I was driving onto Travis Air Force Base the other day, going to get a CT scan for one of my follow-ups on my lung cancer surgery almost two years ago. There's a lot of construction, for those of you who haven't been in Cowtown for a while, the biggest is the building of a Amtrak station off Peabody Rd. and Vanden/Cement Hill roads. The plan calls for an overcrossing to be built on Peabody to take traffic over the train crossing. To that end, Peabody has been closed at the intersection of Vanden/Cement Hill roads, and the detour takes you all the way back, around the jail, and back onto Air Base Parkway. Most people in Vacaville/Dixon/Rio Vista areas use the back gate, so it's not uncommon to see traffic backed up in the mornings.
The person in front of me had a rental car, and the current readiness level (Bravo) requires the gate sentries to look in the trunk of rental cars. There was some junk in the trunk, not hers, the car's, but it was otherwise OK. It got me to remembering an old car my dad fixed up, and let my sister Sherry use...
It was a brown, 1947 Plymouth coupe, six-cylinder engine, and a 3-speed manual transmission with the shifter on the steering column. Pop brought it home, and the girls (sisters Sherry and Pat) responded with the 1950's version of, "Ewww!" It was a total P.O.S., and it broke down in our driveway a couple of weeks after Pops bought it. I don't remember how long it took him to do it, but he totally rebuilt the engine, and actually had the car running pretty well. It would be a great car to have today, except for one small thing...
Pops was kind of a lazy guy, and only wanted to travel out to the dump when he had to. Our garbage service in Vallejo didn't take yard clippings, so we had to store them up, and take them out to the dump ourselves. Being lazy, Pops just tossed them into the trunk of the Plymouth. Ever smell dead grass after it has baked for several days in the trunk of the car? I can tell you, without a shred of doubt, it stinks like Hell, but this was the car my sister Sherry got to drive. I think my parent's attempt at preventing teen-aged pregnancies was pretty effective, but there were still holes in that plan, as would later be discovered.
One afternoon, my sister had to go out to Mare Island (when it was still a Naval Base), and a robbery suspect had evaded Vallejo Police, getting onto the Base somehow. They had chased him around some of the Shipyard warehouses, and had asked for the Marines on the gate, now armed with M14's, to search every vehicle for a white male suspect. Cars would pull up, stop, the Marines would ask to open the trunk (they didn't have interior switches in '47). For the safety of the driver, they would take the keys, and open the trunk with cover from the other Marine. Imagine the look on my sister's face when they opened the trunk to find two weeks of grass clippings. The Marines smiled, closed the trunk, gave my sister the keys with a, "Have a nice day, ma'am."
I don't know why, but something about that incident flashed when I saw the Airman checking the trunk of a rental car.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Friday, August 21, 2015
There's Hope at Last!
I have been fighting a problem with my hips (AVN), and the left one in particular. On an MRI of my left hip, a cyst and a tear in the labrum was revealed. Since then, I have been playing the bureaucracy to get an arthroscopic procedure to remove the cyst, and repair the torn labrum. I thought it would be easy enough, an orthopedic surgeon could take care of that, right? Sort of... maybe... What do you mean you're not a hip guy? I don't give a rat's rump if you can boogie the night away, or speak in the current vernacular, I want you to get a f-ing cyst out of my hip. Oh, you mean you're not that kind of hip doctor? Elbows, knees, ankle guys. Yeah, I get it, hip work isn't hip work, mostly for old people. If you work knees and elbows, you can get on with a MLB, or NFL, or NBA team as a consultant. Swell...
Finally found an actual hip guy up in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, a drive of 50 miles, or so. Met with him, got to scheduling, and United Healthcare/Military/Veterans decided that I didn't need something in the Dr.'s request, and "partially" approved the procedure. Dr. Greene wasn't going to do what was approved, so everything (including a $51 co-pay), just stopped. This was in early May 2015.
I spent the month of June trying to re-establish the fact that, of the three options I was given (do nothing, get hip injections (steroids), or arthroscopic surgery), the only viable choice was surgery.
I asked my Primary Care Manager, Dr. Vogel, to see if he could get the hip injections coordinated with my back injections, scheduled for July 13, 2015. Meanwhile, in a series of e-mails through Relay Health (it's meant to computerize appointments, prescription renewals, etc.) but I sent him a plaintive request for help with my referrals, stating firmly that the "do nothing" option was not.
This whole thing began because I was no longer able to walk even nine holes of golf. I'm fortunate, in that I have access to the military course at Travis, where I pay for my golf annually, and I can get a "cart card" that drops the regular price of renting a cart from $18 to $13 for a full 18 holes. The fact is, I miss walking the course. Cypress Lakes (the Travis AFB course) is flat, although there are raised greens and tees, and some small knolls throughout the layout, so it's easy to walk. Eventually, I'd like to get one of those self-propelled carts, to walk alongside, but I could do with one that is easy to push. That is still in the future, however.
In July, I met my appointment for my back injections, and was asked if I was ever told that steroid injections in my hip were no longer allowed because of my AVN. I told him that I was, but that I wanted that little fact brought up again, due to my current problem. Finally, I got a phone call about the "partially approved" referral, and an appointment to see Dr. Vogel to see WTF was going on with United Healthcare. Six days later, I get a new referral for Dr. Greene authorizing the arthroscopy.
