Not long after I started the Ryokan, I began having a lot of health problems. They kept treating me for asthma, but I knew it wasn't that. Finally, last July 11th, I had my husband take me to the emergency room in a hospital in western Maine. They performed an emergency tracheostomy, and transferred me to Portland by ambulance. I was in the hospital all summer and fall, being treated for cancer. I'm still not out of the woods yet. I need a biopsy and some other things, and have been waiting for an opening to get it done for about a month now. I don't have any of my craft supplies at home now, so can't work on the dollhouse. Keeping my fingers crossed that things will get straightened out soon. Health care is in such a mess.
We never qualified for Obama care, and don't qualify more Maine care either, but the IRS thought it was fine to charge us thousands of dollars because we couldn't afford health care. I had to give up a few months worth of doctor's appointments last spring, just to pay the IRS the fines. My husband got laid off last summer, because he missed too much work, and still can't get a job, because he can't be there. Now, with almost a million dollars in hospital bills, we are going to have to choose between paying the IRS fines for no insurance in the spring, or paying hospital bills. With only $1,700 per month social security coming in, it will take months to get enough money to pay the IRS. I am terribly bitter about that, and can't stop myself from posting it here, because I am so sick of people trying to tell me that we have affordable healthcare in this country. Luckily, I turned 65 in December, so now I can get medicare. I have part B, but the bills are still adding up. Anyway, sorry for the rant about the lack of health care for those of us who were living paycheck to paycheck, but yes, it makes me mad. It also makes me mad that it wasn't considered a life changing event for me to be treated with cancer, and have to stay in a hospital four hours from my home, and having to use a feeding tube to eat, all the while my husband also was laid off and we were left with nothing but social security, and almost a million dollars in hospital bills. Nope, the government says that's not life changing, we still didn't deserve Obama Care.
Yeah, we will survive, (or at least my husband will), but it still sux.
