Mental Health Day in Day to day life from a woman that turned 60 in Oct 2014 and who lives on a farm and Retired on January 2, 2016. I plan to do more sewing, work outside in the yard and just enjoy my retirement.

I seem to be a mess. Dealing with Medicaid and Medicare for J has just about been too much for me. Very depressing that I can’t decipher all the stuff they are sending me. I (He) received 2 letters from Medicaid on Friday or Saturday that said he would need to pay a spend down every month, which is like out of pocket expenses. I would need to pay it in by the 10th of each month for him to be covered. I was confused. Was going to take those letters to the Drs office and to the pharmacy for some clarification on Monday when I took J back for a checkup. I forgot them. Grrrr. Got home from the appointment and there were THREE more letters in the mailbox. 2 from MD state and 1 from our state. OMG. The one from state said one thing and the other 2 said something completely different. Wanted to cry. Instead I just laid them on the bar. Yesterday I started making phone calls to get some help on the array of correspondence. My frustration was obvious. Almost hysteria. Almost. I set an appointment to take the correspondence to J’s case worker at 12:30. I knew this was going to take longer than an hour so I took off 3 hrs to hopefully get this settled in my mind and to see if I needed to mail money to someone. The case worker read over all the correspondence and sure enough part of it was from Medicaid requesting the spend down amount to be sent to them for May and June. The other two letters were from Medicare, which stated that J qualifies for medicine coverage. What? PTL!! Still needed to take all of this to the Child Family Services to verify she was correct. That was the next stop. Yes. that seemed to be correct but I needed to send the spend down amount to the address on one of the letters. She also said to take the Medicare letter stating J was eligible for pharmacy coverage to the pharmacist who we get the medicines from. So.....head to hometown pharmacy. Pharmacist that is expert in this crap was gone for the day. No fear. They made copies for her to read and look at today when she gets to work and I will call later and find out exactly what those letters mean. Boom!! I’m not as confused but still unsure. Then went to talk to the billing folks at the Drs office to get their take on this mess. She advised me not to pay the spend down as Medicare’s deductible is less than Medicaid’s deductible. IF the time comes that J needs to be hospitalized, then I need to start paying the spend down amount. God help me!!

Apparently the snag and so much confusion involves the combo of Medicare and Medicaid combo. Who’d have thought?

My brain is mush and my nerves are teetering. I was awakened at 2:30 by a severe foot cramp and then my RLS kicked in. When I got up to eat a banana for the cramp and take another RLS pill, I discovered that I forgot to take my bedtime RLS pill. See? I’ve lost it!! I never forget my RLS meds. Until now. Until I get this resolved with J’s coverage I seem to be worthless. Confused. Frustrated. Want to cry. Want simple. Not going to happen.

So since I’ve been up for hours now and my ability to communicate respectively to and with “stupid” at work right now is greatly hampered, it seems the right and smart thing to do to take a mental health day.

Take care and God Bless

Last updated May 20, 2015