Who knew?

It turns out that watching shows with lots of beautiful pan shots of deserts and mountains, explosions,  giant robots fighting each other, and pilots angsting over their lives is a good way to pass the time while you sort and organize your collection of 9+ years of OWCP injury files.  And playing shows with tons of potty humor and generally inappropriate content can help distract your mind from the rage as you figure out what to scan/bring when you visit the doctor one last time in an attempt to get a code added to your file.  Maybe I should have looked for something with more explosions because my jaw is killing me from when I must have been clenching my teeth while taking notes and marking things with sticky papers.

By this time next year, for better or for worse, pray that this fight is all over.  I don't want to deal with another year of this, even if it means the OWCP wins their game of trying to make injured workers give up on ever getting any real help and justice.  Just crush all my hope to atomic base components once and for all if it means I can be done with all this.  As I've mentioned before, hope springing eternal gets more head injuries from low ceilings than docile despair.

Miles once said, "I'm tired
of playing wall."  Me too, boy.
Me, too.

Now for something completely different

This Saturday, I'm going to see an acupuncturist.  This is really on the advice of my mother who has been doing research.  Western medicine had seven years to help me, as did my Federal Government, but they failed big time.  Let's give some other alternatives a try.

As a bonus, the only actually certified doctor who is also covered by my insurance happens to be female and a Christian.  What an interesting coincidence . . . :)

Government email is spam

If you ever send the U.S. federal government an email, be sure to check your spam folder regularly for the reply.  Yahoo assumes your email from the federal government is spam.  I guess that's not the government's fault, but sheesh.

Why is the government so behind the times when it comes to email?  So much time is wasted sending documents and requests back and forth through the mail (and having them always mysteriously disappear if they're not sent in a traceable format), and it's nearly impossible to access information you need in anything approaching a timely fashion. 

In my more cynical moments, I think the government thrives on this inefficiency and even uses it to its advantage.  It's quite easy for all the delays to hurt citizens while the government crunches on, rolling over us without a care in the world.  It certainly has for my little ongoing OWCP drama . . .

Sometimes I wonder how much more efficient our government would be if it joined this new-fangled internet revolution.  I've even imagined what would happen if Google took over communication duties for the government.  What a silly dreamer, I am, imagining a world where I could immediately access my SF-50 and enter three simple pieces of information into my application for another government job.

Of course, I'm ignoring the whole national security issue, here.  I guess I just don't think any bad people care about my pay band from my '02-'03 job.  I figure Google should be able to do at least as well as my banks, which seem to be keeping more important information private, but I'm really ignorant about security issues. 

Sigh.  Dream wildly on, self, about efficiency.  It's never gotten along very well with bureaucracy.  :)

Another reason I am a bit iffy about government involvement in health care

I have allergies.  Lots of allergies.  I am basically allergic to the environment and much of the animal kingdom. (I am, for example, very allergic to koalas.) 

I was increasingly miserable until Claritin D came along.  Then I was less miserable, though I was more tired (but NOT drowsy because Claritin does not make you drowsy).  I had fewer disastrous sinus infection-bronchitis-pneumonia episodes, and that was nice.

Then meth came along. 

I didn't even know what it was because I live under a rock, but all of a sudden, it was a huge hassle for me to get my Claritin D.  I had to sign stuff and go to the pharmacy twice a month, and I couldn't actually get the correct number of pills for a month (28-31) because the government in its infinite, apparently allergy-free wisdom decided that a known and documented allergy sufferer like me can only get 2.4 grams per month "over-the-counter." That is about 20 pills, which, if you didn't notice, is 10 too few on average.

I can get a prescription, but it has to be renewed every six months instead of every year, and it takes about 20 minutes for this complicated prescription to be filled at my pharmacy.

I still don't really know what meth is, except that it is a Very Bad Drug, but if you use is, I kind of dislike you, and if you make it, I hate you and wish you had to take on the allergies of all the people you've made miserable because of your illegal, destructive, stupid activities.  And the people who invented meth?  I hate you most in this situation; may double my allergies afflict you.

Anyway, back to the government.  They will, of course, claim that their 2.4 gram limit has lowered meth use or something, but that's probably not true.  People made stupid destructive drugs before and will continue to innovate new ways to hurt people for "recreation" in the future.  In this case, I feel like the government's illegal restriction just stupidly made people like me suffer needlessly.

Your government at work in health care: all politics and theories of government aside, it makes me a bit nervous for some reason . . .


Have you come across any ridiculous government regulation of health care related examples in your own journey?  Do share.