On Monday, for the third time this year, the Slacktivixen goes in for “pre-surgery testing.”
The first of these was back in January and it didn’t go well. Her electrolytes and whatnot were all so out of whack that surgery was deemed too risky. That was your basic medical Catch-22 — due to the symptoms caused by the problem this surgery would fix, you can’t have the surgery to fix it.
After a couple of months of supplements and bananas and Tums and macadamia nuts and forcing herself to eat even though eating hurts she was scheduled for a second “pre-surgery” round of tests. But that one got cancelled because of America’s one-of-a-kind health insurance system. My employer had dis-enrolled my spouse because of paperwork. It took some luck, a handful of miracles, and the intervention of my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss for us to get her reinstated, along with a bunch of certified letters, a certified copy of our marriage license, and a sheaf of tax and mortgage documents, but our benefits center has finally conceded that my wife is, indeed, my wife, and therefore does qualify for the (expensive) spousal coverage the company provides to anyone who manages to jump through all those hoops.
So now it’s August, 2024, more than two years and one coma after we first started this long effort to get American health care for her painful, disabling, and utterly fixable condition.
If she passes this last medical hurdle, we’ll get a date for her surgery sometime in early September. This will be either the fourth or fifth such scheduled date and we’re almost too scarred and scared to believe it could finally happen. But it could finally happen. There may be a light at the end of the frog.
America’s one-of-a-kind health system requires the copay up-front, of course. We think we’ll have that covered with a loan from my 401(k). But it’s gonna be tight, so I’m kicking off a week of fundraising here.
If you’re willing and able, we could sure use your support
Here is a link to my PayPal account.
I am also on Venmo as @George-Clark-61.
I am also on Venmo as @George-Clark-61.
(Like George Orson Welles and George Thomas Seaver, I’ve always gone by my middle name.)
The support and generosity that so many of you have shown us in previous fundraisers here has been absolutely vital for our family over this whole health journey — especially after her health issues cost my wife her job, and therefore her health insurance last October. I can never say thank you enough or fully express our gratitude for that. But thank you again, and thank you in advance for whatever you’re willing or able to pitch in now.
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