A Curious Statistical Anomaly

We’re usually told that we get all the Vitamin-D we need from the sun. I’ve heard that 10-15 minutes a day in the sun is enough to give you your full daily requirements. However, now-a-days most of us avoid the sun and if we do go out we make sure to put on sunscreen and/or wear a hat. We worry about skin cancer and, since it is on the rise as atmospheric ozone decreases, it’s a legitimate worry.

You can also get Vitamin-D from dietary sources: fish (Salmon, Herring, Sardines, Mackerel), eggs (yolks), milk (fortified), cod liver oil, and probably some other food I’m just not remembering. Most of the times we just never think of Vitamin-D as being a problem.

It was recently brought to my attention that researchers have found a connection between Vitamin-D deficiency and pain. In a BBC New article, scientists found that low levels of Vitamin D, may contribute to chronic pain among women — since this finding is more prevalent among women they believe it may also be related to hormones. Lower levels of Vitamin-D are also linked to osteomalacia but they did not believe that accounted for the link to pain. Dr. Hyppönen said:

“Work was needed to evaluate whether vitamin D supplements could help prevent chronic pain.

In the meantime, she advised: “If I had chronic pain I would certainly check I was getting enough vitamin D.”

However, on the flip side, Kate Maclver of the Pain Research Institute cautioned:

“Taking too high a dose of Vitamin D supplements as a means of preventing or treating chronic pain could result in Vitamin D toxicity and high blood calcium levels.”

An earlier article on WebMD cited another study that also found a link between Vitamin D deficiency and chronic pain:

In a study involving 150 children and adults with unexplained muscle and bone pain, almost all were found to be vitamin D deficient; many were severely deficient with extremely low levels of vitamin D in their bodies.

About the reality of getting enough sun to satisfy your Vitamin D needs, it was stated:

The amount of sun exposure needed to get the proper dose of vitamin D depends on a person’s skin type, where they live, and time of year, and time of day the exposure occurs. Holick says it is difficult for people living in northern climates to get the vitamin D they need from the sun in the winter, but in the summer a light-skinned person at the beach should get all the vitamin D they need in about five minutes.

“The trick is getting just enough sun to satisfy your body’s vitamin D requirement, without damaging the skin,” he says. “It is difficult to believe that this kind of limited exposure significantly increases a person’s risk of skin cancer.”

A further study, Back Pain and Osteoporosis Special Report: The Bone-Protecting Benefits of Vitamin D in a Johns Hopkins Health Alert found the same relationship between Vitamin D deficiency and pain as the other studies. Again they talk about the difficulty of getting sufficient Vitamin D from sunshine:

When it comes to vitamin D, a few minutes in the sun is all you need, correct? Well, that depends. As it turns out, that is easier said than done for many of us. Draw a rough line across the country from San Francisco to Richmond, Virginia. If you live north of that line, it’s impossible to get enough sun exposure during the winter months to maintain adequate blood levels of vitamin D. And even during the summer, you may not be getting enough vitamin D. That’s especially true if you spend a great deal of time inside, out of the heat—or, ironically, if you’re particularly meticulous about using sunscreen, covering up, and seeking the shade when you’re outside.

Aging and racial background also affect vitamin D status. As we age, our skin doesn’t synthesize vitamin D as efficiently, and our kidneys are less able to convert vitamin D to its active hormone form. As for ethnicity, melanin—the pigment that gives skin its color—reduces the efficiency of vitamin D synthesis from sunlight; therefore dark-skinned individuals require even more sunlight to maintain adequate vitamin D levels.

Medscape Today in the article, Vitamin-D deficiency increases pain of knee OA by Zosia Chustecka from December 23, 2004 pretty had found the same connection as the previously mentioned more recent studies.

Vitamin-D deficiency has become a major health problem in the US, and all physicians should be alert to it, an editorial in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings cautioned last year [3]. It was prompted by a study that found most patients presenting with persistent nonspecific musculoskeletal pain were vitamin-D deficient, many severely so, as reported at the time by rheumawire. “The take-home message . . . is that when patients with nonspecific skeletomuscular pain are evaluated, their serum 25-hydroxyvitamin-D levels should be obtained,” says the editorialist, Dr Michael Holick (Boston University). “Physicians should discard the laboratory-reported lower limit of the normal range. A serum 25-hydroxyvitamin-D level of at least 20 ng/mL is necessary to minimally satisfy the body’s vitamin-D requirement. Maintenance of a serum level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D of 30 to 50 ng/mL is preferred.”

