I've always been blessed with fairly amazing insurance. My dad worked for the city of Houston for several decades, so our family has always had the group policy with a large subscriber base and it's stayed the same since I was born.

After he retired, we kept the same insurance as part of his pension plan. Our co-pays rarely change for either doctors or prescriptions. They pay roughly eighty percent of most procedures and devices. And since I was blessed with a stable income family, I'm able to afford the $45 copays and twenty percent of the pump.

But in the last few years and with the new health issues, my health bills seem to be piling up. And with the economy the way it is, I'm starting to stress about how to pay for some of the necessary (and probably not so necessary) items.

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I got laid off last week.

I got a call from my (now former) boss, whom I love, care, and have deep respect for very much, on Tuesday. Her mood and energy were off. I could tell she was under a lot of (mind-made) stress. I was told that I would need to call in for a phone meeting with some of the higher-ups and board members in the organization. My mind and thoughts began to wonder, like everyone's does, when you get that feeling
inside. That feeling where you just KNOW something is off.

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There has been much heat in the diabetes online community concerning the new Medicaid/Medicare restrictions on paying for blood glucose testing supplies for people with diabetes, including the belief that these limitations will quickly replace current private-insurance coverage policies. We're seeing some of those repercussions here as The Other Half has just been informed that instead of covering testing supplies ad libitum (as many as his doctor writes for, for whichever brand she writes for), they will only cover OneTouch or Accu-Chek strips, to a maximum of 51 strips per month for people with diabetes who do not require injectable insulin, and 204 strips per month for those who do require it. (READ MORE)

I went shopping last night for just one new outfit and for the first time in a very long time I tried not to be so hard on myself about the way I look.
 

I’ve been heavy for a long time. I remember my mom helping me try to lose weight when I was in sixth grade. I think I lost 13 lb. and was beside myself with excitement.
 

I can’t ever remember a time when I was happy with the way my body looks. Though when I look back now at pictures of myself in college I realize that I wasn’t as heavy as I thought I was, didn’t look as undesirable as I thought I was.
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Just as hyperglycemia is but the tip of the iceberg when discussing the physical ravages of diabetes, depression is but the most visible diagnosis of how diabetes affects our minds.

I'm not talking about the temporary states of anxiety or paranoia, lassitude or somnolescence, that accompany our glycemic highs and lows, but the long-term, "you should get psychological help for this" effects of living with chronic disease in general, and diabetes in particular.

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I've been somewhat ambivalent about today's rally surrounding the United Nations Summit on Non-Communicable Diseases. The libertarian "party line" is that the United Nations does little more than abrogate nation-states' sovereignty and forcibly redistribute income from the wealthier nations to the less-wealthy, dampening incentives for innovation and destroying private charity efforts which would otherwise improve the lives of those in need. On the other hand, the prospect of spending time with friends I seldom see in-person is an opportunity not to be missed.

It's a dilemma I'd been wrestling with for a couple of months, and friendship was winning over politics. However, neither friendship nor politics had the choice to decide.

The deciding factor was money.

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