Laurie Ishii

Okay. This morning I went to USC hospital to meet a woman/case worker who takes care of medi-cal and financial services. She was really nice – I am so grateful. My last experience with the case worker from the welfare office was almost traumatic…I don’t remember if I shared that before.

Well, when I went to apply for medi-cal a couple of months ago – I wanted for almost 5 hours and there was a guy who came out and said that my case worker was going to see me next – that my paperwork was on his desk but that he went to lunch and he’d be back in 20 minutes or so. So in a half hour I checked at the front desk to see if my case worker was back and a woman told me to check at such and such window because he should be back. So I went back to check and while I was looking around a guy says in a hrash way – “Are you looking for something?” and I said “Yes, I’m looking for my case worker” and he said, “Did someone call your name?” and I said, “No, a woman told me to come back here and check such and such window” and he said, “Well if no one called your name you need to go back out and wait for someone to call you.”

Okay fine – not a big deal. I felt bad cause I thought that the guy must’ve been having a bad day and I made him mad. So I went back out and told the woman in the front what happened and she asked me to describe the guy and then she said that he was my case worker. But she wasn’t surprised that he was rude to me and told me to write a complaint. So I did – although I was concerned and almost didn’t do it because I just wanted to get my medi-cal and I didn’t want to make the guy madder at me.

Well, later I found out that he put my name (which was at first on top) on the bottom of his pile of people to see, so hours later he finally called me like 15 minutes before the place closed. He told me that I didn’t meet the requirements to receive medi-cal and then gave me back my application and said he didn’t even need it because he already knew that I didn’t qualify because I wasn’t 65 years or older, didn’t have children who were living with me and I wasn’t disabled.

So basically I just gave up – I thought that was it, I didn’t qualify. Then the next time I went to the hospital and tried to apply for ATP (ability to pay) the worker there said that my medi-cal was ‘pending’ so I couldn’t apply. I explained to her that the guy declined me and she said that he couldn’t just deny me flat out like that and that I needed to get a letter that I was declined and why before I could do anything. Well wouldn’t you know it – the next day I got the decline letter in the mail. So I went back to apply for ATP/ORSA again and this time I was told that my case worker wrote that I “withdrew the (my) application and was not complying with the medi-cal rules” !!! I started crying – I again explained what happened when I went to apply for the medi-cal and thankfully the (same) lady was so nice and talked to her supervisor and he sent me to another office…now I remember sharing the rest of this on another blog “What a Day”… so I won’t go into it.

Anyway – I was supposed to go back to the same office where the mean case worker guy was but the thought of it just stressed me out so much that I haven’t and I guess I just wanted to push it in the back of my mind and forget it…but I knew I would have to deal with it sooner or later.

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail about how I was planning to pay my hospital bills and that if I called this lady and talked to her we could talk about options or else if I didn’t call by next monday I would be billed. So I called and we met this morning.

She was so nice, and I was able to apply for medi-cal again – but through her, not the mean man. I’m so grateful. But now I have to get documents of all my medical records (I just lost all of them when I was at Harbor UCLA) so I’m dreading that…but from now on whatever doctor I see will have to document everything about my medical conditions. She had a record on the computer of some of my prior diagnosis – fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, diabetes insipidus, chest pain, hepatitis c and a few others…but they don’t really have a record of my brain or back injuries.