However, Chustecka also goes on to talk about the problem of measuring Vitamine-D level in clinical practice:

Laster cautions, however, that the assays used by different laboratories can show significant variability—for example, 1 commonly used lab assay (from Nichols) significantly underestimates the amount of vitamin D2 derived from dietary and pharmaceutical sources (while D3 is mainly derived from the action of ultraviolet light on the skin).

“I use a vitamin-D assay that accurately identifies both D2 and D3 components of 25-hydroxyvitamin D,” Laster tells rheumawire. “When a level below 30 ng/mL is identified, I recommend ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) 50 000 IU once a week for approximately 8 weeks. I then repeat a level. If it has normalized I then go on to 50 000 IU once or twice a month. If levels remain low, I evaluate for possible malabsorption, etc.”

Some practitioners recommend taking 800 IU of vitamin D each day and suggest taking 2 multivitamin tablets every day (many over-the-counter multivitamin products contain 400 IU vitamin D2). However, it has been pointed out that this also increases the dose of vitamin A, and higher levels of vitamin A have been associated with an increase in the risk of fractures, Laster comments. He adds: “What has not been proven, to my knowledge, however, is that supplementing vitamin D to therapeutic levels alleviates pain.”

So, it looks to me, a layperson with chronic pain from fibromyalgia, that maybe I need to get my Vitamin-D levels checked and should talk to my primary care physician during my next visit. But, in the meantime, I’m going to check the amount of Vitamin-D in my daily vitamin and maybe plan to spend just a bit of time each day doing yard work. That’s assuming I have enough spoons to get outside — even if it’s just to sit with a cup of tea. Sunshine may not be all that effective but who knows it may be a boost to the daily vitamin until I can find out if my Vitamin-D levels are deficient.

Hope springs eternal and all that….

I’d thought about writing something on this topic, but hadn’t really figured out what I wanted to say, when I found this article on Numbers on Teen Pregnancy as a Freakonomics NY Times Opinion piece (here’s the Freakonomincs NY Times blog).  I found the statistics on teen pregnancies interesting:

High teen pregnancy rates remain a serious problem in the U.S. Although they have declined since they peaked in 1990, rates are still twice as high as in Canada or England, and eight times as high as in the Netherlands or in Japan.

These international differences are due to low contraceptive use in the U.S.; most of the recent decline in teen pregnancy in the U.S. is due to more consistent use of birth control, although teens are also waiting longer to have sex than in the past. In 1995, almost 20 percent of girls had sex by age 17, compared to 15 percent in 2002.

Notice that the drop in pregnancies among teens has two components — more consistent use of birth control and teen waiting longer to have sex.  As to the first, it’s mighty difficult for teens to consistently use birth control when the sex education in our American school systems is mainly about abstinence. We currently have a shinning example of how well that works to lower teen pregnancy with the recent announcement of the pregnancy of the teenage daughter of the Republican Party’s Vice-Presidential nominee.  Palin espouses the party line of abstinence-only sex education and pairs it with absolutely no choice even for rape or incest.   Obviously, abstinence education didn’t work in this case, as it hasn’t worked for many other teens.  For Palin’s daughter, I’d hope that the future will not look as bleak as for most teenage mothers.  Again from the article:

…on average, teen pregnancies are more likely to result in premature births and low-birth-weight babies. This is not a good start in life. Babies with a low birth weight are more likely to have A.D.H.D. and are less likely to graduate from high school.

Teen moms are less likely than other women to attend or complete college, and their marriages are more likely to end in divorce; about 50 percent of women who married younger than age 18 are divorced after 10 years, compared to 20 percent of women who married at age 25 or older. In turn, single mothers have the highest poverty rates of any demographic group, and 60 percent of the U.S.-born children in mother-only families are poor.

Being a teenage mother, whether married to the father of the child or not, is a bad spot to be in. It’s not all roses and happy times. It’s mainly lots of work: studying for school, working to pay childcare, rent, food, and all the other assorted expenses of being on your own, and find the time and energy to actually spend time with the child, do the laundry, cook meals, study, and, oh yes, sleep.

