Don't get sick, get hurt
Mood: Cross and tired
Listening to: Night-time creaks
Friday, Sept 22 2006, 12.50am (so its really Thursday night)
I am feeling really angry about something but it makes me feel petty and childish to grizzle about it - but dammit I'm going to anyway.
Here's my husband, 43, Type 1 diabetes so he has to inject four times daily which isn't fun but never mind, he does it. Late last year he was suffering a lot of back and hip pain and we discovered he has a deformed hip socket, and osteo arthritis is taking hold there. Bugger. Oh well, take the painkillers and carry on as best you can and realise a new hip joint is somewhere down the track. Now he's got bowel cancer, had that operated on and is about to undergo chemotherapy for up to a year. For goodness sake, enough!
Yes, he's lucky - these days injecting insulin is a doddle compared with how it used to be. Easy for me to say from this side of the needle. And isn't it fortunate that medicine has come far enough for hip replacements to be relatively common and uncomplicated? And gosh, we were so lucky that his cancer was picked up quite by chance at such an early stage and he was able to have the operation laproscopically and hasn't ended up with a colostomy bag, and not all chemotherapy is as debilitating as we imagine, and aren't we lucky we had medical insurance (which pays 80% up to a certain limit) ......
Yeah, right. It's all very well looking at the bright side and picking bits of that old silver lining out of the clouds, but every now and then it doesn't hurt to have a little wallow. I just wish there was an evening out process somewhere along the way and that the good guys didn't have to keep taking the knocks while the bad buggers keep getting away unscathed (spose the Mob will get me for that).
But what has got me stewing at the moment is this. Through the last couple of months, Brent has been using up his sick leave with specialist appointments, the operation and recovery time, the scan, more appointments - and so have I because I want to be there with him - and when the sick leave runs out then you use up annual leave or take leave without pay meaning either loss of family time later on or loss of funds now. We have been backwards and forwards to Palmerston North that many times I can't remember - there's a certain dollar cost involved there too. Ok, that's just how things work and it's bad luck but it's the same for everyone.
HOLD IT!! Hold it right there. It is NOT the same for everyone. Consider this. A certain other employee at my husband's work recently went hunting down south with his mate. They had a great time out in the wop wops and when they got back to civilisation they got totally boozed, and this bloke jumped off a balcony and shattered both feet. While I have sympathy for his pain, remember this: it was self inflicted through booze and stupidity and need never have happened. This bloke got flown to hospital, flown back to his home town, and has been off work for something like twenty weeks ON FULL PAY thanks to our wonderful ACC (Accident Compensation) system. That's not the worst bit. What has really raised my blood pressure through the sodding roof is that he's going skydiving this weekend - his wife bought him this as a birthday treat - and he's still not back at work because he's on ACC. And we're using up annual leave and going without because we're having to pay for what the insurance doesn't cover (our share of about $16,000 so far, never mind travel and petrol) all because Brent got sick. If he'd got pissed and impaled himself on a fence post or something, we'd be better off, but hey! That's the way it is.
Forgive my bitterness but it just isn't fair.
And shall I carry on whinging? We have to pay for needles, insulin, tablets, test strips - it doesn't stop there. Healthy food is much more expensive than crappy junk. Trim milk costs more than ordinary blue top. Low fat stuff is dearer than regular stuff. Low sugar products are more expensive than normal ones. See? If you get sick, life becomes very expensive. If you get hurt, you get compensated.
Where's the justice? And that's only the financial side. I won't even try to find justice on the "Why us" front.
I feel a bit better having off loaded that. Sorry for those that have had their ears bent.
Jaybee
