Thursday
El Milagro: As I walk into the dialysis room the dressy-uppy insurance lady chases me down to say that she talked to my wife and is going to talk to our insurance contact at the university... I am taken aback. Liz is in Philadelphia. I respond, "Really. Shes in Philly". "Well I called your home and a little girl told me her cell number..." Oh yeah, I think... cell phones... and I am snapped back into 2008 from wherever I was where communications with Philly are impossible. Okay. So, since I haven't looked into this deal about ending my insurance and having to go onto medicaid they will do it for me. Supposedly, insurance companies cap coverage for dialysis at 33 months and that'll be in December for mio. Then I'll have to be covered by Medicare and will have to pay a premium (YCCCHH) Every once in awile Sherry the Social Worker asks me if I have found out about my insurance caps and I promise to do so... and then a month or so later she asks again and I promise again... and so it goes. Lizzie did check once and she thinks that our insurance covers me without caps. Now the dressy-up lady is on the case!
Kate the Physician's Assistant is here today, taking her time with all the patients. For this reason the nurses don't think much of her... she is too slow. The patients get the benefit of her slowness cause they all get a doc-type to really listen to them... instead of the usual drive-bys or the less than usual walk bys that Venkatesh does. Kate gets to me before I get to my chair and says she is concerned about my phosphorous still being high (6.3). As usual, I know nothing. Haven't been eating cheese or tomato sauce or chocolate or ice cream or any of the bad things. I report to her that I actually had plain tacos at La Fogata* in San Antonio, a place where it is very difficult to eat so simply. She isn't impressed... but Rosie the Tech overhears me and she is impressed. So, we don't figure it out and I re-commit in my brain to ensuring I ALWAYS have binders in my pocket. I really think that what happens is that I don't do enough binders cause I always am forgetting to take a pocketful with me out into the world. Kate muses over the whole thing and then asks me to up my Phoslo to five per meal.
Then the dietician who is filling in for little Jordi follows and gives me my report and smiles. I settle in to my chair and listen to the O'Bama McCain Report... which used to be All Things Considered but now seems to only be about these guys running down the far side of the hill towards their eventual crash at the bottom next week. We've all voted already and the whole thing seems anti-climactic now. My only worry is the Noriega/Cornyn race and I don't think Noriega has a chance... but we can always hope for the best. Oh well.
It is Thursday so I am ready to watch Survivor and Gray's Anatomy to take my mind off
the races, today's anxiety-provoking SFBT Class, and my hugely busy last week of trips to San Antonio (Board Retreat), Conroe (consulting on the New STAR Contract), and Ft. Worth (Ethics for one of our big agencies up there). I am tired and I doze thru most of the TV until Survivor and then I doze thru some of that. I have finally selected my favorite survivor; Sugar from Brooklyn**; the cute little pin up girl that is really no dummy. Tonight she basically stood up and moved away from her first ally, Ace... and watched coyly as he was voted off the island. Is she the lady praying mantis they keep showing? Or some sort of deadly spider? We'll see.Gray's An
atomy is some sort of drivel this week, with all the usual characters doing their usual character flaws. Dr. Bailey, played by fellow Texan Chandra Wilson, is really the only character I enjoy watching anymore... she is a good actress and even in her earlier work on Law & Order she was great fun to watch. In this show she carries the show in many episodes, from my perspective. As I've said a number of times though, I am getting tired of this night-time soap. Tonight I watch half-heartedly and am almost happy to have a little cramping problem in the middle of he show... as the cramping starts Rosie turns me off for awhile as these funny cramps pop up around my body (a new experience). First there is this tightening in my right foot arch. I massage it and move my foot around. Then I get a small cramp in my left thigh and I rub on it... and then it leaves and comes back in my left foot bottom. By the time I have Rosie turn me off it has run over to my right calf and I can tell you from experience that for me, calf cramps are the worst. I rub and hit and slap my feet together so hard I feel like I might break a heel. Then I try all sorts of calisthenics to get rid of it. Takes about 5 minutes after she turns me off to really relax again. So I am off he machine for some time and then back on for about 15 minutes at the end. By then I am really ready to go home and Rosie unhooks we share the costumes we will wear tomorrow and wish each other a Happy Halloween! Notes: In at 77.7 and out at 74.8 kgs. [My friend Judy corrected me (Medicare, not Medicaid)]
* La Fogata online at http://www.lafogata.com/
**Sugar's page online at http://www.survivor.com/17/jessica-sugar-kiper
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