How do I know? Been there. Done that. Came out okay with a child that I’m very proud of, a college degree, and I’m sure lots of bad decisions and good ones — but all ones I thought I had to make at the time.  How did I end up pregnant? Well, I know it seems strange, but my total sex education was a small six page booklet on menstruation along with the wisdom that only married women get pregnant.  Of course, this was in the dark ages — forty years ago now.  So this has been a perennial problem and it has never worked to stop teens from having sex by telling them to abstain or leaving them ignorant of what sex is and how one actually gets pregnant — (hint, a marriage license has absolutely no effect on the sperm and the egg getting together).

What does work in helping to reduce teen pregnancy?  Truth.  Unvarnished truth about how one gets pregnant, what those teenage hormones feel like, that love and hormones are indeed hard to tell apart but mostly it’s hormones at that age, and that if you are going to have sex, protect yourself and good solid information on how to do that.  Anything else is just leaving young people vulnerable to their hormones and if you don’t remember what that was like when you were a teen, you shouldn’t have any say over what to tell teens about sex.   Abstinence may work, but only if the teens have all the information about what is happening in their body and can make informed decisions.  Since many teens are not going to abstain, there must also be information and access to birth control.

If the Republicans want to stick their heads in the sand about these problems, then the least they can do is also set aside money for free child care, free health care, education assistance, and financial assistant to unwed teenage (and older) single parents.  But, wait…this is the party that is also cutting back on all these programs.  It seems the family values party doesn’t have any concern for families unless they meet strict definitions of what they consider a family and those families are all rich and don’t need any help.  And the Pro-Life policy would be better labeled Pro-Birth, because once the child is born, they no longer care about it until its old enough to vote.

Teenage pregnancy is a real problem for the people involved and for the country as a whole and ignoring it and placing the blame on the teens does nothing to rectify the problem or help to solve it.  I wish Ms. Palin good luck with the child she’s about to have and the marriage she’s about to undertake.  She has a better chance at success than many girls who find themselves in her position, but then she’s not typical.   Hopefully, her being in the limelight; after all it’s her mother who is the candidate, will not cause other teens to follow in her footsteps because she’s an outlier on the curve, not the norm (but I forgot Republicans don’t care that much for science either).

Note: On Where Did I Come From?  I found this book to be a great beginning in opening up discussion with children about sex and where babies come from.  It’s informative, funny, and straightforward.  If you’re looking for a way to broach the subject to young children who are asking — give this book a try.

It’s been a busy month and we’re quickly approaching the end; and that means getting the publications up and ready to go live on September 1st. “What publications,” you ask?  Why SFRevu and Gumshoe Review.

Time usually seems to compress near the end of the month, but it seems like I had even less time than usual this month.  Well, I did go to the World Science Fiction Convention in Denver.  We drove and that add an extra 5 days to the trip.   We had a heck of a great time and brought the laptops and wireless card.  Then coming home to over a weeks worth of snail mail — that took up a lot of time.  Then there was the server crash that our ISP had.  Followed by a loss of data from our database of reviews and books when we found — or discovered accidentally — a bug in the interface software to the database (not our homegrown interface but another package) .  That meant contacting reviewers and others and checking shelves to make sure we recovered everything that we lost from that three days between the restored backup and the day we got them restored.  Whee — that was so much fun.

But it did make me think that somehow the month shrunk when I wasn’t looking.  Luckily, other than a few days of feeling like a wet noodle (and about as aware of my surrounding) this has been a productive month. Just think what I could have done if I’d really had all the days rather than only about half of them to devote to what I was supposed to do.  We will get the zines up on time and there’s going to be some great content but I can’t help thinking I could have done more.  Three days left and about ten days of work to do in them and one of those three days has been commandeered for another  purpose — which will be lots of fun but will take away from being able to tick items off my To Do list.

I keep wondering how other people budget time.  Do you get stressed out when  life and planning come up against chaos and the unexpected?  Does opting for fun in the face of a towering mountain of work seem like a cop out or a self-destructive impulse to failure?  I mean I could have turned down the fun but you can’t live for work alone now can you?

Life goes on and I had an acupuncture appointment today.  So, you see, I’m all set for stress and the push to the finish line of getting the zines up on the 1st.  And before you ask, I did finish the socks I was working on, I’ll get a picture up next month and I’ve got to start another pair of socks as soon as I figure out the number of stitches to fit on my feet versus the number needed for the pattern I want to use (more on that later too).

