Fun with the U.S. Healthcare System!

I just spent five days in the hospital, and I feel no better now than I did before I went in. But before I go into that, I should probably go into my health insurance dealings since I left Steel Johnson. I'm gonna have a hell of a time trying to recall all the details.

In February, people were telling me about how expensive COBRA coverage was. I had COBRA back in 2009, and I remembered it being somewhat reasonable. I got a bad case of sticker shock when I enrolled in COBRA over the phone: $570 for medical, dental, and vision! Medical alone was like $523 or something. I then remembered that President Obama subsidized COBRA in 2009, making it more affordable. This alone is why Obama haters can eat my ass. I tried applying for ACA coverage outside the enrollment period, but was overwhelmed by the questions, especially since they involved trying to estimate income when I didn't know how much I was going to make. But I had doctor appointments in March, so I went ahead and signed up for COBRA. COBRA didn't even take effect until mid-March, so I had to pay some out-of-pocket for the first half of the month, then when it was active, it became retroactive from March 1st. Steel Johnson's open enrollment period was in March, and coverage went up from $570 for medical, vision, and dental, to $570 for medical ALONE! I should've started working no later than the beginning of April, but I didn't start until the beginning of May. So, I had no money to pay for COBRA by May, and my coverage lapsed. Matters were made worse when the job I was working that was supposed to be a four to six week assignment only ended up lasting two weeks due to lower than expected volume. I got insurance through my temp agency, the overall insurance thing being called The American Worker. It seemed pretty decent for the most part, except they don't have actual prescription coverage, just some kind of prescription discount program. I would've had to pay out the ass for Xigduo, but I got a card that helped me pay nothing for a 90-day supply. I'd also have to pay out the ass for Trintellix. I've had no luck getting real help from the manufacturer for paying for it, so I've been relying on the generosity of my psychiatrist's office and a friend who works at a doctor's office to provide me with samples.

If I got to do it all over again, I would've quit Steel Johnson around the time of the ACA's Open Enrollment, which just happens to coincide with Steel Johnson's Holiday Peak Season, so that could've saved me from beating my head against a wall over insurance and dealing with the fucking nightmare that is Peak.

Back on June 8th, I had something odd happen. I had to urinate frequently, almost as if my diabetes meds failed me. I was also tired as fuck that night. I couldn't sleep that night because I had to go to the restroom so frequently, and because my brother was sleeping in the guest room, so I didn't have a fan to provide white noise for me. I seemed to be closer to normal by the end of that weekend. I don't know if it had anything to do with my current health debacle or not.

Okay, now for the main story. On the morning of June 27th, I was feeling really down, probably because of my roommate's continued unemployment, and wondering what the fuck I was working for. Even though I took an Adderall that morning, I couldn't concentrate to save my life. I usually wait until lunch time to take my second Adderall, but I took it on my first break instead, and I instantly felt better by the time my break ended. I got to leave work early, and went to a coffee shop, where I had a Frozen Cappuccino. I got home around 5:00, and as soon as I opened my apartment door, I felt chills. I went to bed as soon as I could. I think the chills only lasted a couple of hours, but I still felt awful. The only symptoms I remember as of now were low appetite, and my head feeling like a balloon. I got up at some point to try to eat something with my night time meds, and forced myself to eat a protein bar. I spent most of the next two days trying to sleep it off, but I tried to get out and get something to eat the next day. The only food I ordered at Arby's was a half pound roast beef sandwich, which I usually have no problem devouring, but I couldn't finish it! I stopped by Walmart to check my blood pressure, and it was sky high, 149/91. On the 29th, I went to an emergency room. My symptoms were so all over the place that I'm sure I just confused everyone working there. It probably didn't help that I have a harder time communicating than normal when I'm not feeling well, due to my Central Auditory Processing Disorder. My blood pressure seemed to be normalizing by the time I got to the hospital, but I still had a horrendous headache. That could've possibly been caffeine withdrawal. They treated me for dehydration, and then sent me on my way. I noticed something in my after-care papers about Leukocytosis, which implies an infection, but I guess they didn't think it was a big deal. I wish I had gone to the ER as soon as I had gotten the chills that Wednesday, but oh well. I thought that the adderall and Frozen Cappuccino must have played a part in my illness, but as it turns out, this wasn't over, and I'm not so sure that they played any part in it.

