Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Thursday, May. 06, 2010 - 3:25 a.m.

Testing? Hello?

Just wondering if any of you are still here. Not that I'd know, since I can't pay for supergold right now. I've been blogging elsewhere so I could have comments without having to pay for them, because money's been really tight since my last entry here, on accounta me being unemployed (yes, for 2 freaking years) in this crappy economy. I actually put in my last day of work 4 days after I wrote the entry before this one. (the subject of which became law, btw)

But the vibe's just not the same, elsewhere. I miss you guys. I miss the me in these pages. Not that that me is all that delightful, but it was still me, and quite a lot of me, at that, and I had the license to be pissed off here - when you go and start over somewhere, there's this big impetus to start all the way over and shuffle off all the stuff that had gotten negative in the old place. But you know what? I AM angry. I'm a pissed off woman. For a variety of reasons. And while I'd like not to be, I don't see that changing any time soon. I have, as a coworker once noted, a lot of anger in me. It needs to get out so that I won't explode, and it would seem that this is my therapy. It's certainly a lot more helpful than seeing a shrink, and cheaper, even if I shell out for supergold.

Since I last "saw" you guys, my dad died. I'm not going to go into it again, though. You can read about it on the other blog. Suffice to say last year was the worst year of the worst 10-12 years of my entire life. Sadly, this year isn't going much better. So far, I've found lumps in my breast, which caused quite a bit of stress for a few months there (turns out I just have a breast full of cottage cheese, how lovely), and I'm currently dealing with some sort of internal injury to my right knee, thanks to Napoleon spinning me around and then yanking me off my feet and dragging me along the gravel and concrete for a yard or so like we were characters in a Beethoven movie or Tom & Jerry cartoon.

I did not appreciate the experience.

I could do an entire entry on the unbelievably shitty state of health care in this country, but I really can't deal with the spike in blood pressure that will cause, and I've already had a good cry over it today, so let's not go there. Suffice to say the doctor at the clinic thinks it might be broken, so she sent me to a "diagnostic center" (and boy, do I use that term loosely) for x-rays, where the x-ray technician used the oldest x-ray machine I have ever seen in my entire life (I swear to you, it was built in the 40s - I haven't seen one that old since high school) to take two of the worst x-ray films I've ever seen in my life, which get sent to the radiologist to read, and then that person will send a report to the doctor who sent me for the x-ray - IN TWO WEEKS.

Yes. Two weeks. And the doctor (who is actually a physician's assistant, because when you have no money, you see PA's or nurse practitioners, not actual doctors) scheduled me for a follow up for the x-ray results on June 1. Meaning it is entirely within the realm of possibility that I could be hobbling around with a broken leg for 5 frigging weeks before anyone diagnoses it and treats me for it. And the capper is that the clinic that sent me for the x-ray does not treat broken legs. They have no crutches and they do not do casts or wraps. I had to stop at a drugstore on the way home and buy an ace bandage to wrap my fucking knee. I considered buying crutches, but they're $45, and I'm a little short on funds right now, on accounta EDD screwing up my unemployment benefits for 2 months, which forced me to cruise thru all my savings, and I'm behind on all my bills.

So yeah. If I had money or a job with health insurance, I could get my knee taken care of. But I'm poor, and if you're poor in this country, you're not worth shit, so you suck it the fuck up and deal with your sickness or injury on your own, and if that means you don't get treatment, then you don't get treatment, you fucking loser. I'm actually *still* waiting for an appointment to have a mammogram. When the doc there finds lumps and decides you need a mammogram, she sends your name to the mammogram diagnostic center, which eventually sends you a postcard telling you when and where to go for your mammogram. I'm still waiting for mine, and it's been over a month. Since I am not the kind of person who can sit around with the possibility of cancer growing in her boob, I borrowed the $800 necessary for a 2nd referral and mammogram in the private doctor world, because just to get a pap smear here is $300, plus the $200 for the breast exam and $450 for the ultrasound and mammogram, since two of the lumps in question (the hard ones) are against my chest wall and won't show up in a mammogram.

As you can imagine, the health care debate really pissed me off on a daily basis. I finally had to stop watching the news. Me, the biggest news junkie on the planet, and I can no longer stand to watch or listen to it. I avoid it like the plague. With the health care bill that passed and the Supreme Court deciding that corporations matter more than the citizens of this country, I have finally given up. I honestly don't think I'll ever vote again. At the moment, I feel it's the single biggest waste of time on the planet. Followed closely by watching the news.

So yeah. That's where I'm at. It's been a really frigging hideous 15 months, and it doesn't look to be getting any better. I need a job, badly. And to get my skyrocketing cholesterol down (254 for the LDL; the LDL is high too, but not enough to mitigate the shockingly high bad stuff). And to lose even more weight than I did before. And a lot of other stuff I won't go into here, on accounta how complicated it all is with my dad's estate.

On the "bright" side, I'm a vegetarian now. So that's good. :)

Peace out,
Katie

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008