What I look like when I'm on hold with Anthem Blue Cross during its death throes

So, a while back I posted what I look like while I'm on the phone with Anthem Blue Cross and eating a breadstick instead of smoking a cigarette. You can refresh your memory here. Today, I tried for the fifth time to contact Anthem in order to remove the automatic withdrawal of Sophie's premium from our checking account. I'll remind you that the evil and disastrous Affordable Care Act (that's sarcasm, there) enabled us to finally add Sophie to our health plan, and in doing so we are getting an entirely new health insurance plan with  entirely better benefits with an entirely different company for an entirely better price. Sophie used to have her own plan, an abysmal one, whose premium had been jacked up over 100% over the last few years and was diligently removed from our checking account by Anthem each month. The rest of our family had a separate individual policy with Anthem, equally as abysmal with an even greater rate of jacked-up premium, and we paid that one by check each month.

Anyhoo.

I've been trying to cancel the automatic withdrawal of Sophie's payment for weeks and have not been able to get through to a customer "service" agent. When I was connected to a human service agent -- ONCE -- I was sent on one of those hellish odysseys through the windowless warrens of Anthem and finally landed behind door number 6,345,876 and told to hold. Again.  The picture above was taken during that hold time, and in lieu of a bread stick, I kept a pen in my mouth and rolled its smooth, cold chartreuseness in my mouth while listening to many, many bars of a requiem that I imagined was for the death throes of Anthem and its connection to my family. My normal appreciation for classical music reached a breaking point, though, and when a voice finally broke into some seventeenth century dirge, it told me that due to the Affordable Care Act, we are unable to help you with your problem. Please call back at another time. In lieu of chewing on pens or smoking bread sticks, I went for the rectal Valium that Anthem has so kindly allowed us to purchase at a reasonable price.

Just kidding. That would have been an unauthorized usage of a powerful narcotic. We prefer weed over here.






To make a long story short, I have contacted my bank and put a stop to the automatic withdrawals that way. On February 1st, when the new policy goes into effect, I will be walking through the streets of Los Angeles with a burning blue cross. If anyone would like to join me, please do. There will be bread sticks and rectal Valium.

Diastat Days

photo by Jennifer W.

I woke up this morning at just after 4:00 to Sophie howling in her bed, not a croon but a howl, the seizure slicing through her throat, air pressed out. She had two more like that, I dithered about Diastat for the thousandth time should I wait should I do it should I wait no do it no wait just do it. I snapped off the plastic top and tore the foil envelope of lubricant, inserted the tip into foil and then into Sophie. Eventually, her eyes fluttered, her hands, in claws at her ears, relaxed. I lay beside her. There is no one to call, I told Suzy, as I wandered the grocery aisles, picking up flour, sugar, eggs, butter, the bad stuff for the five dozen cupcakes I will make this evening. There's nothing to do, sometimes, but endure, I thought, and pushed the for what away. Later, I leaped off the no white food cliff, smeared Brillat Savarin on a baguette, ate it in my car while Astrud Gilberto sang to me.

First day of school, "libtards," Ayn Rand, and Other ramblings

It's the first day of school for Sophie, but she's at home, sleeping off Diastat that I had to give her on Sunday night after a day of six gigantic seizures. I haven't the foggiest idea why she had so many seizures -- was it the heat? was it the moon? was her brain taking a riff off the flurry of small earthquakes we had? I'll never know, and neither will you. In any case, I left her at home with The Husband so that I could bring her paperwork to school, the boxes of educational stuff and her wheelchair and other accouterments. I was overjoyed that the aide assigned to her will be Millie, the same fantastic person who accompanied her to Communicamp the last two summers. It's almost too good to be true. It might even be a great year.

I walked the halls of the giant high school, tried not to wince at the boy with those giant earlobe stretcher thingamabobs who walked past me, or his friend who wore a black tee-shirt with giant white lettering that spelled out: LEGALIZED POT GANG or something like that. They had backpacks on and skate shoes and were laughing together, typical teenagers despite their off-kilter appearance. I am glad that I only wince when I see this and am not affronted, but I have no idea why this is so.

