Me and my STD...

...that's Short Term Disability (you perverts)!


Very few times in my life have I ever had to deal with things that made me feel like an actual grown-up.  (Obviously there were times during Mama's illness when I felt like an adult, although after she died I felt more like a child, and an orphaned one at that.)  The experience of being rear-ended and my car being totaled gave me a crash course in adulthood.  When I had my gallbladder removed at age 30, then broke my leg and both sides of my ankle a couple of years later, there were things to take care of that made me feel like an adult. And now the surgery coming up in 4 days has reopened those feelings.

It was not the wreck or the surgeries that stressed me out.  It was dealing with my insurance company!  And for this short-term leave, it seems like there are a lot more details, and many more possible ways for me to get shortchanged.  Payroll for my job was taken over by an out-of-house payroll processing company several years ago, so we no longer have an on-site payroll person to go to if there are errors with our paychecks.  For a brief period my company had also decided that a benefits coordinator on-site was  unnecessary, which resulted in a LOT of problems with employee leaves and pay.  I guess the powers that be decided that it would be less expensive in the long run to have a benefits coordinator in the building rather than outsourcing that position as well.  I am grateful someone has been in town and in the building to talk to when I have had questions.

I don't speak "insurance" well, and I never have. It might as well be Greek or Klingon or something.  I realize that I need to have a better understanding of how the whole health insurance process works.  All I know is, I go to the doctor and if I owe them something, they bill me.  If I have overpaid, I get reimbursed.  That part I can grasp.  All the other stuff about deductibles and out-of-pocket costs and whatnot...I try to focus, truly, but something shiny comes across my field of vision and I get sidetracked!  I'm not proud that I seem to lack the ability (or the inclination) to process such information more easily and thoroughly, but I am what I am, and what I am when bombarded with this kind of minutiae is bored.  I can't help it.

Maybe during my leave I can sit down with all the collected invoices and letters and try to make sense of them.  Maybe I can find an online tutorial called "Health Insurance for Dummies" and absorb the information that way.  Whatever the case, I am just blessed and grateful to have health coverage, even with all the details that don't quite make sense to me.  Without insurance, the only detail would be that I could not afford the surgery to begin with.

So I am looking forward to my STD.  Four days and counting.  Weight-loss surgery and STD now may very likely prevent long term disability later on.