Not surprisingly I have been in a crazy amount of pain over the last week.  My lung is killing me and there’s no end in sight, since I don’t know when I’m ever going to be able to get a nerve block again.  At the suggestion of  friend I’m going to try to find out if they perform the cryogenic nerve block at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, IA.  Though I would have to take more time to do it, I wouldn’t ever have to worry about a ride and they’d be okay with setting up a payment plan.  Rush seems to think that (quality of) life is less important than cash.  While I really like Dr. Amin if the hospital isn’t going to be okay with something less than $25/month (especially when I receive multiple bills for a visit) then I literally cannot afford to go there.

I had a dream the other night where I’d been in some sort of accident and was in an aftercare facility.  I was sitting in a wheelchair with my right leg elevated and in a lot of pain.  Of course, then I woke up and was in a ridiculous amount of pain.  Like my lung it’s been horrible all week.  Mostly my right side, the hip and my shoulder up through my neck.  The right always is worse than the left, save for my lungs.  I notice that when I have lung pain I often am not aware of the pain on that side unless it’s really bad.  I probably should have asked Dr. Wilkin to write the Rx for extra for when the pain is worse.  I didn’t expect that I’d still regularly be hitting 9 on the pain scale though.  I’m guessing the times that I don’t think to take a pill when I wake in the middle of the night will make up for it eventually.  I wish I’d remembered to pick it up on the 10th!  Then I’d have extra.

Of course all this pain means that my sleep has been terrible.  I’m getting an hour to an hour and a half at best in any given stretch.  When it gets to be 15-30 minutes I tend to just get up, even if end up going back to sleep 10 minutes later.  It somehow seems less frustrating then.  Normally I don’t look at the clock when I get up, but since the wake ups have been so frequent I wanted to see.  And it’s not like knowing the time has ever made it more difficult for me to go back to sleep anyway.  As usual I’m asleep within a couple minutes… only to wake up a few minutes after that!

So the G.I. Joe comment was based on what my friend Ed said the other day. I had mentioned that my COBRA administrator sent me a note asking for this month’s payment.  However, I am receiving the COBRA subsidy and because I paid in full for December they technically owe me money, which in the past was just rolled over for future payments.  Though that was a different administrator.   Anyway, so I had said something about it and Ed’s response was, “Call in G.I. Joe… they hate COBRA administrators and use heavy explosives.”  If only it were that easy!  Obviously I don’t have an extra $200 to plunk down until they figure out what’s going on with the money, plus I’m just going to send it right back to them anyway.  Thankfully, my friends have again proved that they are the most awesome, loving, caring people in the world.

Finally got my appointment rescheduled with DHS.  Totally confused about it though.  It doesn’t say anything about an appeal.  I think maybe they realized the mistake.  I’ll be counting down the days!  I did finally do some grocery shopping, since we stopped being fed at work every day.  But it wasn’t a huge budget drain because I’ve been asked to work extra quite a bit recently.  Of course working means I can’t cook, so it’s both a pro and a con.  I got a magical Starbucks card in the mail the other day, so I’d been eating there and working my way through the easy fix things in the house (oatmeal, pasta, popcorn).  Anyway the point is… regular grocery shopping, here I come! (hopefully)

I want to thank a few people for all the help and support they’ve given me recently:

• Adam
• Blair
• Dan
• Eilene
• Eli & Rachael
• Lana
• Meg
• Rich