OMG, Betsey - the hoops you've had to jump through... Althuogh your sitch is starting to make a little more sense to me because I know now that the H is not only runnning from your emotions, but from his, and from the grown-up problems that are probably way too much for his tiny little fish gills to swallow. Keep swimming applies to the insurance situation as well - since you won't hear until April (typical Medicaid), I guess stewing doesn't help, altho I know i would still do it. Anyway - cut yourself some slack - you not only have your squirrely H to deal with, but this huge scary monetary sitch with your D. You are an amazing Mommy - remember that you are doing the best you can, which is a damn sight better than a lot of people would do.
One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.
All in a day's work here, hon. You just digest each bite as you chew here in la la land.
I know that Mr. Wonderful finds our life overwhelming. But when has running away from it ever helped? I asked him to join us for the meeting yesterday a few weeks ago, and he politely declined. Well, it did turn out that his services were necessary to get D6 and take her to the pediatrician. And it's not like I expected him to contribute to the Medicaid meeting.
Which, ironically, is so UNFUN. I had to list all the bad things about our sitch, which is not a PMA thing for me or anyone else. My Resource Coordinators hate these meetings for that reason: Identify all failures of this child.... it's enough to make your head swim.
I really don't worry about what is going to happen. Really. I don't like reality sometimes, but God has always found a way to provide, and I don't think He's going to renege now. Things happen in good time.
I know this seems overwhelming to those of you who are not in my shoes. But I just deal with things as they arise... otherwise, it IS overwhelming. So don't think I think I have it harder than any of you. You'd do no different if D6 was your own.
It's called a mother's love... and we all have it. You do what you have to do to make sure your little ones are taken care of--and then some, if you're fortunate!
Bets
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
It all goes back to our own set of circumstances, doesn't it? And the concept that anything becomes manageable when it is your way of life.
There are people who will give me this look of pity and say something to the tune of ‘how do you hold it together? You work so many hours and with no husband at home to help with your toddler…” How do I do it? One blasted day at a time, thank you - the same way YOU would do it! You don’t crumble up and die when the bad stuff hits…at least not forever! You do it because doing it is the only choice you’ve got. There is no difficulty without blessing…
That wasn’t supposed to come across sounding so much like venting! I was just trying to say that ‘overwhelming’ is always more so to the outside world. When it is your way of life, there are days when you feel overwhelmed but nothing like what it looks like from the outside. We all know that through DBing…it isn’t a way of life we would have chosen had we been given the option. But we can all agree that there are definite blessings to the crappy circumstances, right?
I think that is also where the frustration with our spouses comes in. Sometimes it really feels like they can pick and choose which parts of reality they want to be theirs and the rest are just left to fall and wait for us to pick them up. I know that is why I was so angry with Sting on Sunday…I saw my sitch from the outside and rather lost it!
"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."
--Agnes Repplier, writer and historian
I am extremely envious of you and how you are able to handle it all. I know that putting it all in God's hand has helped me through this, but the inspiration you provide as an example to us is awesome. Keep up the good work. Stop by my thread in newcomers if you get a chance, a whole lot new going on that I could use a hand with.
Bets- in California there is a state insurance pool for the uninsurable - waiting list is long, but then you can buy insurance. I do know that some new federal regulations regarding pre-existing conditions were being discussed, but I can't remember what, if anything, came of it. And of course there's always the option of finding work with one of those wonderful large companies that still offer decent insurance coverage to their employees and dependents.
It really is pretty absurd that a country as rich as ours can't do better than this.
Bets, Yes, the insurance companies LIE and you just have to PUSH, threat, repeat phone calls until you get them to do what is right.....X taught me this, that they delay paying , saying 'wrong code, need clarification etc cause every month they don't pay they collect big bucks just in interest on their banked money! I started doing this (which you can't do cause you work)...I called and got someone on the line and said, look, i don't work and I need to get this straightened out, so I'm willing to stay on the phone ALL DAY until we get this resolved....and then every argument they came up with I countered with one of my own. But i was very NICE about it. Bets, I believe COBRA and HIPPA are NATIONWAL rules...we in Colorado have to abide by them too, but again, your company AND the insurance co will LIE....get a phone that tapes all this stuff and use it.(Ha, i might just have an extra!!!! )
Well, maybe he doesn't fear any emotion....exactly. Maybe he thinks you use emotions to blackmail or manipulate him. That is what mine thinks, I beleive....Again, it is all about him, so you aren't ALLOWED to have a real emotion..P/A not only personalize everything, but they HAVE to feel it is all about them because anything else would require EMPATHY...and usually P/A based people have a hard time with empathy...getting out of their skin and trying to look through someone elses eyes. So he was honest in that it isn't quite fear or only fear....it is more that he deals with his emotions by closing them down and expects you to do the same and when you don't, he believes that you are trying to manipulate him. Or at least that is what I've come up with....could be completely wrong of course!