The last week has been a bit of a strain.  Not that anything really awful has happened.  There’s been the usual stress of gearing up for the publication of all the zines on September 1st.  Just the usual stuff of pinging all the reviewers and seeing where we stand.  Not to bad except I realized that the questions for the author interview for one of the zines never got sent — will do that tomorrow but it may be too late.

Then there was  a major code update.  Somehow, it shouldn’t have happened, but the update lost us a chunk of data from the database. Then the host servers crashed the next morning so it took longer than usual for the restore.  Then when the restore was in place, well all the work of at least two days was gone and had to be redone.  I think, as of today, that most of that has been recovered and put back in place.

Don’t you just love how computers make our lives so much more organized, in touch with others, and streamlined and then if there’s a glitch… Well, nothing can even come close to screwing up like a computer and its bits and bytes.  But now that we’re back to where we were several days ago — things are looking pretty good.

Meanwhile, while all the computer problems and stressors were going on there was the usual household stuff to do.  I’m trying to get things a bit more organized — boxed, labeled, gathered for tossing or giving away, or storing.  I’ve been pulling out the books that we don’t want to keep in our personal library and making a pile to put on Amazon for sale.  I need the bookshelf space for the book we have acquired lately and want to keep or haven’t read yet.  You’d think with all the books I review, Hyperion reviews, and that we read (from the library), that we’d never buy books.  You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.  We buy lots of books — mostly for research, reference, or just because they look like fun and the library doesn’t have it.

I also picked up some new yarn for socks today.  It’s a stretchy sock yarn in a pretty variegated  purple, yellow, pink, rosy color scheme.  Once I finish the pair I’m making now (just got the toe to do), I’ll start a pair with this yarn and using the circular needle technique to knit two socks at once.  Just need to figure out how I want them to look and find a pattern to use.

I’ve actually managed to spin four of the last eight days.  Not as much as I should but at least I’m keeping my hand (and feet) in.  I’m beginning to feel more comfortable.  I’m trying really hard to over-spin so I don’t lose so much twist when I ply.   I’m still working on using up the green top that I was working on for the Tour de Fleece.  I almost have half a spool full.  Maybe by the end of the month I’ll be plying it and setting the twist for this second skein.  It’s still a lace/sock weight yarn (with 3-ply Navaho plying).

What I have to snap out of is the funk that I seem to be in.  Everyday, it seems like I’m wading waist deep in water.  Everything just seems to take more effort.  I’m not letting it stop me.  I even walked down to the mailbox twice in the last week — I know I should be doing it every day.  But, I’m making a real effort to not give up and that’s got to count for something.  I guess what it counts for is that I keep going and eventually I will find it easier and easier to just keep going.  Maybe I should just buy more spoons, but I’m hoping to “snap out of it”.  So, since I love her work and the puzzle is so bright and cheery — I thought I’d share.  It is available through Amazon (isn’t everything).

Still expect a post only when you see one.  My schedule is a bit uneven just now.

You know what I hate most about migraines?  No one can tell you’re having one.  Well there’s the lack of concentration, the misuse of words (Hyperion’s going to proof this for me), the fact that I can’t seem to keep one thought in my head for more than half-a-minute before it falls out the ear on the other side of my head.  But physically, I look okay.  I can sit here and listen to someone talk to me and when they end their monologue — truthfully, I have no idea what they just said.

We were watching Stargate: Atlantis and when Beckett died (It’s season three so I assume all the world has seen it except for me), I just burst into tears because I liked him.  He was so kind.  Okay, when I have a migraine I cry at commercials also… but the emotional upheaval is pretty rocky.

But since I can’t think straight and I can’t be trusted with sharp objects — I can at least spin.  So, I’m working on my Tour de Fleece challenge of trying to spin that pound of green roving.  I already blew the spinning every day thing because I’ve missed three days now (at Readercon).  I’m not going to get the full pound of roving spun up either but it feels nice to have the wheel out and ready so now that I’m sort of trying to be active and stay out of mischief, I can spin.