I realized by July 4th that I didn't have much more of an appetite than I did before I went to the ER, so I tried to start eating "bland" foods the day after. It also seemed to be affecting my ability to work, because I was absolutely miserable. On the night of July 5th, I noticed some tenderness on my right side, right below my rib cage. I finally made a call to my doctor's office on the morning of the 6th to try to make an ER followup appointment, but I think one of the doctors was going to be gone that week, and there were no openings for that following week. I left work early that day and went to an urgent care center. The nurse practitioner said that the spot where I was feeling tender was my gallbladder. She said she couldn't do any gallbladder testing, that only my doctor could order gallbladder testing. What was the point of going to Urgent Care then? The following Monday (July 9th), I called my doctor's office to make a an ER/Urgent Care followup appointment and hopefully gallbladder testing, and got an appointment for the following Monday morning (the 16th), so I had to suffer for another week, as long as things didn't get worse, in which case I would've went back to the ER. At the doctor's office, they just did some labs and some other stuff. I then went home. Then somebody from the office called to help me set up an appointment for an ultrasound, which was for the following morning. I had the ultrasound done, and that was that. I had to work ten hours on Wednesday (the 18th), and didn't get to take my last break until after 5:30pm. I had a voicemail from 3:00-something from my doctor's office telling me to call them back, but their office closed at 5:00, so I was going to have to wait until the morning. I called them back the next morning, and they said that they were ordering a CT scan, and scheduled it for the following Wednesday. By this point, I was super pissed because I had been dealing with this shit for over three weeks, when my appendicitis in 2001 was diagnosed and treated in a matter of days. But with the appendicitis, it probably helped that I only had one symptom, making it easier to diagnose. I had already been fasting that morning, and after some bitching and some phone calls, I was able to get in for a CT scan that morning. I decided not to go in to work that day because I still needed to recover from the previous day, and I didn't want to miss any calls from the doctor's office. I got a call from them by that afternoon. They said that they found a 4cm abscess on my right kidney that happened to include a non-obstructing stone, and it was urgent enough to make an appointment with a urologist for the next morning (the 20th). I called the urologist's office to ask about fasting, and they said it wouldn't be necessary.

All I had to eat on the morning of my urologist's appointment was a quarter of a Complete Cookie. While I was driving to the urologist, I thought to myself, "Damn it, I want a slice of pizza after I leave this place!" I was already hangry by 10:30 that morning, and the fact that the office had pizza catered for them that day just made it worse. I finally got to see the urologist, and he sounded like he wanted to operate that day, but didn't have a copy of the CT scan to go by. I was then told that I couldn't eat, or even drink much water, making my hangry even worse. I went back home and gathered some stuff, and waited for my roommate to come home from her appointment so she could take me to the hospital, because I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to drive whenever they discharged me. We got to the hospital sometime after 2:00pm. They still hadn't gotten a copy of the CT scan, but were working on getting it, so they couldn't do the surgery that day. I was eventually allowed to eat. I also got a pizza slice from the cafeteria after it reopened at 11:30 that night.

