It's Been Such a Long Time...

Reading my buddy Sneadwoman's blog, I felt scolded into catching up here. It's been a long few months, healthwise, familywise, and workwise. Who wants to read about my day-to-day crap? Nobody. Do I want to write about it? Not while it's overwhelming me. So there you have it.

I have surgery tomorrow for the matter previously mentioned in this blog. At the same time (yeah, a two-fer) Dr Boob* will be doing an excisional biopsy on the mystery lump I've had for over a year. It doesn't show up on any imaging devices, but the damn thing is there, so for piece of mind Lefty will be losing a little bit of bulkage. I have it to spare, no no big.

I had an MRI a few weeks ago for my wrist. At age 36, I find out I have arthritis. What in the world is up with that?!? I type all day, my hobby is jewelrymaking, I can't have arthritis. Jeez. Well, it isn't bad yet. The MRI was to asses a nasty ganglion that has been drained, injected, ruptured several times and keeps coming back, hurting worse every damn time. It's shaped like a barbell, one head outside and one head inside my wrist. No wonder it hurts like it does! Removal scheduled for November 2. Three days off work, then vacation for a week with a good friend, meeting up with other good friends, and going to Savannah, where we not-so-young but incredibly fun-loving women will terrorize the taverns, pubs, and fine dining establishments. The wrist splint will not impair my drinking abilities, I assure you!

On the family front, my husband thinks I should purchase for him a new Jeep. This probably is due to my purchase of a Durango earlier this year, after many years of driving a beat up foreign four-banger 5-speed with no a/c. This is while he drove the relatively new minivan, failed to maintain it, and turned it into a toilet. Now I have a super-clean 4WD SUV that I keep neat clean, tidy, and running right while he continues to trash his vehicle. Maybe I'm cheap but why have a car payment when you have a perfectly serviceable vehicle with plenty of miles left on it that is PAID FOR. I guess it's just not cool enough, and he IS approaching 40 real quick.

Work, good lord... What used to be a passion is feeling like indentured servitude. I stay for the benefits. I don't like being thrown under the bus, and it's happened a lot lately. But I have surgeries coming up and it would not be prudent to give notice and have to pay a million dollars a week to COBRA. Although... with some of the crap I've gone through in the appointments and tests thus far, I think I could have negotiated a lower price than my copays plus premiums. I pay extra for the fabulous and wonderful (cough) PPO plan on my BC/BS and for the first time in my life I got a bill for a copay to the lab that processed my pap smear! WTH is that all about? I've been getting at least one a year for the last, oh, 20 years or so... never have I gotten a separate lab bill. What happened to diagnostic testing being covered at 100%? That's what I thought I got this damn buy-up for! Trust me, I will look VERY carefully next year at the options. I think the plan a step down from the super-duper mucho-spendy PPO plan would have cost less over the long run, plus it has an out of pocket maximum to cap my spending, something the PPO doesn't have.

Crap, blog-break over, back to the salt mines. Since I quoted Boston in the title, I'll sign off it too... I think I should be going.