This has been a strange and aggravating week. And now that I’m off my meds, my moods have been more prominent and unpredictable. It's a little scary, not knowing how i'm going to react from one moment to the next. And stuff like this doesn't help.
On Wednesday, I finally heard back from the Department of Managed Health Care about my grievance.
Good news: Blue Cross is going to pay!
Not so great news: They are going to pay from April to September of 2005 (during those months, they promised to pay and then changed their mind). So… Blue Cross owes me about $3500.00. The current outstanding balance I owe my doctor: $8000.00. Damn.
Bad news: Like an idiot, I called my parents to tell them this (sorta) good news and they didn’t act happy. AT ALL. In fact, they blame my doctor for not giving me a discount. “I guess he just knows that there are deep pockets there…” My mom said. Uh, well yeah…
On Thursday, my car broke down again. I tried my best not to tear my hair out and go nuts about this. I’m always worried that I’m going to say or do something too weird. Then everyone might write me off and think “Oh, she’s just a crazy lady. Let’s not listen or take her seriously.”
On Friday, I battled with UPS. I don’t want to go into all the gory details but let me just paint this picture:
It’s 10:15pm on a Friday night. I’ve been at the UPS package pickup center for almost two hours. The center is a windowless trailer at the edge of a huge distribution center in the middle of NOWHERE. Actually, it’s worse than nowhere… it’s in Richmond, one of the most dangerous towns in the Bay Area.
So all the other customers have gotten their packages and I’m the last one there. There is a security guard but he and everyone else in the building are men. Strange, middle-of-the-night, must-have-done-something-wrong-to-have-such-a-shitty-job men. Luckily, anticipating a moment just like this, I am wearing no jewelry and sporting a sweat suit and a head full of greasy hair. I may be the least attractive (and craziest looking) woman on earth.
And they can’t find one of my packages. They found the book I ordered from Amazon – the one I don’t care about. The package they can’t find contains my records from the Institute of Living (IOL).
The records I ordered from my three-month long hospitalization when I was fifteen.
The records that cost $70.72 to have photocopied.
I waited and waited, getting madder and madder. I tried telling myself: “you survived 3 months in that hell-hole of a hospital – you can survive 2 hours in a dingy UPS depot. But finally, I had to decide if I was going to go uber-bitch on them or just give up and go home. I went home.
Good news: The records finally appeared today.
Not so good news: I just spent the evening reading them and… what a downer.
Bad news: most of the records seem to focus on my “bad attitude.” According to the esteemed doctors there, I was defiant, rude and frequently surly.
For the record, these are pictures of the IOL from their website:
This is the “campus.” I spent 98% of my time locked on one hall of the Braceland Building, so… what good is a campus? Note: the map doesn’t show the spooky, tiled underground tunnels that connect each building. Did I mention that it used to be called the Hartford Asylum?
This is how they want you to think it looks. When I was there, this building contained a very creepy 1920’s era indoor swimming pool and gymnasium. For some reason, this is where they decided to give me an EKG. Twice.
This was the only thing I could see from the one window on my unit. It's the "recreation" building. And they wonder why I was surly…
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