Whenever I’m confronted with a situation my first instinct is to curl up and die.  Luckily my second instinct is who get up, figure out what I have to do and do it so I managed to  work things out so I won’t have to go off my medication. 

 

I had enough Abilify (the most expensive of my meds) to last two weeks so ended up refilling my generic Prozac and getting then got two weeks worth of Cymbalta.  It wound up costing about $145.  Hopefully by the time I run out of everything my insurance company will have received and possessed my payment for October and November and I’ll be properly covered.

 

I have to say dealing with health insurance and trying to keep myself in meds is always good for a sleepless night. 

I’ve come to expect that if something can go wrong with health insurance it will and it apparently has in the case of my COBRA plan.  I found out today when I was trying to refill my antidepressant prescriptions that it’ll be about two weeks till my coverage kicks in.  In the meantime I have to decide if I’m going to shell out around $800 for meds or go without. 

 

This situation is mainly my fault—I apparently misunderstood something in the 20 page COBRA starter packet—but still it seems like a really bad state of affairs that people have to face choices like this.  I’d like to see a world where you could get the medication you needed without going through huge bureaucratic hassles and/or spending a fortune.  I’m lucky of course.  Withdrawal from my cocktail of psycho-active drugs isn’t going to be pleasant and it’s certainly not medically advisable but I don’t know that anyone has ever died from going off Cymbalta, Prozac and Abilify.  I know there are people out there who face life and death choice with regards to medication.

 

I know there are many people who consider socialized medicine a terrible thing and are against President Obama’s proposed Healthcare reforms (my father is of this opinion as are several of my high school friends who I communicate with through Facebook).  I don’t want to belittle their views but However from my perspective, that of  an individual who doesn’t have a lot of money and suffers from a chronic medical condition, healthcare reform seems necessary and socialized medicine seems like a really great thing.

I’m not sure if I feel like a different person these last couple of weeks or like I’m finally myself again. 

 

Everything isn’t happy happy joy joy all the time of course, I’ve had a couple bad days and I’m still trying to get my eating back on track my mood has been good and I have energy and ideas. 

 

I haven’t been doing much writing unfortunately, but I have been working on my art pretty steadily and I’m happy to say I sold three some items on etsy.com.  Also after months of isolation, I feel downright sociable. 

 

Over the last two months, we’ve been doing a fund-raising campaign for the Whole Planet foundation.  For at least the first half of this, I collected about $10 in donations because I couldn’t ask customers to give.  I was afraid they’d get angry, I just couldn’t do it.  However when I started feeling less depressed I started asking for contributions and yesterday I found out that of all the cashiers I’m ranked third for collecting donations. 

 

I should note that I work full time while several other cashiers are part-time and that there are a few cashers who are refusing to ask for donations at all.  Still, I’m really astounded that I’ve made such an improvement. 

 

I’ve also seen more of my sister and her family these past couple weeks and… I actually went out twice in the last couple of days. 

 

On Tuesday (which was Saint Patrick’s Day and a wonderful, unseasonable 70 degrees out) I went to see Tom Never’s Head, a sort of traditional/folk band that includes several people who work at the Market with me.  Then on Thursday I went to a dress rehearsal of a play called Blue Surge by Rebecca Gilman.  Another co-worker is a member of the Eclipse Theatre Company and was co-directing.  The play really made an impression on me and touched on some of my personal issues and experiences, I’ll write more on that later but now I really love that I’m able to support others in their creative endeavors again and take part in the world.