without health care for diabetes

this is how bad health care is in the United States.

as i've written, i do not have health care either. i have to wait on April 2012 to be signed up at work. i have to work there a year. other bridge insurance programs deny me for one of two reasons: i am considered pending at work, or i have a pre-existing condition, the diabetes/high blood pressure. so i get denied.

if i want health care for this 10 month interim, i would have to pay $350 a month. and then it would kick in after the $5000 deductible.

i can't afford that. and i don't want to go to jail. so i am falling, falling, falling through the cracks.

i am going to have to pay for the class out of pocket. hundreds and hundreds of dollars will rack up over the next 10 months. i can't imagine how much. $400 for an office visit? lab fees? the class?

i sometimes feel like i am circling the drain.

that's the difference between me and Boo. between not having health care and your government serving it's people.

i wish you peace.

struggling

since learning i have diabetes and high blood pressure, it has been a roller coaster ride of accepting this and doing okay, then tripping over the speed bumps along the way.

i have no health insurance. i started a job back in November of 2010 but i have since learned that i have to work there a year to get on their insurance plan. the next open enrollment will be in April of 2012. i cried when i learned this. i shook in fear. there is a diabetes class that i need to take but it is supposed to be fairly expensive. i am calling the doctor's office today to see just exactly how much.

right now i am making monthly payments on my first doctor's bill. first time patient with a lab fee and it cost me over $400. that is not a typo. in the United States, medical bills are astronomical. i would like to see a break down of what all that money actually goes towards. centrifuge time? lighting the office? receptionists salary? my percentage of the doctor's salary for those moments i took up his time? i would like to know.

i am struggling with this. i am a picky eater. i do not like certain vegetables. i have a history with food that is not pleasant that stems from my childhood. Boo sent me a book about the DASH diet and i am trying. but it is difficult. there are so many foods that people say are such good foods that i do not like. then there are the foods that one book says are fine while another book or another website says is not.

for example apples. apples are supposed to be good for you. raw apples. yet i found a something called gluco food picker who puts raw apples down in the 80% of food to eat and only in moderation. plain applesauce with no sugar is best. but try to find that in the grocery store.

there are a lot of recipes that allow potatoes yet that was the first food item that my doctor said to skip. who is right? the American Diabetes Association or my doctor whom i am paying over $400 to?

and the taste of sugar free and diet cran grape, which is, or was, my favorite juice. the taste is bland and almost bitter. i used to drink orange juice but i am even afraid of the low sugar stuff. is 10g of sugar in a glass of orange juice too much? how do i keep count of the grams in stuff that does not list grams of sugar, like my last raw apple?

and nuts. i was told plain peanuts and sunflower seeds were fine, good in fact, as a snack. then the other day i read a source that said these nuts were high in cholesterol. and get this, Pacific cod is best because it is lower in cholesterol than Atlantic cod. apparently the fish in the Atlantic swim through more cholesterol thermoclimes than the ones in the Pacific. so what if i start making sure that i buy only Pacific cod, but then i get the one Atlantic cod who decided to go on an adventure and swam through the Panama Canal and got caught? what if a whole school of Atlantic cod swim around the Horn to have a holiday in the Pacific and get caught and those are the ones i get?

you could go on this way with: what if the handful of fish they caught and tested to determine that Atlantic cod are higher in cholesterol were really Pacific cod on vacation, and really it is the reverse that is true?

i think i am losing my mind. i need the voice of reason. i need that class.

what i need is my husband back. he would have laughed at me, then hugged me and we would have figured all this out. and i wouldn't be alone out here without him.

introducing susan aka Beach Bunny

i am susan but my alter ego is Beach Bunny. she used to be real. she used to be me. when he was alive. that's what my husband called me. his Beach Bunny. i used to prowl the rocks and few sand beaches of Rockport, MA looking for treasures washed up by the ocean to build my sculptures that i sold, and to add to my life. treasures that others had tossed aside, or never knew where there. abandonedsouls. that was my artistic moniker.

