get it out of my system. And apologies to the ghost of Hicks, without whom I would not have survived the last three years]

As Bill Hicks used to say, “Case.Fucking.Closed.”

lol! The things we won’t do for our furry friends. In part this is why I’m amazed at this “they’re freeloading off the state” crap. Does anyone really think this family wouldn’t gladly pay any money they had to take care of their kids? As it is it sounds like they’re deeply in debt, and if they’d lost their home they’d be in real trouble as very few apartments are genuinely accessible to people with serious disabilities.

(And yes, believe me I know there are families that treat their kids like shit and wouldn’t give a fuck if they needed medical care, but I have to believe they’re rare, and it doesn’t sound like that’s the case here.)

I wonder, though, how many of the people whining about this have seen elderly family members shelter assets so that degenerative long-term-care-requiring diseases like Alzheimer’s don’t leave them having to move in with one of the whiners before they’re eligible for some state assistance. I’m sure that’s different, though. Gotta protect that inheritance. (Personally, I think that’s not unreasonable too, at least in terms of not bankrupting a surviving spouse. The inheritance can go hang, but if the state can help people not be homeless after a medical emergency, call me a dirty commie and sign me up to help.)

Cypress seems to be doing okay, thank you. She doesn’t, they tell me, have tumors on her heart “as of yet”, which didn’t make me all that happy since I hadn’t been aware I needed to worry about it. But she’s put on half a pound in the last week, so she’s probably doing well enough that she could get some treatment for her low hematocrit next week if she needs it.

Fortunately, my partner makes pretty good money, and doesn’t begrudge my cat either time or cash. We’ve told the mooching housemate that we can’t afford her and the cat, though, and since the cat actually likes us, if she’s not out by the end of the year we’re taking the housemate to the vet to be put down. :-) She was not amused, but I care so little at this point. She’s had three years of free room and board to get her act together (another case of medical emergency contributing to home- and job-lessness), and the stress has contributed to the cat’s problems.

Really, in my experience most people don’t go to the state first. They try to deal with it themselves and then turn to family and friends. But sometimes your family and friends aren’t much better off than you, and how does it do society any good to have one medical emergency cause serious money problems for more than one family?

Pet Ganesh for me. He sounds well worth it, yes. There was a lovely apparently bengal cat at the vet today who a couple weeks ago donated blood for Cypress. He loves my SO, and if we could remotely afford two cats with major medical issues (he got hit by a car and lost, apparently, quite a bit of intestine and one eye and requires daily injections of something), and if Cypress didn’t hate him, we’d have taken him home by now, too.

yeah, he should gt a job, in fact I’m sure I saw a “Dogs with Jobs” program the other day, or was it a dream

As someone who worked in the veterinary division of a major pharma, I was always told that veterinary insurance, as currently constituted, is not worth the money, as the company will seldom pay what they say they will, if they will pay at all. These pet insurance schemes seem to be seen as straight-out business opportunities, and there is some confusion as to whether the companies who offer them are subject to any sort of regulation at all. Certainly, I know of no one who paid for the insurance and got any reasonable percentage of their pet’s expensive care paid for.

I don’t have insurance on Ganesh Bengal Cat, and his various health emergencies involving a chronic condition have often forced me to live for a while on tea and peanut butter crackers to afford his meds and overnight stays, procedures and anethesia, etc. He informs me that he is worth it. i have informed him that he is a hybrid car. Not a large one, or a fancy one, but yes, he represents the hybrid car that I will never own now. ;)

I shall hope for the best for your cat, and will include thoughts of her in my offering to Kwan Yin tonight.

I will also be making offering for these right wing tools who are being used for evil (with or without their being aware of this), and are damaging their own souls in the process. I hope they will come to know Her Mercy soon, since they are obviously suffering.

With Mercy and Compassion, Beloved Kuan Yin
Melt away this anger, and let me love again
Melt away this fear, and let me love again
Om Namah Shiva, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

Note the size of the Defense Dept relative to Health and Human Services…

I can’t quite imagine why they don’t just pretend that their tax dollars are going exclusively to the programs they like (which, since it often includes the Iraq War is very likely indeed) and that the bleeding heart liberals are paying for the social programs. It’s what I do. In reverse, I mean, and there’s really very little chance that at least some of our taxes aren’t going to this stupid war.