I was able to have the procedure to drain my abscess done the following morning (July 21st), but the stone was still in there. Most of the abscess got drained, but they kept a needle in my back with a tube to continue draining, which then went into a bag. I spent a few more days in the hospital. Trying to sleep was a bitch, because I had no white noise to drown out the sound of the IV pumping stuff every fifteen seconds. Earplugs barely even worked. Whenever I did sleep, I was periodically woke up to be poked and prodded. I ended up having another CT scan done one morning just to see where the drain was attached, I think. The next morning, I had x-rays done to see if the stone was "communicating" with the urinary tract or not. If it was, then I think they were just going to go through the urinary tract and break it up. But if not, then they were going to have to go through the "perf-hole" provided by my drain. I honestly can't remember, but I think it was concluded that the stone wasn't "communicating" with the urinary tract, so they were going to have to go through the "perf-hole" to get it. Unfortunately, this was not going to be done that day, and I was discharged with the goddamn drain still in my back, and my baggie strapped to my leg. This was on a Wednesday, and I wouldn't get to see the urologist again until the following Wednesday, August 1st! Before I forget, he said something about having a specialist from Indianapolis to do the surgery, so now I'm wondering, am I going to have to go all the way to Indianapolis to do the surgery, or is the specialist going to Louisville to do it? And when the fuck will it be done? Because I don't want to have to keep this shit attached to me any later than the end of next week. I feel bad for people who have to deal with this shit on a daily basis. I was able to get a lifting restriction from the doc for work, but my boss said that I couldn't return until all restrictions were lifted. So, who knows when I'll get paid again. Before I was discharged, I had a woman from the hospital's Financial Aid division tell me that my insurance wasn't going to pay for hardly any of my hospital visit, so she helped me apply for aid, but I still had to go home and print out a month's worth of pay stubs, as well as my 2017 Federal Tax Return, and mailed them off. But back to income, I have a "Hospital Income" policy through State Farm which should help for the time that I was in the hospital. I still need to see if I can get Short Term Disability through my employer. If not, then I guess I'll have to start a GoFundMe page.

After all this, I still have that "sick to my stomach" feeling, and I've gone back to a bland diet. I figure this won't change until after the stone is removed. And I didn't think to ask what the hell caused the abscess and stone in the first place?

To be continued.

Music Collecting Madness: Streaming

I finally did it! I finally jumped on the streaming bandwagon. One reason that I had been reluctant to join in was because I associated audio streaming with internet radio, especially shitty internet radio. I also couldn't wrap my mind around listening to entire albums via streaming, instead of listening to them via a physical format. But if someone had told me a long time ago about all the kinds of stuff I could listen to on Spotify, I would've done it a long time ago. Like, I'm no longer torn about whether I want to buy deluxe editions of Heaven 17 or Dead Or Alive albums for extra tracks, and I can also listen to Full Dynamic Range remasters of classic Earache Records albums. And remember when I was bitching about how frustrating it was collecting for The Cars? No more! I can listen to the bonus tracks from the expanded versions on Spotify, as well as the "Move Like This" album.

So what convinced me to check it out? One was using a $15 iTunes gift card that a friend gave me for my fortieth birthday, and realizing that there was no way I could purchase every single Eighties song, much less every one of my favorite songs from any other era, anytime soon. Another reason came from trying to find the new Judas Priest album ("Firepower") within the week after it came out, and not being able to, so I gave up looking for it. It turns out that I can listen to it on Spotify. It's a pretty good album, probably the best they've put out in a long time, but I feel no need to buy it now.

I've been looking to downsize my collection, while trying not to add too much to it, and streaming helps with that. I still love physical product, but now I don't have to buy a CD unless I really, really want to, like if it's something I know I'm going to want to listen to in the car.

I actually did end up buying a shit ton of CDs recently, from a guy who was selling them for $5 for a single disc, or 5 for $20, and $7 for a double disc. I ended up getting:

• Three of The Doors' DCC gold discs,
• a couple of early Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper CDs,
• a couple of CDs from an Austin band called 8 1/2 Souvenirs,
• an old Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" CD, just because I have the Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs Hybrid SACD, which is in stereo, and wanted a mono version alongside it,
• a Columbia/Earache edition of Carcass's "Heartwork",
• OMD's "The Pacific Age"
• The Best Of The Art Of Noise
• A Spiegel Edition of Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man",
• They Might Be Giants' "Flood",
• The Clash's "Sandinista!", just because it had The Armagideon Times, and my "Manufactured for BMG Music Service" edition doesn't.