By the way, I haven’t read the book on Migraine in Women — I just really, really, liked the cover.   Tonight, there is supposed to be a thunderstorm and rain.  Maybe not, but the migraine is here, so maybe yes.  I hope not, we’ve still got to get that tree cut up and stacked to dry for this winter.  The garden needs to be weeded.  But, I was going to spin some more and I better do that now.

Rose: The photo is of Paul’s chocolate rose. We’ve come to really like roses and this was one Paul wanted mostly for the name — it doesn’t have much scent. But the first year we had it, it didn’t really do much. The second year, we dug it up and put it in a fancy garden planter and moved it to the garden area near the herb garden. It now gets the required 6 hours of sun per day and is much happier. Last year it had two blooms. So far, this years we’ve had about six roses on it. This picture shows two of them.

Car: Not much going on. Getting right back into the swing of work. Paul had to take some time today to go check out tires — we’ve had three flats in two months. I think we’re now back on track.

Poison Ivy: The consensus seems to be that pictures B & C are poison ivy. Picture A seems right out of the fray. So, I’ll be particularly careful when around the vines in B & C from now on. Poison ivy is getting better now that we’re on steroids (Prednisone). Hopefully, it will be all gone by the end of the pills — but right now half way through it doesn’t look like it.

Garden matters: It’s been rainy so haven’t been out to do much in the yard. We got the buckets to plant the rest of the tomatoes in. The lettuce is starting to come up. Our blueberry bushes on the deck have given enough berries for blueberry muffins and blueberry pancakes and some for just nibbling. Those are pretty much over. The strawberries are still blooming and making fruit but we can’t seem to beat the critters to it. Guess were not fast enough.

Tour de Fleece: So, far I’ve managed to spin for at least an hour each evening. That’s better than I expected but then that includes the time I’ve spend fussing with the spool and the tension. I’ve now got it so that I feed the thread in and it doesn’t get yanked out of my hand. So, I’m at bit more at peace. I’ll post another photo of progress on Friday.

Reading: Been reading books for review in the August issue of SFRevu and Gumshoe Review. So far, I’ve read Exodus by Julie Bertagna, Written in Blood by Sheila Lowe, and Dead over Heels by Charlaine Harris. I’m about half-way through Underground by Kat Richardson. It’s certainly a good month so far in my reading pile. Except for Exodus by Julie Bertagna, they’re all series that I’ve been following, so it’s a really nice break after getting the issues up on line on the 1st, the holiday buzz, and the car problems, and the migraines.

So, that’s a quick update. I’m hoping to follow through on the spinning and get the rest of the gardening in this week. Along with the contract job and the usual stuff. Life is pretty good today in spite of the headache.

It’s me, the cat.  Just thought I’d add my own 8.5 cents in (due to inflation you know).  Getting the car taken care of was pretty easy this time.  The first time was about a month ago.  I came out on my way to work, got in the car, drove the quarter of a mile down the dirt road, and as soon as I turned out onto the pavement, I could feel something was wrong.  So I pulled into a neighbors driveway (also a quarter mile long, so it’s not like they’re ever going to know I was there) and took a look.  The right rear tire was totally flat.  I guess I couldn’t feel it when bumping along dirt and stones at low speeds.  Anyway, it’s annoying, but it’s been a few years since I had a flat, so I figure it’s about time.  I pull the spare off, replace the tire, and find that the spare is only about half full.  Remember it had been a couple of years?  Well apparently, you need to check your spare tire’s pressure when you check the others.  Doh!  So I get some air at the first gas station (costs $1.50 for freaking air!  What is the world coming too?).  I go to work, head over to the tire place and sit in their waiting room for 3 hours while the car slowly moves through their queue of work.  Again, annoying, but these things happen.   Finally get the car back with the tire patched (and at no cost too!) and I figure that’s that.  The next day, the same tire is flat again.  Back on goes the spare and I sit for three more hours after work.  This time they tell me they can’t fix it and I need a new one.  $80 for a tire.  Holy Moly!  Well, again, it’s been a couple of years since I had to buy one, and apparently the cost of rubber has gone up too.  Anyway, now I’m done.  Brand new tire, and all should be right with the world.

Nope!