I called the Dr.'s office today (Friday, August 20, 2015, and got through to his surgical scheduler, who said she didn't have a copy of the referral (she does now). I'm waiting for her to call me back, sometime today. There's hope.
Finally found an actual hip guy up in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, a drive of 50 miles, or so. Met with him, got to scheduling, and United Healthcare/Military/Veterans decided that I didn't need something in the Dr.'s request, and "partially" approved the procedure. Dr. Greene wasn't going to do what was approved, so everything (including a $51 co-pay), just stopped. This was in early May 2015.
I spent the month of June trying to re-establish the fact that, of the three options I was given (do nothing, get hip injections (steroids), or arthroscopic surgery), the only viable choice was surgery.
I asked my Primary Care Manager, Dr. Vogel, to see if he could get the hip injections coordinated with my back injections, scheduled for July 13, 2015. Meanwhile, in a series of e-mails through Relay Health (it's meant to computerize appointments, prescription renewals, etc.) but I sent him a plaintive request for help with my referrals, stating firmly that the "do nothing" option was not.
This whole thing began because I was no longer able to walk even nine holes of golf. I'm fortunate, in that I have access to the military course at Travis, where I pay for my golf annually, and I can get a "cart card" that drops the regular price of renting a cart from $18 to $13 for a full 18 holes. The fact is, I miss walking the course. Cypress Lakes (the Travis AFB course) is flat, although there are raised greens and tees, and some small knolls throughout the layout, so it's easy to walk. Eventually, I'd like to get one of those self-propelled carts, to walk alongside, but I could do with one that is easy to push. That is still in the future, however.
In July, I met my appointment for my back injections, and was asked if I was ever told that steroid injections in my hip were no longer allowed because of my AVN. I told him that I was, but that I wanted that little fact brought up again, due to my current problem. Finally, I got a phone call about the "partially approved" referral, and an appointment to see Dr. Vogel to see WTF was going on with United Healthcare. Six days later, I get a new referral for Dr. Greene authorizing the arthroscopy.
I called the Dr.'s office today (Friday, August 20, 2015, and got through to his surgical scheduler, who said she didn't have a copy of the referral (she does now). I'm waiting for her to call me back, sometime today. There's hope.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Some Explanations
For that one, or two of you who actually read my blog, I need to talk about things that can fill you're time (when you're really bored). I started this thing after my dad passed away in 2009, as a way of letting off some steam as I took on the job of caring for a mother who's cheese was slipping off her cracker, so to speak. I took it on because I was close. My parent's house was less than two miles from mine. The idea of having her live with us, or our living with her was not in question. She didn't want to move, and she didn't want anyone moving in, end of story.
I've talked about the experiences, on occasion, but there's a whole lot more that I didn't post, probably more than I ever published. Some of it is hypercritical, some of it is a bit whiney, and some of it is just inane ramblings that have little use, other than I wrote them down, so I don't have to carry it around with me. If I want to go back over that time (trust me, that is not happening), it's all there, and I can look at it whenever I want.
I'd like to think that the stuff that "made the cut" was better writing, the reason I published them. I wrote a lot, at first, and published most of them, but then things got to the point that all I was doing with my blog was putting down a lot of bullshit, and never publishing any of it (thank goodness).
When Mom passed, I got writer's block, and couldn't get anything going. I work on crosswords every day, and I'm looking up words, as I'm reading, that I didn't know "for sure" what they meant. I'm finding that I was mostly correct in my assumptions regarding meanings, but I'm learning a lot of alternate usages, word origins, and entomology, things I used to enjoy as a boy. Mom was my link to literacy. Not that my dad wasn't, but he read, mostly, pulp fiction novels, and Louis Lamoure westerns. That wasn't my cup 'o tea.
I'm struggling right now, in fact, almost three years after she passed. I don't know what's happening, but I just can't seem to shake it. Please, bear with me as I work this out. Read some of my earlier posts, but let me know you've been here. Maybe that's what I really need, someone to tell my stories to. What do you say?
I've talked about the experiences, on occasion, but there's a whole lot more that I didn't post, probably more than I ever published. Some of it is hypercritical, some of it is a bit whiney, and some of it is just inane ramblings that have little use, other than I wrote them down, so I don't have to carry it around with me. If I want to go back over that time (trust me, that is not happening), it's all there, and I can look at it whenever I want.
I'd like to think that the stuff that "made the cut" was better writing, the reason I published them. I wrote a lot, at first, and published most of them, but then things got to the point that all I was doing with my blog was putting down a lot of bullshit, and never publishing any of it (thank goodness).
When Mom passed, I got writer's block, and couldn't get anything going. I work on crosswords every day, and I'm looking up words, as I'm reading, that I didn't know "for sure" what they meant. I'm finding that I was mostly correct in my assumptions regarding meanings, but I'm learning a lot of alternate usages, word origins, and entomology, things I used to enjoy as a boy. Mom was my link to literacy. Not that my dad wasn't, but he read, mostly, pulp fiction novels, and Louis Lamoure westerns. That wasn't my cup 'o tea.
I'm struggling right now, in fact, almost three years after she passed. I don't know what's happening, but I just can't seem to shake it. Please, bear with me as I work this out. Read some of my earlier posts, but let me know you've been here. Maybe that's what I really need, someone to tell my stories to. What do you say?
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