I've probably forgotten a couple, I'll just update this whenever I remember. By the way, I wouldn't have bought those Doors DCC CDs if they had been more than $5 a piece, and I essentially got them for $4 each. I've given Steve Hoffman shit before, but his version of the first Doors album sounds a lot better than the 2017 remaster.

Music Collecting Madness: The Cars

If you haven't read Music Collecting Addiction/MADNESS!, then you should probably read this before you go any further.

The Cars have been one of the most frustrating bands to collect for. How did I start? I usually enjoyed them whenever I heard them on the radio, but didn't really appreciate them until I went to a Cars "Hoot Night" back when I lived in Austin TX in 2000. A "Hoot Night" is where a bunch of local bands get together and pay tribute to a band. After attending the hoot night, I found their songs stuck in my head weeks afterward, which prompted me to buy Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology. It's a damn near perfect collection, with almost all the hits, a bunch of cool b-sides/demos, and it sounds great. The only problem is that it's missing "Bye Bye Love", which I would've gladly traded "Don't Cha Stop" for. "Bye Bye Love" is on Complete Greatest Hits (also released as Definitive), and if you just want a single CD career spanning collection, that's the way to go.

It wasn't too long ago when I had a whopping five copies of Heartbeat City. My first one was Steve Hoffman's remaster on Audio Fidelity, which was also the first Cars non-compilation album I bought. The second was an original copy, a "target" cd in fact, the kind of which the Hoffmanites cream over. I bought that for comparison purposes. Somewhere along the way I bought the original vinyl. Just over a year ago, I bought the Mobile Fidelity hybrid SACD, along with The Elektra Years: 1978-1987. I bought the latter more for Panorama and Door To Door, but more about those later. I recently sold the original CD and the Hoffman. (I may update this later with my opinion of the sound quality.)

I think the next CDs I bought after that Hoffman Heartbeat City were the Mobile Fidelity Gold CDs of Candy-O and Shake It Up. Those are fun and sound great, but those early albums were so well recorded that it would take effort to make them sound bad.

After that was the self-titled first album, for "Bye Bye Love". It was a compressed remaster that wasn't marked as such, but it still sounded good (see above paragraph). I bought the Mobile Fidelity hybrid SACD at the same time that I bought The Elektra Years and the Heartbeat City hybrid SACD. I've recently sold my old CD copy.

Panorama and Door To Door have been harder to find on CD. I bought Panorama on vinyl. I decided to buy The Elektra Years: 1978-1987 for Panorama and Door To Door on CD, and figured that the other albums would make adequate "car copies". I'm not too keen on the mastering of The Elektra Years, especially Panorama, even though I have no other CDs to compare it to other than the tracks that appeared on Just What I Needed. I remember being annoyed at the "drums" on the Door To Door remaster when I first listened to it in the car. I recently found an original Door To Door CD, and I do prefer it, but I went back and listened to the remaster in the car again, and didn't think it sounded that bad. Go figure. For what it's worth, Door To Door is a mediocre album, with the three best songs and demo versions of two tracks (dating back to 1977!) being included on Just What I Needed.

Not long after I bought The Elektra Years, and to my annoyance, they started releasing expanded editions of the albums, based on the same remasters that were on The Elektra Years. I don't feel the need for the extra stuff, and therefore don't need the expanded editions of most of the albums, but hearing the demo version of "Drive" tempted me for a second to buy the expanded version of Heartbeat City, until I found out that I could just buy a download of the track on its own. The only expanded edition I would bother buying is Panorama, just so I can ditch The Elektra Years. Or I may just search for an original CD, or hope that Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs releases a hybrid SACD of it in the near future.

I also have Greatest Hits on vinyl, I bought it at a friend's consignment shop back in 2005.