So I must just say that this last month has really been a trial for me…I realize that I have been ‘trying’ to be healed (if that makes any sense) with the power of faith and believing and “not speaking death” over myself – not claiming sickness or saying anything when I don’t feel sick but instead just saying that I’m healed, God has healed me…and then when I’m sick again I just end up getting pissed off at myself because I think that I must be doing something wrong or not believing enough and then ultimately I just get mad at God. Last nights message at church was really what I needed because Charles Neiman (last nights speaker at AT) talked about “God has not left you – He is still with you” – because the last month I haven’t felt like He was anywhere near me. Of course I ‘know’ (in my head) that He’s never left me but my heart has felt broken and so far away from God.
Today when the worker asked if I had ever applied for disability before I remembered that I did when I first got out of Cedar Sinai after the craniotomy but I couldn’t even write (or spell) well enough to fill out the paperwork – it was too overwhelming and so I never completed it or went back to the Social Security office. Plus I was on drugs – my prioroties were really screwed up. But I noticed how I still have a habit of just getting overwhelmed with things or situations and then I just want it to disappear – or I want to disappear.
But I also was afraid that if I filed for disability that I would be ‘accepting’ or ‘receiving’ that I was disabled – and I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to ‘claim’ that I was disabled – because I didn’t want to say that. I still don’t want to say that. But I’m scared – I realized that I’ve been scared the last few weeks…see I was taking pain medication and it was helping the pain so much that I started feeling better and was feeling almost ‘well’ (or better than I have for quite some time) but then I realized that I was becoming too dependent on them so I stopped completely (that’s a story in itself) believing that God would heal me and that I would have no more pain…and for a week or so it wasn’t too bad so I was excited and started saying “God healed me” and I believed that…but then I started having pain again and because I was afraid that something was wrong with me – I didn’t dare tell anyone or say that I was in pain again and then I just got madder and madder and finally I blew up. I blew up on everyone around me.

I’m glad that I’m seeing a neurologist. I still don’t want to claim disability but I realize that unless God does a total miracle there is no way that I will go back to working a normal 9-5 job – I haven’t been able to do anything consistently every day or even five days a week for quite some time now. It seems like I’ve just gotten worse since I contracted the hepatitis too. Things have always been worse in the months of September through the winter until like February…so maybe the weather is just making the pain worse…but the headaches – the MIGRAINES – I never got a migraine until just about a year ago…that’s when all the other problems with going to the bathroom and dizziness with hallucinations came…and when the doctor ordered an MRI which came back abnormal and they diagnosed me as possibly having diabetes insipidus which I’ll be hospitalized in the next couple weeks to be tested with the water deprivation test.

It’s so hard because I’m not dumb or retarded – I mean I am smart…I know that I am intelligent. But there are also things that haven’t been the same since the brain injury and yet just because I look good and sound smart and when people see me they’d never even know what I’ve been through…they don’t understand. It’s so hard when someone says something to me and I don’t ‘process’ it and it takes me a while to ‘get it’ or when they say something and I walk away I totally forget what they just said. It’s frustrating when I want to say something but the words won’t come out or at least the words I want to say won’t come out or that I have to think and rehearse things before saying them or else I say something I didn’t want to or mean to say come out.

People don’t realize that it’s much easier for me to type rather than write because holding a pen is harder and my writing is not close to the way it used to be and my hands get tired holding the pen and at least with the computer I can write, process and also have microsoft word to correct my wrong spelling and after reading it I can go back and erase, change or add stuff without having to scratch out or use white out mistakes a bunch of times.

Or that I’m terrified to ride a bicycle or rollerskate or even drive – which is why I haven’t driven for EIGHT years since the brain surgery…

I know that I can appear all tough and hard to many people and I hate admitting all of this because it shows how weak and scared I am so many times. I am so SICK of never feeling good or not having some kind of pain or fatigue or nausea or weakness or whatever! I don’t even know what it is to wake up and feel good! I’m tired and sometimes it’s just really hard to be a Christian, especially a ‘good’ one… I can be such a BITCH sometimes and I am ashamed of it – lately I have felt so hateful and mean and NOT like Jesus at all.

There are days when I don’t want to “put Jesus on” and I just want to ‘not’ be a Christian and just say exactly what I think and be a bitch to whoever treats me like crap instead of smiling and being nice because I know that ultimately I’ll have to give an account to God for whatever I do.

Man. I’m really screwed up. Well, I guess that shows just how MUCH I need a Savior…

I’m just rambling. I’ll stop… please pray for me. I need lots…