Holy Cholecystectomy, Batman!

 No surprise that after that HIDA scan showing 9% ejection fraction and the almost too large polyps that the gallbladder is, indeed, coming out. End of this month, in fact! I’m dealing with the blah symptoms (nausea, upper right quadrant pain especially after fatty foods, fever/chills alternating/ temperature regulation issues, water brash in throat, trapped gas— this can vary for everyone but that’s been my cocktail), counting the days.

My dad lost his best friend this past month to a long battle with cancer. RIP, Richard ‘Too Tall’ Insprucker. Like my grandpa, he stuck around more years than expected and I’m sure his daughter was grateful for every moment even though it’s never enough.

Indiana decided to pass work requirements for Medicaid like the absolute fidgety, awful at budgeting moronic Republicans that they are and I’m just hoping they actually LOOK at my medical history and see that moderate to complex label meaning if my insurance is gone, so is any ability to work. I absolutely rely on ADHD medication to focus and I’ve had a lot of digestive system complications that have been crippling. I have no intent to get on disability. It keeps people poor and helpless and I have no intent of letting them cap my income/assets at any time for any reason. The only ‘entitlement’ I want is health insurance and quite frankly, after a work history that paid little, rarely ever gave me even expensive but even mildly helpful insurance and led to a great deal of my health issues, I *muthafucking* EARNED it. Service and retail jobs sucked my very soul and no one should make less than living wage at jobs that trying. I learned a lot in college but they lied about ever placing me, which was the whole reason I went. I was already learning those programs on my own; what I needed was the network and employment. 

I don’t do ‘nothing’ either. Even laid up, I’ve made crochet patterns to sell, I do product testing with several companies, I do piecework graphic design and do surveys in spare time that I cash out for PayPal credit. No, it’s not stable but I pride myself on being resourceful and giving my life purpose even though my medical issues cause a great deal of anxiety and depression as they get worse before my doctors can figure out what’s wrong. Unfortunately with digestive issues, it requires trying medications for months at a time, running scans when symptoms worsen and waiting some more. 

Just getting to the heart of the gallbladder issue took nearly a year because I also have moderate to severe gastritis and elevated liver enzymes that show some liver damage or hepatic steatosis vs. fibrosis (that IS reversible but will still need to be scanned again next year to see if I’ve been able to do that). For those unaware, this is the crux of medical complexity. It’s one or more chronic conditions that require constant medication and specific treatment. Aside from the physical issues, I’ll remind you again… neurological= ADHD. It not only doesn’t go away, but it can be crippling when under stress. Coping mechanisms can’t always help for impulsivity or emotional regulation. 

I might panic about things that are minor to other people but I’ll be the one weirdly calm in a crisis because I’ve likely already cynically ruminated my way through it in the event it ever happened. I hesitate to call that a disability because when it comes down to it, my brain just files things a bit differently in a way that makes sense to me but can be difficult to explain the logic stack to anyone else. Nonetheless, I don’t have it mildly. I’m a stimmer to the point that others think I’m anxious, but I actually only feel anxiety if I DON’T fidget. If I’m fidgeting, I’m usually calm and thinking clearly. (I had to turn off the tapping feature on my phone that operated my flashlight because I’d turn it off and on when I didn’t realize I was tapping on it.)

But yeah. Indiana is a beautiful place with some ugly misled, authoritarian, freedom hating nosey ass people (and a ridiculous amount of people that fill their yards with rusty junk) but really, where can you go in the US that isn’t full of problems? I don’t have the financial means or the physical ability to just get up and travel. I’m one medical crisis after another and I’m really just trying to get the most out of life however I can. I take care of kitties, indoors and out, and make the best of it. 

But hot damn, are people aggravatingly dumb out there! You guys actually go out there and deal with people without ripping out your hair and howling at the moon? More power to you, because what goes on these days makes me very grateful I enjoy my own company. It’s like people don’t even try to be polite anymore. I mean, there are a few of us left but not nearly enough. It’s soothing to my soul when we meet, but I miss when people were at least fake-considerate. Grumbling about Gen Z when most of these kids are a lot more emotionally intelligent than the haters.