I don't own Move Like This, but I plan to get the CD eventually, even if it does score a rating of DR6 on the Dynamic Range Database. It's also supposed to be a better album than Door To Door.

WHEW!

Doubts

I have not missed Steel Johnson being inside me. It's been nice to get out and do stuff again. I even managed to go to three shows in just over a week, all of them pretty different. But funemployment can't last forever, and I need to get working soon.

I managed to spend an entire day at home yesterday, thanks to having the place to myself, and spent it mostly watching movies. I just about went stir crazy. Having the place to myself and being mostly lazy was a luxury when I was employed, but at the moment it's a nuisance. I don't see how my roommate/ex has managed to do it for the past three years. You'd think that getting money to occasionally go out with would be motivation enough for getting a job.

I had revisited the notion of becoming a studio recording engineer and mixer in recent months. Reading posts like this kind of make me think otherwise. Seems like most of the careers I want to get into are becoming things of the past. A lot of people are self-recording. Some self-recorded music sounds good, some doesn't. I figure the least I could do is advise people on how their home recordings can sound better.

Speaking of antiquated jobs, I was in FYE a couple of days ago, carrying around a stack of CDs, when a woman pushing a stroller came up to me and asked if I worked there, to which I replied no. Then she apologized, and said that I just looked like someone who knew a lot about music and CDs. I then told her that I probably should be working there, but I'm not. I probably should've told her that I could probably still help her.

I wonder sometimes if I should just resign myself to a life of warehouse jobs.

I'm free!

"The Buyout" was finally offered last week, and I took it on Friday. I feel better already, but I need to stay on top of my shit so I won't end up like I did back in 2001-2003 or 2009-2011. Or like my roommate/ex. The hardest part was telling my dad. I hate the idea of lying or withholding information from my parents, but I kinda wonder if I would've been better off not telling them about the buyout until after I had gotten a new job? Then again, if I got a new job, there wouldn't be any point to telling them about the buyout, would there?

One example of my dad stressing me out was when he asked me if I knew how much was in my 401K. I told him that I didn't know. Then he asked, "You don't know much, do you?" I have 38 years of shit polluting my head, half of which is his fault, I don't have room in there for things like 401K or restricted stock units. Hey, at least I'm not an ignorant racist! I wonder sometimes what it's like to have a dad who's not a total asshole.

For the first time in three years, my Federal tax return was accepted electronically! But I had to mail off a form involving sales of Restricted Stock Units. That's one thing I won't miss about Steel Johnson, waiting for 1099-Bs and filing extra shit for my tax return. That shit is complicated, and I kind of wish that I had waited until I had some money so I could let someone who a friend recommended help file my taxes, but it's already done.

Steel Johnson has done it again.

God damn it, "Steel Johnson" never stops finding ways to piss me off. My teammates and I spent more of the peak season than not in departments other than our own. I had a feeling that they would try to downsize the department after Peak by forcing people to transfer to those other departments. I figured this would take place after they brought out "The Buyout", where they pay people to leave the company forever, but no, they decided to do it about month before then. They would choose the ten who got to stay by seniority. This pissed me off because I've been in the department for five years, and others have worked in the department longer, but there were people who just transferred to the department within the past year who would get to stay just because they've been with the company longer. You had two choices, either try to stay in your current position and choose three preferred shifts from the Outbound or Inbound departments in case you get passed over, or volunteer to transfer to one of those departments/shifts. I went about choosing from three of the least worst options, two from Inbound and one from Outbound, and got the Inbound "donut" shift of Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. And before I forget, the day starts at 6:00 a.m.. I was going to be fucked no matter where I went, but going to Inbound was probably a quicker form of job suicide, since I just found out that I've gotten a "Second Written Warning" for productivity from that department. Oh well. If I'm lucky, I might be able to tough it out until "The Buyout" is offered, but whether I make it until then or not, I should probably try to look for another job. I'm also looking to get into a recording school soon, and this bullshit complicates things even more than they already were.

