A month or so ago, I fell on bad health times. My kidneys collapsed, and I ended up in the hospital. And then I had to start dialysis. To sum it up, it really sucked. And still does.
Now, I have to go through dialysis every other day, and let’s just say that those sessions of three or four hours a day are pretty awful. I wouldn’t wish this on people I don’t like (even if there were people I didn’t like).
But slowly, I feel a bit better, although I suspect that I’m never going to be 100 percent back up to speed. Some days, I’m just completely exhausted and there’s really no way around it.
I’m lucky that I’m able to continue working, although it is a bit difficult some days. But I try not to let others know how much pain I’m in whenever I am in pain, and that keeps people from inquiring too much.
Anyway, I know it’s been a while since I shared any information, so I thought I would do so, although I don’t usually share bad information. I thought this one time I’d do so because it’s so hard to bounce back to normal under the circumstances.
There’s been a lot of political talk about the affordable care act (ACA), or as some like to call it, Obamacare. Whatever name you choose to call it quite often determines what political perspective you tend to associate with the plan. An example: If I call it Obamacare, chances are pretty good that I’m a conservative who hates it. If I call it the ACA, chances are pretty good that I’m more liberal, and I support it. Sure, there are outliers in both areas, but for the most part, that’s sort of framed the issue for everyone.
So, imagine my surprise when I read an article from Fox News, indicating how much trouble a woman got into with her cancer because of the horrible policies involved with “Obamacare.” Obviously, I’m being a bit facetious, as the fact that it came from Fox News should have been an indication it was going to be negative from the start. Now, I’m just waiting for the Salon article debunking the original article, including the part where we find out that the woman actually has better coverage now because of Obamacare than was previously reported in the article. If not, we won’t hear from Salon at all. Or from Jon Stewart either (another of the liberal debunkers). I can already tell you who will report the story based on what conclusions they come up with. That’s about as bad as media gets, and nothing I say is ever going to change that.
So, I thought I was address an anecdotal case and talk about health care, specifically MY health care. After I left my job, I found myself realizing that I had to get my own medical coverage. I was originally under Priority Health (which is co-owned by the employer I left). Historically, I’ve always known it to be overpriced and quite often geared more towards the business owner than the people put onto the plan. When Cobra information was sent to me, I wasn’t all that astonished that it was astronomically priced. So I went looking on the education marketplace to find my own insurance.
What I discovered was that Blue Cross/Blue Shield seemed a lot cheaper with better coverage. Figuring my health concerns would require the highest tier of service, I figured I’d be paying an arm and a leg (to keep my arms and legs), so I called up Blue Cross and decided to negotiate my way through it. The first person I spoke to was somewhat of a drip (and a drag). He wasn’t helpful at all, basically sounding like he was reading information off of some sheet and really not into assisting me. I hung up and figured I’d be screwed in the very near future because I probably wouldn’t have any coverage. In the midst of all this, I also explored alternative options like CBD/THC products to for pain relieve and stress to manage my health.
Later, I called back and I got a very nice woman who really seemed to know what she was talking about. She convinced me that the highest tier wasn’t beneficial to me, as one of the lower tiers, combined with the government incentives available to those in my wage bracket (for the easily fooled, attractive women reading this, that would mean “extremely wealthy and billionare-like”; for everyone else, it translates to “dirt poor and barely able to afford to feed his own stuffed animals”), would definitely be the route for me to take. With my deductible lowered big time because of the government incentive, it would make my savings over time even greater. Additionally, this website provides information on rehabilitation centers that can facilitate a quick recovery. Understanding the drug rehab cost can help in planning for potential health expenses and making informed decisions about rehabilitation options.
Into the first month of this coverage, I discovered one of the low points of this plan is prescription coverage (which with any non-generic drug forces me to pay full price, which also means far more money than anyone aside from Donald Trump might be able to afford). Feeling I’d probably end up either destitute, or dead soon because I can’t afford my medication, I saw my doctor, explained the dilemma, and she informed me that the pharmacy attached to the medical service where I see her actually has a contingency plan to deal with such circumstances. So, while it wasn’t free, I was able to get the drugs I needed that were overpriced through my regular plan.
The point is that sometimes you have to go through a little extra work to figure out the best solutions, and that not always is just “signing up for Obamacare” going to get you the results you need. Sometimes, you have to keep your eyes open and your ears listening to make sure that you’re able to find the deals that make your situation better.
Now, something else might come around the corner and make things difficult again, but so far, I’m seeing numerous lights at the ends of multiple tunnels, so as long as you keep moving forward, your chances of success are that much better.
