25 February, 2012

Old man River, he just keeps rolling along.

Another big stretch of quiet from me, for which I apologize, but my heart isn’t in much of anything. I haven’t even felt like taking new chicken pics to post on the MoMB Google Plus page.

Mostly I’ve been carefully combing job advertisements and putting my resume out there. It started with jobs that looked like an exact fit for my skills, expanded to those that look like a good fit, then the ones that seemed like a pretty good fit, and when I hit the ones where I’d have to do some creative editing of my resume to make it seem relevant, I gave up.

No nibbles as of yet, though my more senior colleagues are getting multiple calls for interviews and in some cases their choice of job offers. I begin to assume that junior personnel in my file are a dime a dozen, and I’m becoming increasingly resigned to losing my access to health care along with an assured, adequate paycheck in a month’s time. It’s pretty terrifying, which probably explains why I’ve been quiet here. I try to keep this blog a pretty light and happy place, and right now “light and happy” is about as far from my mood as you can get.

Hope you’re all doing well, gentle readers, and that things are going better in your neck of the woods than they are down here in mine.

13 February, 2012

If my life gets any more exciting, it will turn into a country song.

So after last week’s medical shenanigans, I found out on Friday that my company lost the government contract that provides my job. Ouch. The current contract is funded through the 31st of March, so I have roughly 6 weeks to locate paying work that will provide us with health insurance. There’s a chance my current company may be able to keep me and I should find out for sure on that in the next couple weeks, meanwhile I am buffing and polishing my resume and reading up on pretty much any company I think may want to hire me.

This is so much fun I could just shit.

The impending possible loss of insurance means that I’ve made an appointment with my doc to get tapered off the main drug I’m on for pain control, as it’s not one I can quit cold-turkey. I’ve looked up the retail price for the sucker and it’s not going to be affordable; health insurance through COBRA would run us $1261 a month so that’s out of the question, as well. And you know, I try to stay non-political here (there are plenty of other venues where I am VERY LOUD about my politics) but… can I just say that if I’d moved to the UK, I would not be in this horrifying position? Because there would be the National Health Service, and getting to see a doctor and get the meds I need to not be in excruciating pain all day, every day, day in, day out, would not be contingent upon paid employment.

The health system in this country fucking sucks, and I am having this immense urge to go find everyone who bleats about socialism when single-payer health care is brought up and demand money with menaces from them. Health care should not be contingent upon your ability to be exploited by capitalism, y’all.

Luckily I was able to order a wheelchair due to a band of angels (a-comin after me). I’d originally intended it for use in extraordinary circumstances, like wanting to go spend all day at a museum in DC, but in the circumstances it looks like I’m going to be using the sucker nearly full-time. And hopefully we can manage to scrounge up the money for me to keep seeing my doc periodically so he will keep writing me scrips for generic drugs that we can hopefully afford.

In other news, the cats and dogs and chickens and husband are all in good health and so far there has been no return of my amazingly horrifying allergic reaction (KNOCK ON WOOD), so things are going as well as can be expected given my tendency to panic and hyperventilate when I think too hard about my employment situation.

And if you know anyone in the Fredericksburg, VA area who would like to hire a tech writer type, hook me up, yo.

9 February, 2012

Living in interesting times.

Wow, I am REALLY never commenting on the boringness of my life ever again. On Monday evening, my left knee started swelling and itching. By bedtime, I was having a full-blown allergic reaction to God knows what, which necessitated a trip to Urgent Care on Tuesday morning, where I was dosed up with prednisone and antihistamines.

Prednisone is great — I’m full of energy, not in pain, feel like I could run marathons. Oh, yeah, and I can’t get to sleep before 2300 (11pm for people who do civilian time). Also I’m starving to death all. the. time. This meant I stayed home from work again on Wednesday, and today I’ll be getting Daniel to drive me in and then pick me up at the end of the day. Of course, today I also start tapering the prednisone down from 50mg to 40mg, so maybe tonight I’ll actually be able to fall asleep. A girl can dream, anyway. If she’s not on prednisone.

This whole thing would be slightly less scary if I’d been exposed to anything unusual Monday, but I hadn’t been. So it wasn’t a matter of “oh, yeah, I’d been out rolling around on the back acre” or “hey, maybe it was that thing I ate.” Just, y’know, sudden swelling and fiendish itching, all of it concentrated on my knees with outliers at my elbows, wrists, shoulders, and fingers.