and then he died. suddenly. it seemed to me, violently. heart attack. i was laying in his arms and he started choking. my CPR failed. the EMT's CPR failed. and then the ER doctor stopped working on him and he was gone. my beautiful Dragon left me behind.

he had promised me he would never leave me, but it seems fate didn't want him to stay. and i have always been one to accept fate. i'm that tree that stands so lonely and isolated out there in the water during a flood. people think, "how strong." but i'm not. my roots are rotting down there. they are drowning in grief and tears, and now, apparently, diabetes and high blood pressure.

crap. this is all i need right now. i do not have health care as Boo does across the Pond. i am in the United States, land of the free, home of the brave, and a country that charges out your ass for health care. i work but open enrollment for my company's health care isn't until August.

no one in my family had this so i am flying blind. i am looking things up on the Internet. *laughing* yeah, the Internet, where i could buy plutonium in a heartbeat but i cannot find consistent information on what to eat for both diabetes and high blood pressure. that Venn diagram that has that arc for shared food is small. very small. and i am a picky eater anyway.

and no one cared. only my two adult children but being a mom never stops. that instinct. "i'll be okay. we'll get it figured out." but i posted on Facebook my fears and worries and you know what? only a handful of the 63 people who had wanted to be my friend there stepped up with sympathy and support. no one. let me say that again. NO ONE that i knew face-to-face, no widow that i had met here in this city commented that we should get together. none of them commented at all. so i deleted them.

strangers asked. standing in the grocery store in tears over how to truly read an ingredient label? is 10g sugar too much? what does 9% salt really mean? do Cheerios with that big red healthy heart printed on the box have that much salt in them? are you freakin' serious?

little boy clerks, even a grocery store manager, have come over to offer to help but they don't know any more about what i can and cannot eat than i do.

my son, bless his heart, sent me some money to go to a doctor who will be in my health care plan at work once i can sign on. he was great. nice man. and the lab vampires were funny. i'm waiting on the blood test results. terrified of what they will say. am i dying of some other horrible disease and just haven't been hit with the symptoms? i do not have a blood glucose meter yet, and if i did i would not really know how to use it. my doctor said it could wait until after August when i have health care. there is a class they have where they give out those meters. they will teach me about food. they will teach me about my numbers.

in the meantime, i am on my own more or less. i cannot afford another visit. he did give me a quick run down. no potoatoes. sweet potatoes are fine.

what. what? sweet potatoes? do they turn into the bad sugar?

no.

but what about pears or corn?

don't eat them until we get a series of your blood glucose numbers.

okay. and we'll get those after i get on insurance in August.

right.

so what do i eat?

nice man had to go get my scripts for my diabetes pill and my high blood pressure pill.

i do have a high blood pressure cuff. managed to buy that. my numbers are good he said.

yeah, butthole, because i don't eat salt. i don't really eat anything.

Boo did send me the DASH diet plan book and i am going through that trying to find menus that have food i can eat. or that i will eat. i am such a picky eater. i've lost weight. needed to, but i wanted to feel good about it. not terrified. and not so damn hungry all the time.
i need my Dragon of a husband back. i need him to cook for me. i can't cook for nothing. everyone has told me that. well, not my Dragon. he said i did great in the kitchen. and that's my life. the first person who likes the way i cook and he dies.

not sure if i am going to make it.

his death. diabetes. high blood pressure. worried children. waiting on health care. waiting on the VA stipend each month. working so hard. exhausted and frustrated and scared and feeling abandoned by widows who had said, "we 'get it.' we are there for you, sister." bullshit are you there for me. and they probably don't even know i've deleted them. until they come looking for free sewing, free writing, free something. Beach Bunny doesn't live there anymore. or something like that.

Boo is helping me more than she knows by simply being there. being there is huge for me. only my kids and my Dragon were ever there for me.

i think there is a film titled "Being There" and Peter Sellers plays Boo. =0)

anyway, that's me. that's how i write. that stuff up there. it's like i imagine you know me and i just start talking. and photos of my Bunny will be interspersed through my postings. i believe in visual aides.

peace to all who read. peace and light to all who grieve. and for those with high blood pressure and diabetes? just try to breathe. in. out. in. out. one breath at a time.