let the good times roll

well, the last few days have been a barrel of laughs. (perhaps this would be a good place to mention that i was wearing my “lost cause” t-shirt when the accident occurred.)
a couple of days ago i decided the vicodin isn’t having much effect, so i stopped using it. i didn’t feel any different before, during, or after taking it. i told them in the e.r. vidodin hasn’t seemed to do much of anything for me in the past.
tuesday i spent most of the day in bed. the hrc took me by la fendee for lunch. i decided to not bother with the crutches part way through. i can hobble around, and i can put some weight on my leg, but i’m slow, and if i jar it a little or bend it too much it hurts. we just ordered there, then i brought it back to my house. i watched the island while i ate with my leg propped up on the couch, then i headed back to the bed.
wednesday started off badly. early in the day i finally started to hit the limit of my trying to be understanding and accepting of the situation i’m in. i wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, just more annoyed that it’s sinking in it may take a pretty long time for me to be mostly back to normal again. i was tired of laying on my back in the house staring at the ceiling. i was tired of my leg being swollen. i was tired of not being able to accomplish anything of value related to my job, because even though i have a laptop and internet connection it’s just not the same as sitting at a desk (even my home desk). i was tired of having to ask people to help me do things. i don’t mind if i have to hobble around some, i just want to feel like i know it’s healing and i can go to work and go to eat and drive myself somewhere. anyway, it wasn’t productive.
so in order to feel like i was accomplishing something, sometime around lunchtime (i’ve been sleeping a lot, and late) i called an orthopedic office to set up an appointment, because my leg was still swollen a fair bit and my knee is very sensitive to the touch. the e.r. just took x-rays, so i figured it might be a good idea to have someone check out my leg for ligament/tendon/etc. injuries just in case. this is the point i learned what a big clusterfsck this whole thing could be.
after talking to 3 different doctors’ offices, i learned pretty much none of them will take personal health insurance if you were in an accident. they want you to pay for yourself as an individual. this is because if they accept your insurance, the personal health insurance many times will — upon finding out it is related to an vehicle accident — tell them they need to give all of the money back. why? because it’s an vehicle accident and the personal health insurance companies don’t want to pay that. so then the doctor has to bill you. then you have to fight with insurance companies about who is supposed to pay. they try to force the responsible party to pay. in this case for me, it would be the party responsible for the accident…except we don’t know who that is — or if they even have insurance…or any money at all. so then it falls to my own vehicle insurance if i have personal injury protection. or, if the responsible party is uninsured or under-insured, then it could be you have uninsured/under-insured insurance on your vehicle insurance.
so it was that my simple plan of using my personal health insurance — you know, the insurance you pay lots of money for to take care of your health? — fell apart. i was pretty pissed, because i lived under the assumption that your health insurance was supposed to insure your health. evidently they try as hard as they can to not do so. because you know, they’d like have to pay money, and they’re in business to make money. it’s even more annoying since i personally have been positive cash flow for the insurance industry for most of my adult life. i have made almost no vehicle insurance claims ever (and the few i have made were very minor), and i rarely use health insurance (and when i do it’s usually for some antibiotics or such for a cold or something, nothing expensive).
the hrc took me by schlotzsky’s for lunch, then i came home and sat with my leg propped on the couch and watched adaptation. i then went back to the bed. (spot a theme?)
i had decided to skip doing the radio show, and i slept through the first part of it. i’d planned on getting on irc and listening to it, but i didn’t. around 9:30pm or so the potts (sans children) came by. they took me over to the teahouse. i decided to give a shot at staying out a little bit. but we went in the back where the soft couches are and i put my leg up on a couch, so it was sort of cheating. i was out of the house for probably about 1.5 hours. my leg did swell up some, but it wasn’t too bad and i got home feeling decent about the experiment.
when i got home, my dsl wasn’t working. well, sometimes a bit, but not very well. i tried disconnecting and reconnecting it, but it still wasn’t working. after trying to get a support number via my iphone, and spending time on hold, they told me there was a houston outage and i would just need to wait and call back later and see if it was working. so i gave up and went to sleep.
today when i got up around noon, the internet still wasn’t working. i hobbled over to the modem and it had no lights…no power, no nothing. i unplugged and replugged it. nothing. i changed outlets. nothing. the modem was dead. i called the support line and after it taking awhile they told me it wasn’t under warranty, so i’d have to sign a new 1-year agreement to get a new dsl modem. except the account isn’t in my name, so i said thanks and hung up. i kind of need the internet to do my work, plus right now it’s my connection to the outside world while i’m laying in bed. so i decided i’d go ahead and buy a new one myself.
the hrc came by and picked me up, and first we went by the post office where i picked up a certified letter from the towing company letting me know they had my bike. of course, i already knew that, and progressive insurance is taking care of that stuff, so it doesn’t really matter. from there we went to lupe tortilla. i decided to give a shot at being on my feet for awhile, so we ate there. they use wooden slat chairs, and that mixed with me having to bend my knee more and for longer than i have been wasn’t too comfortable. from there we went by microcenter so i could get a new dsl modem and wireless router. we also went by best buy so i could check on external drives there, which i plan to use with my exchange home lab.
oh yeah, and during the time i was out the guy from the honda dealership called me and said he’d done a repair estimate on my bike and it came out to like $7500 so they were probably going to be totaling it and just cutting me a check, but that my agent would get in touch with me. a while later she did call me, and told me that was the plan. i took the opportunity to ask her about how that works, what about custom parts on the bike, etc. i also asked her if i had personal injury protection or uninsured/under-insured on my policy and…no, i don’t. so i guess both progressive and my personal healthcare will be trying to go after the other people in the accident. i also talked to her about insurance companies and seeing a doctor and such, and she said she would help me if i needed to get proof for my personal health insurance that i don’t have pip or uninsured/under-insured. so maybe that will work out. i guess next i need to call my health insurance company and see what they have to say.
i was probably out of my house, sitting, standing, walking, for about 3 or 4 hours total. my leg was hurting some the whole time, but as we were driving back to my house it got pretty painful. it kind of felt like the lower half of my leg was on fire. (maybe the vicodin would have helped? but i doubt it.) eventually we got home and i got the wrap off and got in bed and elevated it. the ankle was pretty swollen, but the knee not as bad. but a lot more blood had pooled around my heel and the back of my knee and lower thigh. it looks like black bruises sort of. this is in addition to what looked like a number of yellow and purplish bruises along my leg. it’s been a few hours since then and my leg still is sore and tingling some. hopefully that will lessen the longer my leg is elevated. it pretty much sucks. and the trial run is not a good sign for me having little or no problems going back to work.
i had to call raj to try and get info about the dsl line, and then i had to break down and do some google searching on my iphone to get info about how to properly set up the device i got with at&t dsl, but i eventually got the dsl working. which is why i’m finally able to put this update out. yea for accomplishing something.