Keith Olbermann on Joe Wilson and why that was WRONG!

Ginny

On YouTube on Government-Run Universal Socialized Health Insurance

Why We Need Government-Run Universal Socialized Health Insurance

Ginny

Our James Maxwell, Jr. & Virginia Caputo Antiques Page on Facebook

James S. Maxwell, Jr. & Virginia Caputo Antiques on Facebook

About my dental hygienist and the issue of health care coverage

Twice a year I go and get my teeth cleaned by a dental hygienist. She is a lovely person whom I always enjoy seeing and talking with before and after she works on my teeth. I will refer to her as Susan which is not her real name. Susan is excellent at what she does, doing an efficient job with a minimum of discomfort to her patients. My husband, after too many years of avoiding the dentist office due to his fear and dislike of pain, now goes to her as well. He complains much less than if someone else there cleaned his teeth.

Susan has been cleaning my teeth for more than ten years. I can't remember what year it was that she first cleaned my teeth. I don't make appointments with anyone else there for my teeth cleaning. The cost now is somewhere around $135 including $35 to have the dentist take a quick look after Susan finishes. The price is more if x-rays are done. The appointment generally takes about an hour although I haven't timed it. I enjoy seeing Susan even though when I see her I am at the dentist having my teeth cleaned which is not my idea of the most fun way to spend an hour. I had always assumed that anyone who works in a field involving the health of others had health insurance coverage.

In my conversations with Susan I learned that she loves to play the piano. She loves birdwatching and has several birdfeeders set out in her yard at home as well as outside the window of the room where she cleans people's teeth. She is married, has one son who has gone to college and gotten a job and another son who died at 19, and she is religious. She has shared with me a considerable amount of personal information, especially considering that she only knows me from my coming in to have my teeth cleaned. I share a fair amount of personal information with her as well. We both share some similar experiences and interests. We both have had problems getting the right type and level of medication for our different but similar thyroid problems.

During my last appointment with Susan she shared with me that her 55 year old husband has been diagnosed with a very serious illness, one which has a terrible prognosis. Due to the symptoms of the illness he has had to quit his job where he had health insurance coverage for himself and her. The specific illness that he has allows him to get Medicare even though he is only 55. But Susan is going to lose coverage for herself. Currently they are under COBRA for a little while. They have gone from their both being employed and having health insurance to only her having a job and soon to having no health insurance for her. Due to the recession many people are not going in to have their teeth cleaned regularly as they had in the past. Thus Susan's income has dropped so much that she needed to find other ways to supplement her income. The only job she could find was as a grocery store clerk for minimum wage.

She has been looking around at health insurance policies and she cannot find a policy that she can afford. She does need health insurance but she certainly has preexisting conditions. She is 55 years old. Her husband has been diagnosed with a terminal illness which will cause him to become chronically ill requiring intensive medical care within a few years. She will be losing coverage for herself. She will be responsible for making a living for both of them. She does not make enough money to pay the health insurance premiums that are being quoted to her and even if she did, it is likely that they won't cover her preexisting conditions for at least a few years meaning that on top of the premiums that she can't afford, she'd have to pay the full rate of the cost of treatment for herself.

This is a person who is a Christian, who prays, who has lived a decent and good life, who works hard, who is a good kind spiritual person. She is now in circumstances that I am sure that she did not expect to occur. Why, on top of the stress of her husband having become ill, must she be without healthcare coverage for herself? The government will provide Medicare for her husband but how can the only other caregiver in the family do it all? How can she find a way to make an adequate living for them both plus be faced with the problem of getting healthcare for herself and being a caregiver for her husband?

What can someone who is against providing health care for all going to tell Susan about why they are against the government getting involved in health care? Why does she deserve the fate that is being dished up to her? She is already fearful of what is going to happen in the next few years because of her husband's illness. Why must the anxiety of what else can happen due to the lack of health coverage for herself be added to substantial stress that she is experiencing? Why, why, why? No one can explain this to me adequately.

No one can explain to me adequately why some people who call themselves Christians would be against providing affordable health care coverage to people like Susan. No one can explain to me adequately why some people who call themselves Christians and bang that Christian drum loudly also proclaim that they don't want government involved in coverage for health care. No one can explain to me adequately why some Christians want to have the words "under God" remain in the Pledge of Allegiance while that is a government Pledge, and yet they aren't as passionate about providing the basic right of human beings to being helped when they are ill no matter what their financial status because that would mean that the government is involved. They want to be involved in the government but they don't want the government to be involved with them! They will fight over two words in a national Pledge of Allegiance that is not and was never meant to be a religious prayer but they won't support a decision that affects the quality of life of millions of people. I am having a hard time recognizing some people who call themselves Christians as Christian.

No one can explain to me adequately why some people who call themselves Christians want government involvement when it comes to words but not government involvement when it comes to actions that provide comfort and assistance to all. It seems now that there are different sorts of Christians in the world: those who want to do things that lift people up out of their misery and those who want to do things that keep people miserable.

In the church where I grew up, I was not taught that it was a Christian thing to keep people miserable. I was taught that helping people was a good thing. How is it that some people now who bang their allegedly Christian drums very loudly against decisions that can raise people up out of the mire of health problems and misery have the nerve to call what they are doing Christian? I don't hear Christian in the sound of those drums.

Ginny

When it might not be Alzheimer's.

At the end of August 2008 my father-in-law died of Lewy Body Dementia. This is a very difficult type of dementia that can cause the sufferer to do bizarre things that are the opposite of what anyone would expect them to do. It is a common dementia but still not many people have heard of it and often it is misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's. Some of the medications prescribed for Alzheimer's can lead to serious side effects and even death in a patient with LBD. More doctors and the public needs to be aware of Lewy Body Dementia so that the correct treatment can be provided early on in the illness.

