The Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President in March 2010, gives you better health security by putting in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that hold insurance companies accountable, lower health care costs, guarantee more choice, and enhance the quality of care for all Americans.
On the fence about health care reform? Imagine having to cyber-panhandle for help because you slip on wet grass. Share this with your friends today, by Monday we could be working towards a healthier America.
Welcome Wagon
Getting some new traffic here gang. I apologize in advance to Ouchie followers who like, know the deal already.
If this is your first time visiting The Ouchie, welcome.
Below are excerpts from some posts you might have missed or if you want the direct treatment, start here.
OR if you just want to know about the E-mail I Didn’t Want To Send that saved my ass (read: ankle) go here.
If there is one thing I excel at, it’s exceptionally bad timing.
I’ve been hearing it in the low whispers between my Mom and Dad, my Mom on the phone with the rest of my family like I’m not here, or even worse like I’m a kid again. How suddenly, I could go from 31-year-old woman back to 10-year-old little girl in the span of five minutes and a broken ankle.
“Who is going to take care of you like we will?” She asks, and the truth is (I will never admit this to them) that no one will be able to take care of my like they will, my friends won’t set their alarms for 4:30am to make sure I take the right pain killer to numb the staples in my leg, or to take the anxiety meds they prescribed so I don’t cry myself to sleep thinking about the fact that I hurt myself with out health insurance, or to help me maneuver into the bathroom with out falling like I did the first night I was home, when it took four hours for the pain to subside, until I could fall asleep again and I couldn’t have crawled back into that bed without their help. Read More…
I keep running this over in my head… how the hell did I hurt myself doing something so American, so corn fed and wholesome, so utterly vanilla… a drive in?! I wasn’t even drunk… or… or… I was getting a DIET SODA and popcorn without butter! I was playing it safe. A week before, I got wasted at the one year anniversary of my friends bar, got on my bike rode two blocks, and fell off face first. Face first! And nothing… except a wicked hang over and a black and blue beard. But go and have a diet soda and popcorn in the rain… P.S. I’m not advocating riding your bike drunk, you can still get a DWI for that. And always wear a helmet, I did, but maybe I need a chin helmet. If I invent a chin helmet I will call it Chelmet and I will buy the cable-marketing package that includes Fox News and The Food Network because it worked for the Snuggie people. Read More…
Yesterday, I had an interview to be a music stylist at a company called El Records; it’s kind of a dream job for me. They compile the mixes you hear in high-end boutiques like Scoop and luxury spas and hotels like The Gansevoort. I had to cancel, there was no way I could get on a subway and prove to them that I’m capable of helping them build revenue because I’m a sold aural architect.
Tomorrow someone from a state agency comes to see if I qualify for aid, hopefully they could cover follow-up exams, x-rays, and the physical therapy I’m going to need. Bon Secours ran the hospital I was in, it’s a charitable hospital and I sent in my application for charity assistance; let’s hope I’m eligible. What I don’t understand is, how could someone collecting unemployment insurance make too much money to qualify for state medical… How is this possible? If you make $401 dollars a week you CAN afford a private health care?! Ummm, that’s gonna be a big old bullshit from this corner. Read More…
I’m watching the (health care) debate go back and forth like the kid caught in the middle of a horrific custody battle. Watching mom and dad argue over my head and if I try to get a word in edge wise, you’re just a kid what do you know? Well… I’ll tell you, right now I know a thing about pain. Like real localized pain, and look, thankfully I didn’t collapse at the drive in because I was sick… like really sick. I’m not hooked up to machines anymore and I didn’t lose my foot, or G-d forbid my breast, and I don’t need radiation therapy. Read More…
I was finally in bed, a process that takes a few minutes with pillow set up, bathroom, changing (though, I find that it’s just easier to stay in pajama’s these days), updating my pill journal, etc. It was about 11:30 when Mac came to the side of the bed, he usually sits where I can reach him, turns his little Morky body around and lets me pick him up onto the bed. Tonight was different; he sat at the foot of the bed and wobbled a little. I had an immediate memory to our last dog Gabby who, the night before she died was in the hallway of the house on Long Island wobbling. Immediately I knew something was wrong. Vin thought I was being neurotic, I picked him up on the bed and he curled up at our feet. Mac likes to play before bed, he’s still a puppy, nearly 9 months old, he didn’t move, I lifted up his little paw and it just dropped. After a few minutes he started retching. I quickly put him on the floor and he ran into his little house in the living room. We called my brother up from the basement; I hobbled into the office to try to find the number for the vet. Of all the bases my Mom and Dad covered before they left, they missed emergency contacts for the dog. Read More…