Last Thursday, I’m on my way to the doctors (where they’re squeezing me in before the holidays) to get my own poison ivy checked out.  I’m in bumper to bumper traffic when a woman in the next car starts waving at me.  I roll down the window (why do we keep using that phrase?  There’s no handled to roll!  Anyway …) and the lady informs me that my front-right tire is flat.  Grrrrr!  So, after finding a flat space to pull over into and putting the spare back to to play, I’m now twenty minutes late getting the the appointment that they were doing me the favor of squeezing in the first place.  Lucky me, they take me anyway and my poison ivy is on the mend.  Afterward … it’s back to the tire place (visit #3) where it takes 4 hours to get the tire patched.  Grumble grumble, but yeah, that’s got to be the end, right!

Nope!

The very next day, we head off to the 4th of July barbecue.  We have a very nice time, head back to the car, and find the front-left tire is flat.  This is the third different tire now.  Back goes the spare again and we have to hope for the best until today, since it’s a holiday weekend and all that.  So this morning, I e-mail into work that I’m going to be out since I have to sit and wait for the car.  I drive up to the car place, hand over the keys, and get them handed back 15 minutes later.  What?  How can that be?  Looks like my luck finally changed and I was first in line in the queue.  Turns out to have been a rotted valve stem, so the repair was free of charge and I’m out and about, wild and free.  So, being the wild and crazy guy that I am … I go to work.

Where I find out my corporate manager has been replaced (I can’t pronounce the name of the new guy, and he doesn’t speak English very well either).  And my government boss has also changed (can’t pronounce his name either). As you might expect, it went rapidly down hill from there, but as I’d prefer to keep my job, I think the fewer details there, the better.  Besides, I’ve bored you long enough.  But I bet it makes you look forward to Gayle taking back over again.

Last weekend, we worked on getting that rest of the gardening done.  Sunday, we got a lot done and then started to weed out around the fruit orchard.  Last year we didn’t do much in that area and it has gotten rather overgrown with weeds and baby trees and stuff.

I’m highly allergic to poison ivy.  In Maine and most of New England, I know exactly what it looks like and avoid it like the plague of destruction it is.  Last year, I ended up with poison ivy (going systemic) twice.  I got some gardening gloves from FoxGloves.  I got a pair of the ones that go up to the elbow.  I also have some regular gardening gloves — you know the generic kind that just go about 3 inches above your wrist. I also have a pair of leather ones that  go nearly to the elbow.  Last Sunday, I was wearing my regular gloves and a long sleeve shirt made out of a gauzy material to let air in and keep bugs off type of material.

Monday, I noticed bubbly dots on my arm.  My right arm.  The arm with no lymph nodes due to breast cancer surgery 6 years ago.   Rather than waiting until I was really, really sure it was poison ivy — I played it smart and called my allergist.  I got in today.  Yup, poison ivy.  As of today, it’s a half dozen spots on my arm and one on my stomach.  We’re hoping to get it in check without going for the big guns.  So, now I’ve got an extra antihistamine and a steroid cream. Tonight I have a few more spots.  If it doesn’t clear up by Thursday, I call about the big guns.

Now, you’d think after last years P.I. woes, I’d learn to recognize this sucker.  But here in Maryland, I’m not seeing the poison ivy I know and detest from New England.  No shiny three leaved thingies.  In the area I weeded, I saw 5 leaved vines, three leaved vines and stand alone bushes (none shiny and all with big honking leaves and serrated edges), and a variety of vines with and without thorns.  There were even some run away raspberry vines.  But nothing that I recognized as poison ivy.  How can I avoid what I can’t identify.  Guess it’s time to buy a field guide to poison ivy. This is so frustrating.  And so is the fact that it went through my shirt.

So, next trip to the weed patch, it’s the elbow length gloves under the leather gloves  with a cotton long sleeve shirt.  I may melt but hopefully I won’t get poison ivy again.  Of course the weeding may need to wait until I get the present case of blistery bumps under control.

Just in case you’re interested, Burt’s Bees Poison Ivy Soap and Domeboro are great for starters to control it and for those who aren’t hyper-sensitive (like my hubby)[ [Hyperion: I can only apologize so much for being damn near perfect 🙂 ]. But always check with your doctor for actual treatment — poison ivy, with the way it spreads, is not something to mess with.  If you use over-the-counter stuff and it doesn’t clear up in 48 hours call a doctor, you may also be hyper-sensitive.

