Vicodin and Torodol are not doing the trick today... Yesterday was so unbearable when I got home from our open house at the club that I thought I literally bore a hatchet in my lumbar.
It scares me.
It scares me that I am back in this place I was a few weeks ago where nothing was helping, and my options have been deemed limited by insurance because of an overzealous doctor that didn't listen to my symptoms - that guessed that I was wrong about what I was feeling, and then gave up on me when she discovered her hunch was off.
What scares me even more is that I am now going to have to succumb to the recommendation by my insurance to start a very strong regimen of physical therapy on a full time basis - more than one or two visits. More than an hour or two a week. I fear I am headed back to where I was two years ago: 2 hours a day, three days a week.
I don't have the time, and Lord knows we don't have the money. PT where I go now will cost me $35 a day. That is $105 a week. I have no idea how much it will cost me if I can get thet referral I am waiting for in the small town next to my larger small town.
And here is where it gets real personal, and it gets really real...
Jim is on partial layoff. Not enough time to keep us in the black, and too much time to collect unemployement to make up the difference. They won't work with his schedule to allow him to work part time for my cousins husband. Guaranteed money. But he cannot risk them letting him go since he is the keeper of our insurance.
There is no two ways to look at this any longer. That 43% that stares back at me on my sidebar is a serious reality to us right now. I fear we won't make it at all if the economy turns any more sour.
We had some equity built up in our home not that long ago. But when the housing market tanked, so did the value of our home. And now we are in the red - no equity, officially upside down. We aren't concerned about it becoming a liability because we are solid when it comes to our mortgage - but we are sick that we don't have that equity any longer. Equity that we could use to help us pay off these darned medical bills.
And this brings me back to the beginning of this post. I know what I need to do to get rid of this pain - but I know we can't afford to do it. And the really scary thing is, the fact that surgery is potentially looming off in the not so distant future makes it even harder.
How do you qualify the need for relief?
