freaking out...

up at an ungodly hour - spent the last couple tossing and turning in bed...not sure what woke me up, but then i got medicaid on the brain and it's been freakout ever since. this spend-down thing's got me really freaked out - how the hell am i supposed to live on what social security gives me MINUS FORTY PERCENT? six hundred a month is gonna be ROUGH. so i'm trying to think of all these ways to milk the system - doc visits and med refills at the beginning and end of one month, then none the next month - to save money and it's just causing a freaking anxiety attack. and that's just presuming i can keep it together enough to contain my expenditures to every other month - we know i have a tendency to have things pop up, be they seizures or strange mental things...

the New Year's Resolution i made @ Douglas & Dan's party to ring in 2008 was to be more positive - right now it's not feeling too attainable, i'm feeling really negative...grrr...

i wish the extra xanax i just took would kick in - i just wanna go back to sleep...

No change...

just heard from my medicaid caseworker - that $385 spend-down is not gonna change. she also informed me that i would've had a spend-down before, but that my previous caseworker didn't submit the proper information. thankfully, i'm not gonna be penalized for that. this system is all sorts of screwed up.

Volunteering at Hunger, Inc.

on today's agenda: my shift for volunteering at Hunger, Inc. - a food pantry down here on the south side of Indy. not sure what sort of crowd to expect today, with the snow we've had, and the fact that it's the middle of the month, the numbers may be down - the end of the month is usually the busiest time of the month. i actually prefer it when it's busier - the time goes faster and it's not as easy to dwell on how depressing can get at times.

Can you at least pay for the lube, Medicaid?

the new year brings a reaming from Medicaid. the annual cost-of-living increase in my Social Security Disability by $24.00 means that i now must pay $385.00 PER MONTH of my healthcare expenses before Medicaid will pay for anything (it's called a "spend-down"). the magic number is $1022.00 - make under that, NO spend-down - last year i made $1014.00. the new year came and Social Security gave me an increase to $1038.00 - now i make $16.00 more than the limit so i have a spend-down. what i don't understand is how that extra sixteen bucks makes it so that close to FORTY PERCENT of my disability check has to go to healthcare now.

i'm sending some paperwork to my caseworker to hopefully try to lower the spend-down, but she warned me that we're taking a chance - it could actually increase...but that's a chance i guess i have to take

restarting the ol' blog...

i think it's time to get back into the blogosphere...this area under construction...