karobit

[karobit]

Yesterday a kid said to me "excuse me? Your hair looks like beautiful anime hair" which is already amazing and then she said "watch me on your camera when I go down the slide I'm going to do the Peter Griffin death pose when I come out" and she sure did.

[karobit]

really don't know how i feel about the metal cane decoration being found at the top of the mountain. a cane? like, a walking aid?

(x) id lose my fucking mind. imagine climbing nearly 10k ft of elevation thinking you're the first to ever do it n turns out someone beat you to it a millennium ago

[karobit]

oh hey humble bundle finally had a bundle that felt worth getting an affiliate link for

$18 for 14 martha wells novels/novellas/short stories (including murderbot) in drm-free epub readable on any device you want, with a portion of your purchase going to support world central kitchen. you can also adjust your donation to increase the amount that goes to charity, the default kind of sucks.

you can copy/paste this plaintext link if your adblocker breaks the other one: https://humblebundleinc.sjv.io/1935ox

[karobit]

i feel like high school/middle school sitcoms set the unrealistic expectation of being able to have lunch time outside

[karobit]

i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck

[karobit]

wishing a very happy day today to becky macIntyre specifically

[karobit]

Post on my dash about medical debt reminded me of the time tumblr saved me two grand. I don't think I told y'all about it because I am out of the habit of posting everything I do on tumblr lol

So. Last December, I had a bad cavity filled, and about a week later, I woke up with half of my face paralyzed. Which, as I'm sure you can imagine, freaked me the fuck out. Fortunately I had some level-headed Discord friends who a) told me what Bell's palsy was so I could look it up and b) reminded me to call my dentist for an emergency appointment. Dentist was also pretty sure it was Bell's palsy, but urged me to go to the emergency room to get checked out, because one-sided facial paralysis is also a possible indicator of a stroke. And you don't fuck around with strokes.

Bell's palsy, if you, like me of 6 months ago, don't know, is a harmless paralysis/muscle weakness on one side of the face that can be caused by a variety of things. It usually goes away on its own after a few weeks but also you can speed up the process with steroids.

I was pretty sure I was not having a stroke, because I'm Red Cross first aid certified and I know the symptoms of a stroke, and while one-sided facial paralysis is one of them, I didn't have any of the others. Also, I had quit my shitty job in October, which meant I had a shiny new marketplace health insurance plan and hadn't even touched my deductible. But I called my parents from the car and they urged me to get checked out and promised to help me pay off the emergency room bill if I needed it, because they're good people and they love me even if they drive me crazy sometimes. So off I went to the nearest emergency room.

Emergency room staff also didn't think I was having a stroke, because I waited ALL AFTERNOON, periodically having a new person come up to me and ask me to smile, hold both arms out to the side, press down on their hands, and tell them what month and year it was. (They don't ask who the president is anymore. Hmm, I wonder why.) One guy had me drink a cup of water while he watched. I cannot stress enough that I did not have any medical tests other than a physical examination: no CT scans or MRIs, no IV drugs or blood draws, nothing.

I get diagnosed with Bell's palsy and given a prescription for Prednisone. And then they give me a phone number and tell me to talk to this person about administrative stuff. So I call, and the dude on the phone verifies my name and date of birth and insurance information, and then he says, "It looks like your copay today is going to be $2400. How would you like to pay?"

I am, to this day, kind of impressed that he didn't even stutter over that number, but I assume working in a medical call center drains your entire soul. At this point, it's about 7pm, and I've been in the hospital since 2pm, and I'm stressed because half my face doesn't work, and I know that I can't afford $2400 because I quit my shitty job with nothing lined up back in October. But, I still remember every tumblr post I've ever read about health insurance and the medical system and how you can negotiate down a bill. I am not looking forward to this process, it sounds like a pain in the ass, but the alternative is paying $2400, so I say the magic words: "Send me an itemized bill."

I kinda expected the guy to try and get me to pay up front, but he just says "Ok" and finishes up the process. I get discharged, go to the only open pharmacy at that time of night to get my Prednisone, have the pharmacist tell me the prescription isn't written right and he can't fill it, go home, and have a screaming sobbing meltdown because I have used up every single milligram of cope in my entire body. (I got my steroids eventually, and the Bell's palsy cleared up in a couple weeks.)

A few weeks later, I get the bill in the mail. I brace myself and open it...

$300.

Turns out, after going through insurance and processing and everything, they couldn't actually find $2400 worth of stuff to charge me for. Shocking! Who could have predicted!

I might have been able to argue it down even more, but I was fed up with entire thing, so I paid the $300 just to be fucking done with it. Sometimes the cheapest way to pay is with money.

What if I had paid that $2400 up front? Do I think they would have been like, "Oh, oops!" and refunded me $2k? Well, possibly, but I am not optimistic.

So, thank you to everyone who has ever posted about navigating the US healthcare system on tumblr. Because of you, I knew how to handle this situation even when I was tired and stressed.

Don't forget to ask for an itemized bill, folks.

[karobit]

Daily life of a cat.

[karobit]

Give a man a leaf and he will eat it. Teach a man to leaf and he will go away

[karobit]

[karobit]

Star Trek conventions are so funny. After I got an autograph from somebody, I went to an empty table nearby so I could set my stuff down for a second while I put my autograph in a protective sleeve, and I hear somebody yell at Ethan Peck (whose table is across from the empty table) "HEY HOT SPOCK!" and I turn around because I want to know who the fuck just said that. And it was Jonathan Frakes.

[karobit]

"You could get up early and do it before work" I could also wait for a magic beanstalk to start growing in my living room LMAO. Let's focus on things that happen in the real world

[karobit]

thinkin' about him

[karobit]

whisper of the fall

[karobit]