Today was the second time I’ve left the house since the hospital; there is something new, something awful. A nerve, and it’s agitated. When I stood upright this morning, the blood rushed to my feet, the pain took my breath away. I sat down on the bed and started to count slowly to ten. It’s what I have been doing; at first I was taking route Fight Club, it was the last thing I watched before leaving the motel room that night, it was the tactic I used in the emergency room before they pumped me full of Dilaudid. The part where Brad Pitt douses Ed Norton’s hand with lye and tells him to live in his pain not shove it to center. I try to find my cave… nothing. There must be a voodoo doll somewhere, because the pins are in my feet. Read More…
The waiting room was big, impersonal, with a different shade of flat pink wallpaper. Now two receptionists, one was a woman who looked like a lesbian but wore a wedding ring on the straight finger. This is a suburban anomaly I will never understand. Ever. The other couldn’t have been much younger than me, maybe late 20s. I waited in a chair behind a man in a bow tie who was fussing with her about a referral. They way she told him sorry, as the final word on whether he would see the doctor today, as if it were a salutation akin to when you say hello or goodbye to a stranger. The sorry of someone who really didn’t care, like a DMV sorry. He walked away, I made eye contact using tactics I usually use when ordering drinks at a bar, always make eye contact and know exactly what I need when I get their attention. I don’t know why I even try to use my charm here, it’s not like they are going to kibitz about me when I leave,
“What a nice kid, poor thing… let’s accidentally erase her file. Yippy.” Read More…
Day 4
Well… I’m home finally.
I just wanted to get out of the city for the weekend. I wanted to go apple picking, because that’s what I did when I was a kid and it’s fall and fall reminds me of being a kid in New York State. It reminds me of geeking out at a Ren Fair, picking apples at Maskers, finding just the right gourds for a fall cornucopia and debating over which pumpkin would be best for carving. It’s the cheesy time, the cheesy family time where everything in life looks a lot like a staged editorial for a Sears or JcPenney catalogue. Because I’m a middle class kid, we never went away on huge trips and to be honest, the Rosenduft’s invented the “Staycation” that everyone seemed to be so keen on this past summer.
My mother was/is the epitome of frugality and it’s not like we have lots of lace and porcelain in our house, we don’t. We have a nice house, a DIY house, the house that Mona and Dave built. It’s a house built on a foundation of love and support and the belief that no matter what the obstacle they could do anything as long as there was love.
So here I am, sitting here in the living room of their one-bedroom apartment listening to Bill Maher argue on my behalf about health care reform in the kitchen and the printer from the office printing out an itinerary for the first vacation my parents have taken in over a year.
If there is one thing I excel at, it’s exceptionally bad timing.
I’ve been hearing it in the low whispers between my Mom and Dad, my Mom on the phone with the rest of my family like I’m not here, or even worse like I’m a kid again. How suddenly, I could go from 31-year-old woman back to 10-year-old little girl in the span of five minutes and a broken ankle.
“Who is going to take care of you like we will?” She asks, and the truth is (I will never admit this to them) that no one will be able to take care of my like they will, my friends won’t set their alarms for 4:30am to make sure I take the right pain killer to numb the staples in my leg, or to take the anxiety meds they prescribed so I don’t cry myself to sleep thinking about the fact that I hurt myself with out health insurance, or to help me maneuver into the bathroom with out falling like I did the first night I was home, when it took four hours for the pain to subside, until I could fall asleep again and I couldn’t have crawled back into that bed without their help.
Yes, my friends will come over and play Wii and they’ll help clean out the liquor cabinet, they will cook dinner and spend time with me and leave and go back to enjoying the crisp fall air in new york and I will remain on this couch watching the next four months pass by like a 10 year old in the window of my parents apartment in Brooklyn.
They leave for a staycation in the morning, the next ten days should be interesting.
Four days ago, I slipped on some wet grass at a drive in. I needed emergency surgery and spent almost three days at St. Anthony’s Community Hospital in Warwick, NY. I have no health insurance, I’m unemployed and my EDD insurance just ran out. I think some might refer to this situation as totally f*cked.
