Blessed Be!

This year I am once again thankful for my loving husband and my four legged fam!  I really love coming home to all five of these wonderful beings!  I am also thankful for us surviving a full year as a one car household; it is so much easier than we thought, but it certainly makes me thankful for safe (ignoring the speeding cars and scant sidewalks and lighting) streets and working so close to home.  No matter how much I want to smack her father, my niece is such a wonder.

We are blessed to have the freedom to travel, and I am looking so forward to strapping into my skis.  Speaking of skis, I’m posting a honeymoon picture (ah 2007 started soooo well!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Shame on you, Congressman Shuler!

Abortion is legal.  The best way to stop abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.  Before Roe v. Wade, well heeled women went out of the country to have their abortions performed, and less well off women went to illicit abortion providers who may or may not have been medically trained.  As a result, women died.  It is infuriating that Congressman Shuler (and the other representatives) would vote to restrict a right that is so intensely personal.  Every child born should be a wanted child.  How many children have you adopted or fostered Mr Shuler?

Congressman Shuler issued a press release stating that HR 3962 doesn’t provide enough reform or control enough costs.  However, if that were the case why bother with voting in favor of the Shupak amendment that would restrict access to abortions for ostensibly less than wealthy women.  Why didn’t Congressman Shuler present anything to the Small Business Committee that would have provided better cost controls or more reforms?  What reforms are Congressman Shuler looking for?

His press release states that he supports “many of the provisions in HR 3962″, but other than cost control he doesn’t specifically state where the bill’s reforms fall short.  On his Small Business page he points that healthcare costs have almost doubled since 2001 and that businesses are facing the decision of whether to pay for health insurance or lay off employees, but his solution on that page is to allow businesses to band together to create coops which would work within the existing system that Shuler says is “laden with waste, fraud and abuse” (from today’s press release).

The Senate is next so pick up your phones and call your Senators daily to remind them how you feel about our healthcare system.  I’ll be reminding mine that unlike them I don’t have free healthcare.  I don’t get to choose my doctor because my health insurance company does that for me.  For my annual physical, I have to schedule my appointment about six months out, and then I should expect to wait one, two, or more hours to be seen by the doctor.  Due to the huge price difference between the group and individual market, my employer choses my health plan.  If I were on the individual market, my only real option for health insurance company would be Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC; although they are not considered a monopoly BCBSNC collected over 96% of individual health insurance premiums in North Carolina in 2008.  I’ll also be sure to mention the millions of uninsured (like our friends who work forty plus hours every week, but still cannot afford health insurance) that the private market has failed.  I’ll voice my support for moving away from the fee for service paradigm and moving towards the rewarding healing the sick one; I’ll also share my dream of taxing the hell out of those prescription drug ads that harass me constantly to ask my doctor to please give me a prescription which might help the selectively fiscally conservative get on the bus.

I hate hospitals

Earlier this week my husband received a call from his step-father that his mother was in the hospital on a ventilator.  For the past several years she struggled with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and on Thursday morning she took her last breath.  It seems so strange to think that she will never make another smart ass comment with her dry sense of humor, or open her arms to hug my neck (or tell my husband to hug my neck for her as her normal phone ending).  She was a strong willed and highly opinionated woman, and when her symptoms first arose a year or so before our wedding she promised she would be there with us in Key West and would be walking.  She did just that, and it really seemed that she had kicked its ass.  However, it wasn’t finished (nor is there a cure) so we leave again to attend her funeral and say good bye for now.  Barbara, I’m sorry that you didn’t get to hold any grandchildren, and I hate that I won’t be able to enlist your painting skills on our next round of home improvement.  

I cannot stress enough the importance of a living will or an advance medical directive.  Barbara was about ten years from retirement age, and shit happens indiscriminate of age.  It is heart-wrenching to see someone on life support; with all the stress everyone is under in these situations it just make sense to have the patient make the decision for how they want to treated ahead of time.

There’s No Place Like Home

I love my husband’s family; they are really hospitable, kind, fun, and loving, but there is nothing better than sleeping in one’s very own bed surrounded by kitties who have missed you.  All of the four legged babies seem clingy; they are milling about my legs and resting at my feet in shifts.  

We got to see all of his aunts (which we haven’t since his grandmother died over two years ago), and on his father’s side I met two cousins that he hasn’t seen in twelve years.  His family keeps spreading west, so we now have four reasons to visit Texas.  Double shame on us for leaving the camera at home!

Being on the coast, I was reminded of how I love mountains and cooler temperatures, especially lower humidity.  The little coastal town his parents live in is much like Asheville in that tourism and the medical industry are major facets of the economy as well being more progressive and left of center than the surrounding county; however, Asheville is so wonderfully eccentric and funky.  Ahh, Asheville how I love thee, sidewalks to nowhere and all!