It’s partly why I hate following politics any longer. I’m a political scientist, and I’ll admit that I hate politics so much. It’s rarely positive; it’s always about how someone else did something bad, and how bad everything is because the other guys are in office, in control, or behind the curtains. One of the things I teach on day one of every class’s semester is my perspective on how I teach the class, where I explain that we’re not going to be studying politics but something much simpler: Why do people do the things they do? I’ve been convinced that it explains politics far better than most of the theories I’ve studied over the years. People do things for reasons. Politics cloud those reasons, and once those clouds dissipate, things become a lot clearer.
I apologize for taking a detour on a site where I normally talk about writing, self-publishing, computer games and all things stuffed animals, but recently, I’ve been going through a bit of a struggle with my health, and it finally hit me hard enough that I thought I would dedicate a little space and talk about it.
First off, I’ve been a diabetic for a good portion of my life. Most of it is genetic, as my mother’s side of the family had the disease and both my mother and grandfather died from it. I don’t know anything about my father’s side of the line, so I’m going on limited information here. However, I did have the opportunity to see how it affected at least two of my family members, and to put it simply, it wasn’t pretty. It’s a crappy disease, and if you don’t have the ability to afford the best medication, you’re pretty much screwed. Both my mother and grandfather were poverty stricken, and that’s the greatest petri dish available for that disease to take you down.
I’m not in the same financial circumstances, so one would think I’d have access to better medication and treatments, and I have been, but I’m discovering that it’s really not that much of a benefit when it comes down to a really crappy disease. While I’m not stuck with having to inject myself with throwaway needles every day (they have what are called pen needles that use a different needle, but you use the same injector pen until it runs out. These days, not everything has to remain refrigerated, and let’s just say that with needles that are less intrusive these days, it’s a lot better today than it used to be.
However, what they don’t tell you about are some of the things that happen with this disease that’s different with each individual affected. One of my pet peeves about this disease is how many “experts” exist out there who know a fraction of the information about diabetes that I do, but somehow speak as if they’re experts in the field. These are the people who say things like “well, you can control it with diet” or they’ll point at whatever you’re eating and say “You’re a diabetic. Should you be eating that?” Unfortunately, our legal system frowns upon my desire to shove an ice pick down their throat, so let’s just say that being a diabetic means being subject to every whack a doodle wannabe doctor with two years experience of watching House on television as their “residency”. Or worse: “I know a guy that had diabetes, so let me tell you about everything I know about the disease” which usually means falsehoods and stereotypes of medical information.
But to understand the really bizarre nature of this disease, I have to give you a little history about myself, because there’s no better way to explain it than taking it from that perspective. You see, some years ago, I used to control my diabetes through diet and exercise, keeping myself in somewhat decent shape. Then my pancreas decided it didn’t want to secrete as much insulin as it was supposed to do, so I was put on oral medications that helped my pancreas produce more insulin. And then about a year ago, that stopped working, and somehow my kidneys started to shut down. I ended up in the hospital, and fortunately I didn’t end up on dialysis, but was pretty close. However, all I could remember was the nurse who kept making comments about how I was lucky that I didn’t have to go through dialysis, giving off the impression that somehow this was my fault. You know, the claims of you didn’t take care of yourself well enough, you ate badly, and your not checking your blood enough to maintain your sugar levels. Almost every conversation with her was like hearing how I would now have to be doing something different, and it was now on me to make things better. The fact that I was watching what I was eating and running/biking didn’t seem to make a difference. Again, it was all my fault.
After I got out of the hospital, they decided that the old way of maintaining my sugar levels hadn’t been working, so they put me on insulin, something I used to equate to “you’re going to die very soon after that, Duane.” I’d seen it happen with both my grandfather and my mother. Once they got put on insulin, it was only a matter of time before everything fell apart and they died. Everyone kept saying, this is 2012 (at least when they said it), and not the 1970s; medicine has come a long way. People live long, productive lives with diabetes.
Well, one of the problems of taking insulin, at least for me, is that my weight shot up big time. It’s been on an upwards trajectory that I can’t seem to stop. I’m not talking a few pounds here and there. I’m talking a trajectory that has increased my current weight to a level that my body has NEVER reached before, even in a short period after I got out of the Army and let my body go completely to waste (before wising up and getting back into physical shape). The problem is: It’s not stopping.
One of the problems that’s emerged is bloating of my limbs, which makes it so much more difficult for me to walk (and obviously, run). I have trouble putting on my shoes every morning because my feet have gotten so bloated that my shoes rarely fit, and I have to force my feet into my shoes, until my feet settle down and my shoes begin to feel a lot more comfortable for the day.