My father-in-law was a very intelligent polite man who worked for the Pentagon at the time of his retirement. When he was about eighty years old, he began doing strange things in the middle of the night. He would get up out of bed, pull the bedsheets off of the bed, and then twirl them over the railing of the stairway that went down to the front foyer. His wife had no luck stopping him from doing this. He would have no memory of having done this when asked about it the next day. Also at night, while still in bed, his legs would move as though he was running.

Early on in the illness my mother-in-law was mystified about what was happening to him. His behavior worsened to the point where he swore at her and called her names. She became fearful of what he might do to her while he was in one of these states. She called an ambulance one day to take him to the hospital where he was largely unresponsive during the day but tried to wander the halls at night. The doctors put him on the very medications that can worsen the symptoms of Lewy Body Dementia. It took our having to stay overnight at the hospital to restrain him in bed so that they would stop giving him the wrong medications and so that we could keep him alert enough during the day to get him home away from the hospital where he was being harmed because of not being diagnosed correctly.

Shortly after the hospital stay he was seen by a neurologist as well as a doctor who specializes in geriatric patients and he was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. He was prescribed medication that alleviated his symptoms considerably for over two years. But then the illness began to run its course and he deteriorated, eventually having to go to a nursing home where he died within a month.

A correct diagnosis is essential as without a correct diagnosis, the sufferer and his or her family can go through hell while the patient's bizarre symptoms continue unabated and can even worsen because of treatment that is not correct for that illness.

Ginny

The Beauty of Normal

Normal is a wonderful state to be in. You can't appreciate it fully until one day something happens and normal gets taken away from you and you can't get it back for some time. After a while you realize how wonderful normal is and you yearn to find a way back to normal. If the thing that took normal away from you is a health issue and is said to be resolvable and if you're like me, you work like crazy to get back to normal.

In 2005 I was diagnosed with Grave's Disease for which I was treated in the Fall of that year. In the initial treatment of Grave's, they knocked out part of my thyroid with radiation. Then I waited about a year before I was put on thyroid hormone to replace what my irradiated thyroid was making in insufficient quantities. Then I waited some more to see if the level of thyroid hormone was correct which is determined by having blood tests done and by reporting on how I felt. Trying to get the level of thyroid hormone right is like watching the longest slowest movie you ever saw. It is like watching and waiting for paint to dry day after day after day, month after month. You are trapped in your skin, a prisoner of the whims of the hormone and the doctor who writes your prescription.

After a year of being on the medication I still did not feel normal. I missed normal very much. I was upset. I talked to my doctor, a man well respected in his field, the head of the endocrinology division at a medical school. He adjusted things a bit, gave me another type of thyroid hormone, and told me there were limits to what could be done. I went along with his program, trying to be satisfied and not whine too much while still missing that old familiar normal. The months dragged on. The symptoms of insufficient thyroid hormone remained.

When I don't feel normal, there is no convincing me that this is as good as it gets. It didn't set well with me when my doctor told me that there wasn't much more he could do for me. When I was having blood drawn for something else, I had an opportunity on my own to check my hormone levels mid-year from when I would see that doctor again. The hormone levels were off! They were not right. I called my doctor and let him know and also discussed my multiple symptoms of being hypothyroid which he expressed doubt about being due to my thyroid levels. His dismissing my symptoms made me angry. So angry that I wrote him a four page letter letting him know the illogic of his statement and how much I disagreed with it. While he hadn't agreed with me on the symptoms, he did increase my medication and that did the trick! Normal returned! Not perfection but normal! I wasn't expecting perfection but when normal came back, I recognized it and welcomed it back with open arms!

I wrote my doctor another letter, letting him know that normal was back. And telling him all the ways that I felt better, all the symptoms that were now gone. I made quite a list. A couple of months later I had an appointment with him and I went over it all again. Thyroid hormone affects things that you might not even realize that it affects. I won't list all of the things that were normalized as it makes a lengthy list. One simple thing that improved was the condition of my skin. I wasn't expecting how improved my skin would be! That was a pleasant surprise! What was the best part about having normal back was having a clarity of thought that I had been missing for over two years. Also I was able to sleep and feel rested, something else I had been missing for a long time. Maybe in another post on another day I will list all the ways that I learned that thyroid hormone level can affect us.

I have had normal back since the Spring of this year and I am excited, thrilled, delighted, and pleased to feel plain old ordinary normal! Normal is a highly underrated condition! Normal is wonderful and especially beautiful when you get it back after not having it for a while. I don't think I'll ever take feeling normal for granted again!


Ginny

The Nondaily Pic: Still Life with Hands"

-- Ginny posting from her iPhone

Update to Ebay & Propay payment reporting issue

This is an update to my July 29 post about ebay reporting that payment was made through Propay that was never received by Propay. Payment from the customer in France arrived in the mail and we sent that item out. Ebay never did correct the information on our MyEbay page that indicated incorrectly that the item was paid for on Propay. It is no longer a problem for us and if ebay wants to leave that transaction recorded that way in their database, it doesn't affect us.

If this situation occurred again with another transaction, it could be a pain in the butt if the customer did not send payment and we had to file an unpaid item dispute. Hopefully that won't happen and maybe they've got things figured out now so it won't happen again.

Ginny

The Lancaster County Art Association's Facebook Page

Lancaster County Art Association on Facebook

Ginny

Photo from Iran on Twitpic posted by oxfordgirl

Ginny