8.12.13

Last night I slept and it was glorious. I highly recommend it. A good night's sleep was everything I ever hoped for. I have my bed finally at the level of Princess&Pea-dom that is comfy enough. On my "skeletons in the closet" adventure on Friday I noticed that there was a stack of comforters in Pop's closet and I snagged the comfy-est comforter and that... combined with the proper dosage of knock out drugs... made for a great night's sleep last night.

Ok. I will admit to waking up thinking it was the best night's sleep I had ever had and it was exactly 10:40pm. But I had a bowl of corn chex and went right back to sleep and slept until 7 something this morning.

I decided to take that extra spring in my step from the good night's sleep (because who knows when I will have that again) and make some calls this morning. I first checked in with my disability attorney and... there's news... they found out last week that a decision had been made and was being sent out. Apparently someone makes the decision and lets someone else at Social Security know and they advise me and my attorney and that process takes... who knows how long. So a decision is on the way. Here are my thoughts on this:

• faster than I thought, does that mean a decline?
• they never asked me to go see a doctor, does that mean they don't want to bother or does that mean that my medical records were sufficient?
• even if it IS a decline, at least we're one step closer and can go ahead and appeal in the "every no brings you closer to your yes" sales mentality.
• I could, possibly as soon as this week, have the answer to the question that has been looming over my head since January 2011 - is my suffering sufficient to warrant disability?

So. Yes, I'm slightly anxious about the pending decision but however it goes, I'm just glad to see the process moving ahead. It's only been three months and eleven days since I filed.

The next thing I had to do was call my pain doctor to see if he would call in my knock-out drug refill because I will run out exactly two days before my appointment with them, which is Friday.

And side-bar on that - I paid off my account with them with my tax return and went ahead then and paid for my appointment in June. The billing people told me the visit in June would be $115 and I said, "does that include the lab charges?" because every visit requires a specimen to make sure I'm not smoking or using drugs other than what is prescribed. I was told, yes, the total for all of it is $115. And then... last week I got a bill for $25 from that last visit for... you guessed it... lab fees. So. I'm already really over these people because they haven't fixed me and then there was the extra billing and then there's all of a sudden no way they can prescribe ambien with more than one refill and this time it was right down to the day of my appointment when it would run out. And... well, at some point I took an extra one and I gave one away (NOT REALLY.... I WOULD NEVER GIVE AWAY MEDS because that would be WRONG!). And they will not give me a refill until I go in on Friday, despite the fact that coming off cold turkey off that stuff is wickedly painful. They don't care. It's not like I came up short on the hard drugs but the problem is that all these durn drug addicts put the spotlight on pain clinics and they are on such a short leash that they can't prescribe even two days before. That made me mad on so many levels. I don't want to BE one of the kind of people that needs to see THAT kind of doctor. And on Friday when I have to go and pay $165 I'm going to be even more angry.

On the other hand, my general practitioner was kind enough, when I called him and explained that I really can't afford to come in for a $150 check up with them since I don't have insurance. I told them I was being seen every month or so at the pain doctor and my blood pressure has been the same. No change. Could they please, please, please refill my blood pressure meds without a visit since it had only been six months? Yes. They would be glad to help... they refilled me through January. And why can they do that? Because it's small town medicine vs. big city medicine, it's a gp vs. a pain specialist and there is the understanding that I am a responsible person who just happens to not have health insurance at the moment through no fault of my own.

Those calls were enough human interaction to last me for a few days, especially since there's the mandatory trip into civilization on Friday to see the doctor. I've spent my day hanging out in the living room, letting the tv watching me and watching the rain fall. It was just like any other day this Summer... the rain comes down and the satellite goes out. Lather, rinse, repeat. We're under a flash flood warning now. Fortunately the lake is down a steep hill from us because the lake is definitely up.

Austin has gone off to spend the night with some friends... new kids I had not met before but they were polite enough. I'm glad to have a little peace and quiet with no Xbox marathon. Hopefully the half a knockout pill will be enough to knock me out. Happy Monday, y'all.