[Fair warning, this post may get a little ranty, which will probably mean it will also get sweary, so if that's not your deal... Tomorrow is another day!]
I hate paperwork so fucking much. I didn't even have to do that much of it today, but I now know that much is in my future because of course, why wouldn't it be?
We have had MediCal benefits for the last couple of months, as well as EBT food benefits which have been great. Buying food is my favorite. We were not doing all that much of it for almost a month while the paperwork processed.
But with MediCal, I was having way more issues. Last time I was on it - when we lived in Roseville - I found out I could get Kaiser because I'd previously had Kaiser. And Kaiser is not great, but I could still get appointments in a few weeks if needed, as opposed to waiting months for just the initial intake appointment let alone anything specialized.
When we got back on MediCal this year, I was like, great, I know I can get Kaiser in this area because I had it for work, I just need to get back on it... no. Apparently, it wasn't that easy, but it was right at the 6 months of Pandemic Mark, everything was terrible, and I did not have the mental or emotional energy to engage with any level of automated phone systems and bureaucratic nonsense at the time, so I let it slide. I lived in hope that whenever I did manage to get my brain around to dealing with it, I'd be able to find my way through.
BUT THEN! We needed to move. And right before we moved, I had a very intense November of writing which I was not fully anticipating, and so ended up doing the bare minimum in terms of dealing with paperwork things. And then at the end of last week, right as we're about to jump into weeks of moving madness, I realize... I'm about to run out of my depression meds, which are also meds that help me sorta kinda manage my ADHD. At like the barest level, which is why I want to get better ones eventually, but like, it's better than nothing?
I look at my prescription. No refills left. "Fuck," I think, and then because I had 50 million other things on my brain, I forgot to call during business hours every day until today. Three calls and an hour of waiting for a call-back later, I finally talk to a real person and she tells me that, 1) I should probably just go to an urgent care doctor of some sort and beg them for a new prescription, which means more calling around and more paperwork for a new doctor, but like, I can do it because I need to, because otherwise I go off my meds for an indeterminate amount of time right in the middle of the holidays and moving and ramping up teaching stuff and none of that is easier to do when I'm not on medication. The only reason I had any left for most of this week is because I started stretching them out to half a dose a day just to try and get through. And now I have found that I will have to do all of the calling and paperworking and explaining without them because fuck everything.
Then she tells me the second piece of news, which is that apparently we're going to be out of the coverage area in our new place, which I wasn't anticipating because it's not that far away from the closest hub for Kaiser, but whatever. It means that I'll have to find a new health network again, and get another new doctor, and potentially wait months for an intake appointment, and generally have to jump through a ton of hoops to get any sort of mental health care. And good luck finding a doctor who isn't going to tell me that maybe my mental fatigue and inability to focus when I'm tired is because of a thyroid issue that has never been supported by the blood tests, but what else could it be because I'm fat? It couldn't be ADHD or anything like that. That's totally not in the realm of possibility. My weight must be the only answer.
Anyways, so that's something I get to deal with tomorrow because I got distracted by the next thing on my list. It's another fun thing I get to deal with, figuring out how to get benefits switched from county to county because I could have sworn last time they told us to call the county we were moving to first, but when I called Placer County they told me to call Yolo first. At which point I had about 20 minutes until my next student of the day and had lost all of my fucks to give, so I just gave up and spent the next 20 minutes trying to bring myself down from the screaming and crying level of emotion into something that could reasonably deal with a 13-year-old student without reverting to my 13-year-old self in response.
Me right now
I just... There are so many pieces of this whole process that are beyond shitty and frustrating, and I am very glad that I don't have to pay for health insurance when I'm this poor, or like, roll into an ER just to get my damn depression meds, but also there has got to be a better way to handle this. Whoever decided to make this system as clunky as possible to discourage people from using it did an fucking admirable job.
Until tomorrow,
Hobbit
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