The other day, I stupidly engaged with a person who goes by the name Skunkfeathers when he comments on a conservative blog that I periodically check on to see what's up in that otherland. Skunkfeathers likes to refer to people of the liberal or left persuasion as libtards, of which I am one, and when I objected to the term, he kept at it. In the ensuing exchange, he claimed You may call the term 'libtard' an attack on a class of handicapped; you're free to do so. A person with a condition from birth, I don't consider 'retarded'. They have a disability. Many of which overcome it with hard work and guts. I promptly told him that his comment was not factual and, actually, ignorant, but the last sentence is the one that I've been perseverating on for nearly a week. Many of which overcome it with hard work and guts. I think it's the word overcome that stops me short and helps me to make the segue to the vast space, ever increasing, between those on the "left," and those on the "right," those that think the recent appointment of Paul Ryan as VP contender is depressing as hell and those that think his government-slashing, Ayn Randian group-think is the answer to the question of the legion of lazy, shiftless folks, including the disabled, who persist in exhausting government monies and leeching from what really matters: a powerful military and the promulgation of American exceptionalism, shoved down the throats of those who just don't know better. Sophie's seizures began for no apparent reason shortly after her initial vaccinations at two months of age. When the seizures didn't stop, her development sputtered along with periodic plateaus, and despite hard work and guts for over seventeen years, she can't talk, can only walk with assistance, wears diapers and must be fed. The other night, when I snapped off the plastic top of the syringe that holds the Valium, dipped it into the foil packet of lubricant, lay Sophie gently on her side and inserted the drug into her rectum, I wondered if she -- and I -- worked hard enough and had guts enough to keep going.

I won't pretend to understand the finer points of Ryan's famous budget proposal, but I do know that if enacted, it will decimate, completely, the already weak supports that people like Sophie and her family (The Husband, me, Henry, Oliver) and other libtards -- as well as conservatives -- depend upon to give our lives a modicum of sanity.  At best, I'm thinking this potential decimination is due to ignorance and fear of The Other, and I'm not sure what to do about it other than keep bleating when I can.

When I told Oliver about the Republican operative in Pennsylvania and his comments about the retarded, Oliver burst into tears. He then uttered the F word, which, I'm certain, some might call an example of the deteriorating values of our young people. I told Oliver that he shouldn't use that kind of language although it might, perhaps, be fitting in this particular circumstance. I then told him that people are ignorant and afraid of what they don't understand. Sometimes, I told him, they're just stupid.

Musings

My good friend S and I had a fantabulous lunch today at Mozza-- the most perfect chopped salad of lettuces and herbs and salami and the thinnest slices and bits of cheese and a sprinkling of herbs and just enough acid, was it lemon or vinegar -- in the dressing. And then we had two little pizzas -- on the most perfect crust, completely devoid of grease -- tiny little clams that tasted in one bite exactly like the sea and on the other thin slivers of artichokes and a bite of lemon taking the edge off some kind of creamy cheese. S had a glass of wine because it was her birthday lunch, and I took a couple of sips from it and it tasted like flowers. And then we had dessert -- spoonfuls of butterscotch pudding with a hidden crunch of Maldon sea salt, so faint that the sharpness was a surprise that disappeared in the puff of thick sauce that came with it and the finish of light, airy whipped cream. We just about ran our fingers in the glass and licked them, it was so good.

On the way out we kept talking, mainly sharing stories of our daughters who both have special needs. I gave her a big bag of clothes that Sophie had grown out of and remarked on the rickety stroller in the back of my car that I need to replace. I need to buy a new one, and the insurance company doesn't cover wheelchair/strollers. The stroller will cost at least $2500 and I just don't have that now or, for that matter, in the near future. And then I remarked that I understand insurance companies cover Viagra, that drug that helps older men maintain erections. S has the same sense of humor as me and she pointed out that I should write about it and call it:

SPECIAL NEEDS MUSINGS

So here's one:

I wonder if I could get a prescription for Viagra, cash it in over time and buy a wheelchair for Sophie?

OR

I wonder if there's a black market for Diastat, the rectal valium that we have to keep on hand for emergencies. Each package has exactly two doses, already in their syringes, and they cost $450 each (without insurance), and I always have to make a case for how much we need them whenever I refill them.

I could perhaps stockpile the Diastat (since the insurance company suspects that's what I'm doing) for real and have a rectal valium party where people pay for their dose.

And then there's another blogger friend, Ms. Moon, who mused on her own personal vanity as she slowly gets ready to be a grandmother. Even though I'm nowhere near being a grandmother, I spend an inordinate amount of time being vain -- about my weight, about my appearance, about the loss of my skinny, young, carefree self -- you'd think I had nothing else to worry about. HA!

Another Musing

I wonder whether Gertrude Stein worried about what she looked like. I like to think not. That she had somehow come to a state of peace and sat, immobile, on her literary throne, waited on hand and foot (and loved) by the even uglier Alice B. Toklas, eating incredible food, entertaining the greatest literary and artistic talents of the day. I want to be like Gertrude Stein.