Meanwhile, over at my old building, they've downsized the same department there, and allegedly has them working eight hour days, Monday through Friday, which is what I've been wanting to do ever since I got hired back on! What makes me even madder is that I would've probably stood a better chance of staying in the department there, since turnover was higher in that building than in my current one!

This has been my worst Winter since late 2003/early 2004, my first Winter after I moved back to Kentucky. I might not have had much social interaction the past couple of Winters, but they were relatively mild in comparison weather-wise.

I got a little bit of good news on the IRS front. They finally sent me a fucking IP PIN, so I'm able to file electronically again. The bad news is that I still owe them for cashing the erroneous refund check, so I'll be amazed if I get any refund this year. If my CEO really gave a fuck, he could totally pay for that shit, but it looks like he'll be getting a huge ass tax cut.

Saying good bye and good riddance to 40.

I only have a few days left before I turn 41. 40 has been the worst age ever. I've spent most of the year broke, broken, and alone. The only reason I'm still working at 'Steel Johnson' is because I'm too lazy to look for work, and I don't want to have to take a pay cut. Voluntary Time Off has been offered frequently, and I hate that place so much that it's hard to resist. Plus, while I accrue a good amount of vacation time now, the majority of it goes toward covering the VTO. I've been thinking lately that it might be worth taking a cut of a couple of dollars if I can get an eight-hour-a-day job, and can actually get forty hours in every week. So, I really should update my resume and start a job search.

I mentioned in my "Labor Day 2007" post that I've realized that I will always be a social reject. I really only hear from one person who isn't my roommate or family anymore. I spend entirely too much time wondering where I fucked up with some people. My theme song to this past year seems to be "Do You Still Love Me?" by Ryan Adams. What's funny about that is that a Facebook friend who I never met unfriended me pretty soon after I posted the video to that song. I figure it was because I didn't have a response to his comment about that being one of his favorite albums at the moment.

I actually unfriended one person that I was really good friends with 20+ years ago, since she made it clear that she really had no interest in hanging out with anyone outside her current circle of friends. She may have been under the impression that I wanted to date her, which wasn't the case. I just wanted to reconnect. I think she also forgot how much fun I can be to hang out with.

I figure that my whining about Depression might turn people off, but oh well. Maybe I'd be less depressed if I got to hang out with friends on a semi-regular basis, like I did back in 2014. I can't help but wonder though how many people I hung out with then really even care to hang out with me anymore, or if they just hung out with me because the structure of Louisville Mojo events meant that they HAD to hang out with me. It seems like my social life in Louisville is directly related to the health of the Louisville Mojo site. It's pretty much been brain dead for well over a year now, so I guess my social life will also be brain dead for the foreseeable future.

I don't know if I've mentioned my dealings with the IRS during the past couple of years, but I'm still fucking dealing with them. If I had known that some fuckhead was going to use my social security number to attempt to file taxes, I wouldn't have moved out of my mom and dad's place two years ago, thus eliminating the dire need for my tax refund.

Going to the Forecastle Festival this year was probably a mistake, but damn it, I didn't know if or when I was going to get the chance see LCD Soundsystem, who are my favorite band of the 21st Century, again. Having no one to meet up and hang out with sucked, and barely having the money to eat or drink anything sucked even more. LCD Soundsystem were great by the way, I just wish the rest of my experience that day came anywhere close to when I went in 2014 to see The Replacements. Seriously, I was so happy to be seeing The Replacements with my two favorite people that if either a ten ton truck or a double decker bus appeared out of nowhere and ran over me, I would've died happy.

I can really only remember two good things happening this year:

1. Getting to see Tears For Fears.
2. Getting to hang out with my brother for the first time in over two and a half years, and seeing U2 with him in Louisville. I wish I could've visited Austin as well.

I have no hope that 41 will be better than 40, but it could be.