He does fear being needed..remember, that is the base concept of P/A. He fears being manipulated and controlled. He also fears you needing him....and that is the one that is so SELFISH that it sticks in my craw. And I swear I can't think of anything to do about it other than a BRAIN TRANSPLANT...does our insurance even cover one of those?
Well babe, off to play tennis then an all nighter finishing up deposition questions which will be a blast....when I get to watch him answer hahahahahahhha Linda
Mer and Bets - Yeah, I think thats true - we each just take our own sitch one bite at a time, and if we do it with style, so much the better! I get a lot of that "omg, how do you do it?" but mostly it has to do with "how do you put up with him?" Well, I get up every morning, hug the S, get dressed, and face the day. It's only remarkable to me when I look at where I was a year ago, and how much stronger I feel, even tho my sitch looks worse from the outside. I was thinking about this one time last year H took off to the beach with a friend and got MAD at me when I yelled at him for taking off without telling me where he was going - and I felt guilty - or the time he took me, our S, AND ow to the beach? That was before I knew for sure... At least now I know what the hell is going on, and I'm not letting myself get walked on. THAT sitch was hell. This one I can handle. It's all a matter of perspective.
One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.
Hey guys, it's okay on the insurance thing! But I appreciate all your help. Things are fine. I'm a great advocate for D6, though I turned over the insurance fights to Mr. W.--who is just as effective (if not moreso) than I am in dealing with sharks! We're really good...
The secret is persistence. They expect to have insureds back off in fear. They don't get that from us, and we've been able to get them to pay for pretty much everything they're contracted to pay for. Whew.
I am a candidate to testify in Congress with our state director sometime later this year, so that will be the right place to address the world on the problems with state entitlement programs. Until then, I've got to resolve conflict with my partner in crime.
Linda, I think it's important for me to point out that Mr. Wonderful is not a full blown P/A guy. As was pointed out by Laurie (DB coach) and MC (you know him), a true P/A is P/A with just about everyone--at work, play and in Rs with friends. I will tell you that my H will give the shirt off his back to fulfill commitments he makes to others.
And he hasn't always been as P/A with me (though there were definitely some signs of this before we got M). When my crazymaking peaked, his P/A peaked as well. I believe that they were both coping and defense mechanisms--ones that had long outgrown their usefulness because they were making the problems worse.
However, maybe he DOES think that my emotions are blackmail. I'll have to consider this one. But something doesn't quite sit right with that one.... let me think about this some more.
One of my colleagues had a C session last night that went very well (and he is my age--the Will in our Will and Grace sitcom here). Well, he's just ended a R and the C had some interesting things to say... because his ex-SO appears to be having MLC on top of some other legal problems that are turning his life inside out.
The C said that often MLCers are dealing with conflict that their fathers presented during the years when the MLCer was 13-19 years old. I felt a complete whack by this one.
Mr. W. has admitted to me that his world was very turbulent then. His mother was diagnosed with emphysema (and refused to take doctor's advice and continued smoking). His paternal grandfather had come to live with them, and his mother was very angry... Angry about her Dx, angry that she had to take care of her FIL, angry about being poor. Angry that she had married at the age of 16...
Looking back in the crystal ball, I imagine his father felt grossly inadequate, a financial failure and a disappointment to his W (not to mention a little unloved). Neither of them had ever communicated effectively--they employed the silent treatment when they couldn't work through conflict.
Mr. W. and his older brother were caught in the middle. Well, BIL was on football team in high school, giving him an out at family time (and how his mother was able to secure permission from his dad was a pretty sad story--manipulative and mean).
Mr. W. did not have the athletic prowess and was stuck at home doing chores and helping take care of his beloved GF.
He told me that he felt very much alone the day that Gramps died (he was 16). Gramps often spoke up for him and made sure that his folks realized that he was a person. Once the medium was gone, he put the wheels in motion to get the hell out of MT. He got a scholarship to college in AZ and never returned. Never wanted to either.
What I'm really thinking is that his parents taught him his coping mechanism. They ran away from their problems by ignoring them, stopping the conflict by not speaking or pretending that there wasn't a problem when the frigging elephant was occupying their living room!
MC was just getting into this when Mr. W. stopped going.
So I'm taking this a step further and postulating that because I'm different, he thinks this is bad. In fact, I'm going to put money on this one.
Think about it:
If conflict and conflicting emotions are things to avoid, this makes them bad and hurtful. And what do we feel when we avoid? Fear. Fear that hurting will make things worse.
Well, I know that can be true initially. But why do physicians often have to rebreak bones to get them to heal properly? This can't feel good at the time, but in the end, it forces proper healing.
OK, so now I have to break Mr. Wonderful's leg....
Bets
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
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