Family

Stress, instability…what’s next?

Originally posted 2014-07-18 01:42:05.

It’s been a little over 2 weeks since my surgery, Dusty’s grand-mal seizure and the stress of it all. My mother ended up having almost one hundred staples throughout her little body. But now it’s time to heal. We have been to the doctor for Dusty’s seizure. Like I said before he has seizures but for him to have a grand-mal seizure…well that is few and far between. We did find out his white blood cell count was dropping and has the last two blood draws been below the norm. Granted he was born with lower numbers of antibodies anyway. We are just having to see what happens. He is on three different seizure medications at this point.

But with life as he knows it about to change it will likely cause more before it gets better. Kayla is working her last night at her job and will be leaving home. Even though she doesn’t start college full-time until mid August she will be helping her grandmother recover. She feels so close to her and Pa that when my mother went through all of that she felt like she was going to lose her. Hell my mother just went through colorectal cancer about a year and a half ago so this was a bit different to go through for her. It is funny because she told me once she go up and around she would come down and drive me around…all I could do was laugh because I knew I would probably be driving before she would. But that is my mother. Her and my step father have been there for me and my children most of their lives with the exception of maybe a year. My mother has been there for just about every surgery (except this one) that I have had. Hell…she was watching Dusty when I was giving birth to Kayla.

Kayla thinks she wants to ”get away” but little does she know she is more drawn to be near us than she realizes. At first she wanted to go to college in maybe Florida and Texas. Anything I mentioned about college she usually did the opposite. But that is the nature of a teenager. At least the ones I have known. She has volunteered for Special Olympics so many times and even when the school didn’t go themselves. She would majority of the time go with her brother no matter what. Even if it meant missing a day of school. You may think that she would be good with missing a day of school…NOT KAYLA. That girl has always wanted to go to school even when she didn’t feel good. So missing those days were always bittersweet for her.

Now, for the next phase. My husband has gone on a “trial run” driving for a Marine Corps veteran. The guy wanted to make sure this is something my husband wanted to do. Which is understandable. I mean for my husband this career move is crucial. Since being booted from the Marine Corps he has felt kind of lost. The drawdown has turned a lot of them. The feel jilted like a bride at the altar. His need to take care of his family is a key factor in this career move. He mentioned to me one day that he wanted to make sure that if I needed to go to the doctor for my big toe that I could go and it not be such a financial burden. We owe almost ten grand in medical bills right now and my husband has been out of the Marine Corps a year and three months. We have paid for insurance for exactly one year yet still owe that amount of money in medical bills.

There is a program for families that is supposed to help with the costs of insurance premiums. I applied back in December and the application has been pending since then til recently. We were turned down. The program is for households that have someone who receives Medicaid (which Dusty does) and has insurance through their employer or cobra. The program has to be cost effective…which in this case it is. But because part of my husband’s pay goes into a health and welfare account and is applied to the overall premium we were denied. The agency said that amount had to breakdown to show what amount went towards medical, dental, vision, etc.. Over the last 7 months myself and my husband’s employer have been asked on numerous occasions how that worked. We explained it and they say ok we understand. But because the funds don’t breakdown when applied to the premium we were denied. They could only reimburse the medical part of our health insurance premium and so that was part of the problem. They were sent a breakdown of the insurance premium to show how much each was. So anything above medical we were not getting reimbursed. Which we were ok with that because the medical portion was over $1100.00 alone. Whoever said this healthcare stuff would be affordable didn’t live in the real world…at least in our eyes. I mean each pay period $350.00 is deducted for insurance (not including taxes, etc) Then you have the funds that go into the health and welfare account. That is applied to the premium as well. I don’t get it at all. We pay this amount for insurance and our deductible is $7500.00. Who can really afford it?

On top of all of that…well my husband is one of the thousands of veterans going through the VA claims process. He has had one letter from them at this point basically informing him they are still working on his claim. That is pretty much it. No calls, no appointments. Thankfully he works with a veteran that has helped him in the process so his claim isn’t lost in translation and he isn’t screwed over like a lot of them. It’s a damn shame the crap these veterans are being dealt.

By the way, there is a petition that is addressing this is any of you would like to sign.
At the time of this posting there were still 2,093 signatures needed. Will you be one of them?

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/montel-williams-order-surge-va-vasurge/Scr7rhfB

Hopefully some resolve to all of the backups and delays will come soon.

Now onward. My new slogan will be #Going Strong in honor of Kayla and her college choice, Meredith College.

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