My usual response to this sort of thing has been exercise, which I attempted to do, but here’s one of those things they don’t tell you about. I just don’t have the energy. I tried going running a few weeks ago, and I didn’t make it steps before my body practically just conked out on me. So, I tried doing walking instead, and let’s just say that I’m running into some complications with that as well. Last week, I decided to walk two miles (basically taking the sidewalk around the complex where I live and down the street before coming to the back exit of where I live). On Monday, it was tough, but at the end of it, I felt pretty good. Exhausted, but good. I gave it a few days and then decided to go for the same walk on Friday. I made it about 1/3 of the way before I hit a wall that I’d never experienced before. I couldn’t walk another step. I realized I wasn’t going to make the trip, so I tried to turn back around and walk home. In only a few steps, I felt like I was drunk on a night full of tequila, except I wasn’t getting the enjoyable feeling you get when you’re drunk on tequila. I just couldn’t walk straight. I’d go a few feet and start to fall down.
I made it back to the housing complex, but still had about half a mile to go to my apartment. I couldn’t move. I fell down on the grass and just laid there. After some time, a nice woman in a truck drove by and asked if I was drunk. I tried to explain what happened, which was probably a lot like some drunk trying to explain the preamble to the Constitution. After awhile, she probably figured I wasn’t some guy she had to fear, as I couldn’t even stand up, so she drove me home. I stumbled up my stairs and then into my apartment, collapsing on my couch, waking up early Saturday morning around 1:30 in the morning.
My solution to this sort of problem exists already in my apartment. I bought a treadmill some months back and have used it a couple of times. If I used it regularly, I wouldn’t even have to leave the house. But it appears I bought the one brand of treadmill designed by Loki because even on the manual mode, I’ll walk for about two minutes or so and then suddenly it will start to speed up. In seconds, it will be at a speed so fast that I can’t even keep up. Again, this is MANUAL mode. Then it might slow down to a point that is like watching a slow motion runner going even slower than physically possible. Again, another one of those frustrating things that could have been such a great solution.
But back to diabetes. The worst problem is that I have two doctors I see who don’t seem to care. Oh, they care, but they care about things that are relevant to other issues. Like, they care about my blood sugars. As long as they’re normal, they seem to think we’re on the right track. Sure, my blood sugars are normal, but I’m not. My blood sugar is great, but my body is falling completely apart. At this rate, I suspect I won’t survive the year. That’s not hyperbole; that’s rationalization. I’ve always been somewhat of a rational kind of guy.
But that’s my tale of diabetes I wanted to share with you. I figure most people have read the first lines of this article and just went onto the next one, and I understand. Unfortunately, I can’t move on; I’m sort of stuck here.
If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you know about my whole adventure with being a diabetic. For a number of years, I lived on the edge of the problem by actually going out of my way to change my lifestyle so that what I ate was copacetic with what I needed. I completely changed my eating habits to compensate for this, and as a result, I’ve had to be very careful about what I put into my body.
Having said that, no matter how much work you do at this sort of thing, there are so-called “experts” all around me who are convinced that because they saw a TV show once, knew some guy, or just happened to hear something on the news once, they know more than someone who lives through it on a day to day basis. When I first started dealing with the problem, one of the first things I did was switch from regular soda to diet soda (or pop). This started the “you know that diet soda is just as bad as regular soda, right?” commentaries. Those ranged from the totally stupid people (“just because it’s diet doesn’t mean it doesn’t have calories”) to the New Age stupid (“the chemicals in diet soda are worse for you than if you were just imbibing regular cubes of sugar”). And there’s no shutting them up either. Go to the fridge to grab a diet soda, and you’re guaranteed a five minute screed on all things bad about diet soda. Tell them to stop lecturing you, and they do it anyway, because they’re convinced they’re doing it “for your own good”. One day, I was actually lectured by a woman who felt that diet soda would one day kill me. She would have continued the lecture, but she had to take a break and go outside because it had been fifteen minutes since she last had a cigarette.
I went to work out a few weeks ago, and someone told me that my choice of exercises (the exercise bike) was a poor choice for someone with diabetes because it didn’t affect the cardiovascular system as well as some other exercise he named. The fact that I went from sitting in front of the television set to actually working out should have been an indication that criticism wasn’t necessary, but strangely enough that fact had little sway or influence.
The other day, I was in the cafeteria choosing EXACTLY the same thing I eat every day in order to constantly maintain the correct blood sugar. Someone who knew I had just come out of the hospital felt it necessary to criticize me over my choice of lunch food. I know the person meant well, but just once I wish people would just shut the fuck up and leave me alone. I choose what I eat because a) it appeals to me, and b) it works. I don’t want to hear about tofu, soy milk products, modified starches or whatever. It’s bad enough I have to change anything in my life because doctors inform me of what I should or should not do. Having some clueless wannabe interject with naive information is really annoying.
