I Know I Got a Tattoo for a Reason

Jury Duty Day 1

I show up at about 8:40 and get put in the jury holding pen. I’m reading my book about Hunter S. Thompson and the room starts to fill up. After about 30 minutes we all get called into the courtroom for jury selection for a civil trial. It’s a malpractice lawsuit. Doctor Vs. Disgusting man and woman who’ve had bad things happen to them. (Yeah, I’m a fucking dick), but I don’t want to be there. I’d rather be at work running a test.

I’m not part of the first twelve who get called into the box to get questioned. Three get to leave because they have good enough excuses. I’m #3 to get filled back into the twelve. Shit, we’ve already found out this is going to be about a two week trial. I really don’t want to be in court for two weeks.

We all get questioned until noon lunch break by the plaintiff attorney, and things aren’t going well for my chances of getting out. I haven’t really been able to play the crazy card. I don’t want to go too overboard and have the judge call me on it.

I take a walk downtown for lunch and get a bite to eat. I really need to focus after lunch.

The doctor’s lawyer gets to ask us questions after lunch. His first or second question is if any of us have had negative experiences in the healthcare system. My hand shoots up like I’m a giddy second grader who knows how to spell “dismissed”.

I talk about the time Carter broke his leg and how much of a headache the insurance was, and how I felt the care was very systematic, not personal. I use strong, but not vulgar language, like “I despise the healthcare industry”.

Defendant’s lawyer wraps up and the judge and the counsel go into the judges chambers to determine who is going to serve. Moment of truth, did I do a good enough job?

Right off the bat, they dismiss this dude who I didn’t think would get dismissed. Some farmer, I guess farmers are too, or not sympathetic enough in malpractice. Judge calls four peoples name to stand and swears them in. At this point I think I’m screwed. He calls four others and swears them in. Myself and two other women who also talked about negative hospital experiences get moved down to seats 1,2,and 3. They then pull 9 others who’ve been sitting and watching the whole time.

Did I mention it was like 80° in the courtroom since we had this warm snap and they must not have turned of the heat.

Now I have to sit through both attorneys questioning the new 9. I’m starting to sweat like I’m running a foot race. I can’t sit still.

Finally they finish. At this point I feel pretty good they’ll pick four other jurors and two other alternates who aren’t me. I was right. I felt good. I dodged a two week bullet.

I got to go home, and I have to come in tomorrow. They have to fill one more felony trial for the week. Even if I get called into that I should get excused since I look like a criminal.

Team Lawryde

I’ve had a few tussles with United Healthcare (They process all of Opposite of Dog’s insurance and flexible spending claims) over coverage and payment of health services.

The most in depth of these being their refusal to pay for a second x-ray of my son’s leg when he broke it a while back.

I ended up beating the assholes after 13 months of battling them over $67.50. The resources and man-hours consumed to pay a $67.50 claim, just because they thought the x-ray people or myself were trying to screw them, is astronomical. It’s got to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

That, my friends, is what is wrong with the healthcare system in the United States. There are levels upon levels of bureaucracy where everyone is making a buck shuffling papers around.

So I had another issue of them not paying a flexible spending account claim on something they should have.

I give them a call and go through all the bullshit menus of dialing 1, entering my subscriber number, dialing 3, entering my date of birth, dialing zero, and then I get to actually talk to someone.

He again verifies the information I just dialed into the fucking system, and then says, “Oh, it looks like there is a team assigned to your account. I’ll need to get them on the line before we talk about anything.”

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at him. “Alright,” I say.

I was on hold for like 10 minutes, but I guess Team Lawryde was out on a coffee brake so this dude had to help me. We got the shit straightened out, it was their fucking error, again.

I would be happy as a clam, to simply pay extra money in taxes and never, ever, have to look at bills, or statements of benefits, or be on the phone disputing mishandled claims.

Gladly.

The business of Health Care

I apologize for not posting, but, just like everyone else, I’m busy this time of year. I’ve got a nice little story about how terrible and bloated the health care and health insurance industries are.

Carter broke his leg back in February. The total bill was around $14,000 for an ER visit, a couple nights in the hospital, and surgery to cast it. Simply because I work at Opposite of Dog I got $10,000 of the top. My first question is this, what is the actual cost of all of this. The hospital I go to has a deal with Opposite of Dog to give reduced rates because Opposite of Dog sends all of it’s employee’s there. So did all of the stuff that happened to Carter cost $4000 or $14,000? There is a real cost there, but who the hell knows what it is. Is it half of that? Do some people actually pay $14,000 for a similar service?

But I digress. Boy breaks leg, Boy can’t say this leg fucking hurts, and it’s the broken one. Boy gets both legs X-rayed to ensure the correct leg is identified. Lazy Orthopedic surgeons don’t work Sunday nights so Boy needs to have leg splinted so he can suffer through the night. Boy gets broken leg X-rayed a second time to ensure splint has placed bone in acceptable location for the night.

