Isn’t there some old ethnic curse that goes something like: “May you live in interesting times”?
We are living in interesting times. On monday my mom, who lives next door, fell out of bed and dislocated her shoulder. We discovered this after a trip to the ER. They didn’t do an xray, but they did their best (??) to relocate (?) it, and sent her home in a sling. She’s black and blue all the way up her neck, halfway to her elbow, and down below her armpit in the front and back. By wednesday she is continuing in severe pain, and when you look at her it appears that her arm is just kinda hanging there. The shoulder is almost 2″ lower than the other. The PA who tried to relocate her arm recommends that she get in to see an orthopedic specialist ASAP.
To make a long story short, she has no real recourse within her health care provider to do anything but:
a) wait until June 25th, which is the earliest appointment she can get by referral, or…
b) Go to the ER at the County Hospital about 2 hours from here and hope they will do something.
Tammy and I are (and have been for some time; but that’s another post) transportationally challenged with only one vehicle; the ’89 Toyota SR-5 truck that the GirlyBoi must needs use for work. Although my Mom has a “Caregiver”, she is unable to take Mom to the hospital due to mileage and time considerations.
So yesterday, while I’m trying to figure out if we can arrange a ride to the hospital for Mom with a friend or neighbor, (If not, I’ll have to take her to the ER at night; after Tam gets home from work), and setting up for some extensive tattoo work I had to do yesterday, up drives the GirlyBloi.
When it rains, it pours.
My lovely one has put a 16 penny nail from pneumatic nail gun clear through her hand at work. Since my Tam works as an “independent contractor”, she has no medical coverage, no worker’s comp, no possibility for state disability leave or unemployment compensation.
“May you live in interesting times”
What the hell, right? So my poor sweet GirlyBoi heads off to the County Hospital with my poor, insane mother in tow.
We’ll skip the attendant drama (a given, if my unmedicated bi-polar, schyzotypal mother is involved). The good news for me yesterday is that I was very involved in my tattooing, which is a zen sort of activity for me.
Mom’s shoulder is still a clusterfuck. It’s still dislocated and according to the xray report, may be fractured as well. She is no closer to getting it fixed than she was.
Luckily Tammy missed any tendons, although she chipped a bone. She got a tetanus shot and a scrip for antibiotics, and she’s home today doing the ice/soak/elevate thing. She wanted to go to work. I almost tied her up, but that would have been entirely too tempting, and I was afraid to hurt her hand in the process. I had to settle for scolding her into staying home at least through Monday and giving her injury a chance to begin to heal.
The bigger issue that her injury has really brought home for us is that had she as our primary earner, been seriously injured, we’d be fucked. Seriously fucked. We can’t skate along this way much longer. She needs to get a “real” job with taxes and disability and unemployment and etc. taken out. It’s all fine to be self employed if you are making enough money on top of saving for taxes to have an emergency savings for stuff like this. She’s not. If her employer offered, we’d be happy to let him pay the hospital bill, but I doubt that he will, and we’ll leave it at that.
I was working on a top 10 of my own, inspired by Doug’s post, “Proof” (That he’s a lesbian) but these “interesting times” bumped it to a 13 that didn’t get done either with 8 hours of tattooing yesterday. Today I’m going to put together a slide show of my work to run at the Body Art Expo. I also have to design my new business cards, a new logo and sticker, as well as edit portfolio photos for print.