Now if I can only figure out what it looks like down here in Maryland with the heat and moisture.  I’ve checked out several websites with pictures and just about everything thing in the woods matches one picture or another even some I know aren’t poison ivy.  Why can’t Mother Nature put little labels on the plants for us? It’s the least she could do.

I’m sure out there somewhere is a nice blues jazz number with that this title, “Medical Insurance Blues”. However, it’s two days later and I’m still seeing red. Here’s the background. I have allergies — lots and lots of them. Basically, if you say I’m allergic to the world you’ve got it. I don’t even bother with the skin test anymore because the very last time I had one everything reacted so they tested for the base (no reaction) and for the needle invading the skin (no reaction). So, now I have them test my blood (RASP test). The doctors explain (patiently I might add) that the test is not sensitive enough and we should do the skin test. I counter with “Do the blood tests and if you need the skin test for some items, we’ll do those.” I’ve never been asked to retake a test because everything tests high enough.

Now for the problem. It’s pollen season in force big time down here in Maryland. My eyes have been itching like crazy and at times I wish I could do the cartoon thing of popping them out of my head and running water over them. So, I’ve been using the over the counter allergy drops and tears and anything else I could find. Finally, I gave up and saw the doctor. He gave me a prescription (hereafter Rx) for some eye drops. We dropped it off at the pharmacy but had to wait to pick it up the next day.

Go to pick it up and insurance has refused to pay for the Rx. Why, you might ask. Are you ready for this one. The insurance won’t pay because, get this, over the counter eye drops work just as well as the Rx ones. I just love the way an insurance clerk, whom I have never met, and who doesn’t have a medical degree, and who has never talked to my doctor, can make such judgments. Yes, statistically, for some people, maybe the over the counter drops work just as well. But to make this declaration without ever asking if I’d used over the counter drops is pure bottom-line bean counting.

Will I fight this? No. This is the third time they’ve done this. Insurance is Anthem BC/BS PPO — the plan is a good one and generally they’re okay but every now and then they come up with these gotchas. I fought for one drug and finally got them to pay for it but it took 5 months of fighting and faxing documents and getting papers signed and made out by the doctor. But I couldn’t afford the over $110/month to pay out of pocket for the drug. It was exhausting and depressing experience and in this case not worth the effort.

The doctor gave me a sample and I’ll use it sparingly until the season is over. The insurance covered it last year and maybe they’ll cover it again next year, but this year they decided to make me suffer. The thing is it would be easier to take in some ways IF the insurance company would at least acknowledge that they’re playing with my health. When they refused the sleeping pills about two years ago they said, and this is almost a direct quote from the manager of the telephone support.

We’re not making medical decisions and we’re not stopping you from getting the drug. You can get it anytime you want, you just have to pay the full price for it.

I just love the way they can distance themselves from the suffering they cause. What did I do about the sleeping pill. I decided to do without. It’s easier since I quit work and now work at home. Every now and then I just can’t sleep until after being awake for 36 to 48 hours.   I usually finally manage to sleep 8 hours and then I’m back to my normal 4-6 hours a night (if I’m lucky). Somedays, there just aren’t enough spoons within reach.

What I know is that I’m lucky. We have insurance through the company my husband works for, and many people don’t have any at all. I did find out that people with no insurance pay more for drugs than people with insurance. I’m not talking about the copay. If you pay attention to the sheets that come with your Rx, in some places they say the drug costs X and the insurance pays Y and your co-pay is Z. Then if insurance won’t pay, you usually pay the cost, X. However, if they make out the payment sheet thinking you don’t have insurance it’s usually X+some number B. So not having insurance costs even more for health care.

None of the present candidates have a decent health care plan. Mandatory health care unless the government is going to pay for it all isn’t going to do anything. If people can’t afford it now, they can’t afford it when it’s mandatory. Do govvies really think people don’t have it because they’d rather get a six pack? People don’t have health insurance because A) they have pre-existing conditions that run the cost through the roof or B) they’d rather feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads or C) they’ve got A and B. Let’s face it medical care should not be a profit making proposition.  I mean who came up with the brilliant idea to put the health of our citizens in the hands of someone whose business model makes money by NOT providing healthcare?  In America, we need free basic medical care for all citizens and clerks should not be denying things that a licensed doctor has prescribed for a patient. Why bother to license physicians if office clerks can over-rule them.

I feel better having let off steam. But I’m still outraged — and — my eyes still itch!