Our dirty insurance processing house United Health Care refused to pay for two of the X-rays because they were all billed on the same day under the same code Femur 2-views. I battle with them for like six months saying they weren’t the same and he broke his fucking leg so they needed to do multiple X-rays. They come back and say OK, Opposite of Dog says it’s ok to get one X-ray per bone per day. Excuse me?! One X-ray per bone per day! Opposite of Dog you dirty fuckers. The evil fuckers who came up with our health plan know exactly how all procedures are done within hospitals so they decided to hide some cost. Of course if you break a bone it’s going to be X-rayed more than one time per day. So Opposite of Dog saves $48 every time someone breaks a bone.

At this point I’m on a fucking mission from God to not pay that $48. I got screwed once before when Carter was born on a similar “snake in the grass” clause in our plan. Opposite of Dog also only pays for one Pediatric visit when your child is born. Of course the Pediatrician is going to come in every day to check and see how your child is doing, and I had to pay for that second visit.

I’ll figure I’ll use their own evil system against them and I decide to call up the hospital to get a full set of the medical records from the incident.

I go and get the records, during work of course. I start reading through the twenty or so pages of documentation, dictation, and ER reports. Turns out the first two X-rays of the left and right happened at 11:55 PM on Sunday, and the third on the left happened on 1:25 AM on Monday. Gotcha!

I fax all of this shit to UHC and now I’m waiting for their evil response. I’m guessing it’s going to be along the lines of it needs to be 24 hours between X-rays on a given bone. We’ll see though.

If I had to estimate how much time, at work, I’ve spent fighting this nonsense, I’d have to say at least 5 full hours on the phone, going to the hospital, analyzing the records, etc. Opposite of Dogs billable engineering rate is $150/hr. So in not paying a $48 claim, which actually only cost them $18 because of their “discount agreement”, I’ve cost Opposite of Dog $750 of lost productivity. Hopefully I’ve made up for all the people who’ve broken bones and just given up and paid.

To get away with it, you just need to be more clever than the next guy.

I had my yearly review today at work. It actually went well. I got the above average rating, which got me a 6% raise instead of a 5% raise. I guess it worked out well that my previous boss thought I had all these issues, even though I didn't. My new boss comes in thinking I'm going to be trouble, and I just do what I was doing and it looks like a huge improvement. I still got the raises I should have last year, and I get an above average one this year.

I guess it still shows through my cheery corporate facade how much contempt I have for upper management though. I still need to work on my "attitude". It's just so damn hard when my wallet says "Bad Mother Fucker" on it. My skin screams at my body to say how stupid all the fucked up processes we go through every day are and how much money the upper management makes while we suffer through health care cost increases and short term pay decreases. I really should have been a plumber. It's so hard to play this corporate game day in and day out. I can't keep track of all the people's cornflakes I shouldn't be pissing in, constantly being aware of who's listening to what I'm saying and whether or not they approve of it.

A highly specialized doctor! That's what I should have been. If TV has taught me anything, it's that a highly talented specialized doctor can get away with almost anything. Maybe in another life...

... you take out your heart and expose it to the world

I haven't posted for the last few days because I've been in the hospital.

My wife and son slid/fell down the stairs on Sunday night while I was at hockey. One of the guys who works at the rink came on to the bench and yelled he was looking for lawryde for an emergency phone call.

I knew immediately something was wrong with Carter. It was just a matter of what level of bad it was. Had he stopped breathing, did he have a seizure? I didn't know. My wife told me what had happened and told me to meet her at the ER. I ripped of my hockey shit and ran under the cold shower to get the stink off me. By the time I made it outside into the cold 10 pm night, I was saying to myself over and over that he was going to be OK.

I drove about 90 down I-74 and made it to the ER in a few minutes. I heard him crying as soon as I got to the floor he was on. They were examining him to see what was up. Everything seemed OK until they got to his left leg. He shrieked when they extended it. Nothing in my life thus far has made me feel worse than not being able to do anything for him and stand by while he was being tortured (all be it necessary) by the doctors.

They decided he needed head to toe X-rays and a head CT scan to see exactly what was wrong. Every time he would twitch like babies do, he would scream in pain, then out of exhaustion he would try to close his eyes and sleep. A few minutes later he would twitch again and get the shock of the pain.

After a half hour or so of this, they took him to get X-rayed. They didn't let us in the room. He was shrieking the whole time. I'm sure they had to extend all his limbs and the table they had him on was cold. This was terribly painful for us too. I just tried to consol my wife and try not to cry too much myself. I tried to make sure she knew it wasn't her fault. It was purely an accident, and it could have happened to either of us. I've slipped on those damn stairs on several occasions.

After the X-rays we went and got his head scanned. It wasn't too bad since his body was wrapped up tight.

We went back to the exam room and the doctor came in and told us they found out what was wrong. He had fractured his left femur (the big bone in your leg that goes from your hip to your knee). It was a clean break, just about in half. They would splint it right away, and put a cast on it the next day when the Orthopedic surgion would be in.

