Thursday, December 8, 2011

Breathe Easy

Part two of maintaining insurance / MediCare and food stamps (SNAP) complete!

My asthma has been bothering me a lot this week, not sure if it is the wetness- a trigger- or stress- also a trigger. I'm hoping and trying to avoid having to see my doctor or worse, the hospital. Thankfully the nurse on call knows me personally and gave me some things to try with my home nebulizer first. I'll just have to try and not stress today and breathe easy.

Back to insurance. So my first interview/panel review was today. We have one every 6 months and they get to look through just about everything. Medical records, yup. Bank statements, yup. Copies of food reciepts, yup. Copies of co-pays, copies of every prescription filled for the last 6 months, yup....
It's about 50-70 pages of paperwork for me to gather and file. Roughly 20-40 hours of work. Hours away from Wash. I hate that part. I've hated it the last 4 times I've had to do it. Not to mention the pain of having to fax all this in and get confirmation. It is one of my biggest stressors outside of money and brain tumors.

This time, was a bit different.
For starters my wait time was only an hour to begin with, which is not bad- I'm used to 2-3.
The main interviewer also never doubted me this time when I confirmed Wash did indeed have terminal brain cancer. She was patient and kind. More so, she was able to (unlike any others prior) understand that me taking care of my husband was full time and unpaid. We had our interview for about an hour and then the best news came; I only have two documents to submit to the board this time around. They have my file already, so they are not making me repeat every piece of paper like they had. Huzzah!
I have about 2 more steps to complete before we are both "set" for the next 6 months with insurance and SNAP, but it is amazing what humanity can do. The simple act of understanding that you are dealing with people; sick people who need help, rather than just numbers or expenses can be... so amazing. I'm amazed at how nice I feel after being treated like a human.
Why is being treated like a human such an aberrant experience?

Aside from that, we had some good quality time this week, and some really nice surprises in the mail. Wash was not up to his physical best yesterday but we are both hoping he feels better tomorrow, I want to take him down to the aquarium on Friday.

I have more to say, but I just told myself not to stress out, since I'm trying not to fuck my asthma up any more.

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