We got to our room at like 2 AM and had a terribly restless night. Even with the leg splinted he was really uncomfortable. I think I got about 3 hours of sleep.

The next day he got the cast put on around 11:00 in the morning. They had to put him under full anesthetic so they could set it without him moving around. It was so hard to leave him before he went to the operating room. My chest was all tight and I couldn't help crying.

They put a full hip spica cast on him.



Something like that except without the bar in the middle and he has a penis.

The Orthopedist said he should heal in 2-3 weeks since babies heal so fast. It's going to be a tough couple weeks. It's not exactly easy to put a diaper in that little space for his junk.

Today he seems pretty good. With his hips immobilized, I don't think his leg is hurting him much now. He's pretty much back to the way he was before the accident behavior-wise.

My wife is doing a bit better too. She kind of slid down the stairs with him in her arms, and he kind of snapped forward in her arms. Her tailbone hurts.

It's still so sad to look at him in the cast, but it could have been so much worse. Bones heal. He'll be fine with no long term effects and won't ever remember it happened.

It was harder for his mom and I.

The business of Childbirth: Part Two

The numbers are in ladies and gentlemen. The final cost of having a baby as an Opposite of Dog employee with plan A (They give us a choice of plans, yeah right! It's more like: do you want to be fucked in the ass with the 7-inch or the 12-inch dildo?):


$1029.81 Total out of my pocket expense

That's $4372.15 for Mom.

And an additional $1926.00 for baby.

So 1029.81 is about 1.6% of my salary. Now say the Supreme Overlord of Opposite of Dog were to incur the same expense due to, I don't know, having a hangnail surgically removed. It would be .03% of his salary since he makes 2.54 million dollars. That's not including his capital gains from his stock options. All you Opposite of Dog employees should take a look at how much the corporate officers make on a monthly basis from stock option sales . (It's public information)

I would think it would open your eyes to how much these people care about money, and how little they really care about you and your family. It's in the millions (nearly every month). Yet they want us to help reduce the company healthcare costs by paying our own money, to improve the bottom line, to make the stock go up, so they can make more bloody money. We are making them money and losing our own in the process. How much is enough? Am I the only one who gets mad about these things?

"America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve." -Tom Morello former guitar player of Rage Against the Machine

Still haven't given a new baby gift? There's still time!.

But, sweet Jesus, I am tired! I’m scared. I’m crazy. This culture has beaten me down.

I've been wanting to post this picture for a while, but I just didn't get the chance. It's kind of late, but it's still good.

REMOVED-it was me flipping the bird

Back at it again. Another shot of the spiderweb.


REMOVED- A picture of my back

Who are the Noswal's???

The business of childbirth

So my wife is about to give birth to our son in January and I’m also being forced to determine what healthcare coverage I’m going to take in ’06: High premium lower max out of pocket, or low premium higher max out of pocket. We’re also taking a Bradley Birthing class that stresses natural childbirth rather than knock ‘em out then drag it out.

The concept seems to make sense to me, other mammals don’t have excruciating labor like humans do. They still feel pain, yet they somehow know how to giver birth without extreme discomfort and without drugs. Why do humans need it? The answer: money.

I talked with a guy at work whose wife gave birth naturally and one who was induced with epidural. The cost difference: Natural = $7492 Drugged= $12,177. So if you were the hospital would you rather make 12 grand or 7.5 grand? Don’t tell me those few syringes of drugs cost an additional 4.5 grand. It’s a big scam.

My 14-year-old dog is having heart failure. He’s been coughing really badly in the morning so we took him into the vet and they X-rayed him. His heart is swelling which pushes on his lungs and esophagus making him feel like he has to cough. The vet gave him some meds to take that should decrease the swelling, but he only has 6 months to 2 years left in him. It’s too bad. I love that dog.

I’ve had three and four hour meetings every day this week at work. I have a hard time concentrating for an hour let along four. I really need to win the lottery so I never have to work again. That would be sweet.

Bill My Magic Castle

It's times like this that I've lost all faith in humanity. It's 11:00 PM on a Friday night, and I'm trying to figure out which one of the "new" shitty health care plans Opposite of Dog is going to implement next year will cause me to take the lowest pay cut. Because when it comes right down to it, that's what it is... a pay cut.

The reason it makes me think that things won't be alright, and that my dreams of not having to work for the rest of my life dry up like oh so many tears into salty crust, is that no one who has any power in this life cares about anyone else. They only care about themselves, and money. The more power and money you have, the less you care about your fellow man. The more suspicious you are of poor people and minorities, and the less tolerant you become of things that are different than you.

It won't be alright, we(humans)'re fucked. There won't be a happy ending for us. Jules Vern knew it. The Haves and the Have-Nots will only grow farther and farther apart. Did you know that more than 60 MILLION people in the United States don't have health care? Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness... Unless of course you need a life saving medical procedure you can't pay for. Then you can go fuck yourself you socialist cunt. We live in America. You need to pay up for the basic human dignity of being healthy.

The whole thing just sucks.

And I should stop thinking about it on a Friday night.