No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on May 23, 2019

This Sunday will be our eighteenth wedding anniversary. Our marriage will be an adult.

I was thinking about all that had to happen for us to get married.

Not the preparations for the actually wedding but the things that had to happen in our lives to get us to the altar.

I do need to give my mother many thanks and a lot of praise for getting everything in order for the wedding. She took care of a majority of those things that need to be done to have a wedding. We sent out the invitations and did a few other things on our end but she did the lion’s share of the work.

If I hadn’t learned how to make a hand and rod puppet then I would not have made Phreqd (pronounced Fred) the Klingon.

If I hadn’t made Phreqd then I would not have met Peter at a convention. We think it was one of the last Atlanta Fantasy Fairs.

If I hadn’t met Peter at that convention, we would not have become friends.

If we hadn’t become friends, I wouldn’t have gone to SDCC the first time and met some other people who have been friends since.

If I hadn’t been the DragonCon Tech Director, I would not have been at DragonCon when Peter told me that he was getting a divorce.

If his ex hadn’t decided that she wanted to be his wife anymore then he would not have approached me at DragonCon.

If we hadn’t messages on the computer through the AOL chat feature, then we would not have fallen in love.

If we hadn’t fallen in love, I would not have made the huge leap and moved to New York twenty-one years ago.

If I hadn’t moved up to New York, we wouldn’t have seen where the relationship would go.

And it had gone some interesting places.

A lot of dominos needed to fall in place for me to be where I am today.

I am grateful that the dominos did line up the way they did.

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Posted By Kathleen David on May 22, 2019

With no good punchline

I changed Doctors this time last year and am glad that I did.

My previous primary care Doctor was not a bad person nor a bad doctor as long as you were male. I really think he is clueless as to how his behavior changes depending on the gender of his patient.

I think the straw that broke the camels back for me was when Peter and I went in at slightly different times for basically the same problem with very little variation of what the problem was. Peter received medication that included a painkiller and a prescription anti-inflammatory, a script for physical therapy, and a follow up in case he still needed the painkiller. I got ‘use over the counter anti-inflammatory’ and lose weigh, which was this Doctor’s solution to any problem I had. Short of breath? Lose weight. Pain in the gut? Lose weight. Everything for this Doctor when it came to women is that we are all overweight and seeking pain medication for our sorry lives.

Peter still sees him because this Doctor does listen to him and has been a big help in keeping him alive.

I found, after a lot of trouble and looking, another Doctor who was female and practical and, most importantly, listens to what I am saying. Her staff is the same way from the desk to the consulting room.  With one minor thing that I have been saying all along that no body seems to be listening to which is the number of stressors in my life. But she is better than most.

 It was through her that I finally got my answer for the shortness of breath that had been probably my biggest problem, which was that part of my lung is not functioning. This explained a cascade of problems and symptoms I have been having. Armed with this knowledge, I have been able to adjust things and get back to what I was doing for the most part. 

Caroline is going to her as well since she turned 16 and doesn’t want to be seen by a pediatrician anymore. She is happy with her level of care as well.

Overall health care in the US is a mess. We are caught in the vice grip of companies, for all their nice commercials on how they value us, who don’t give a dámņ about the people they are serving but how much money they can make off our backs. And we complain about them all the time but nothing has changed except for the worst.

Of course we are talking companies that sell health insurance and drugs.

At the beginning of the year, medication that Peter has been paying an eight-dollar co-pay since he went on it after the stroke, almost seven years ago, to a thirty-dollar co-pay for no reason other than the drug is now no longer under patent and there is a generic version for sale. There was another that went from ten dollars to a hundred and forty for the generic version. We got him back on the brand version and our co-pay went back to ten dollars.

It is insane.

I am very lucky that the pharmacy we go to and the people who work there are very much on top of this. I have watched them go above and beyond to help people find a way to pay for the medication they need to live their lives and not die.

But the amount we have to pay in co-pays is sneaking up slowly every couple of months it seems. We adjust our budget and go on but a lot of people on fixed incomes do not have that option.

And the next time Big Pharma declares that the prices are so high because of research and development, feel free to toss them the finger. Because that had been their defense on price hikes for years and, considering the profits they make every year, it no longer holds water.

We have Mickey Mouse insurance. No seriously, we get our health insurance through Marvel which is own by Disney. And it is good health insurance. We are very lucky to have it and we appreciate it each and every day.

Disney looks after its employees in this regard. They have all kinds of programs for health and wellness that we have available to us. There are incentives to do the healthy thing. There are people to talk to who will advocate for your health with the insurance company. We used this a lot during Peter’s stroke and recovery. They have wellness coaches to help figure out how to stay healthy. It’s a system with a lot of support.

I know a lot of people who do not have these options. They barely have health insurance and the monthly bill and co-pays are insane considering what they get for their money.

But they are better off than the people who have no health insurance and just live with whatever because they cannot afford even basic care.

After the affordable health care act passed and people got health insurance through the exchanges, I had a lot of friends who were able to address long time problems for the first time because they had health insurance that could not refuse for a pre-existing condition. They could get preventive care so they didn’t end up in the ER or dead. It was still not cheap but they could afford to be sick again.

But again it is profits over people. Insurance companies have posted record profits for most of the 2000s. The bonuses paid would buy health care for a small town.

Both Big Pharma and the Health Insurance companies are terrified of universal health care because with regulation, which they have not had in a very long time, comes questions about the money they are making. The Health Insurance companies are pouring a lot of money into the political arena trying to stay in business. Big Pharma to keep its system in place and make money for their stock holders.

And who gets the short end of the stick? Their customers which would be us collectively.

It is not going to be easy to fix this mess we have gotten ourselves into but it does need to be done and sooner rather than later.

I am grateful for Doctors who listen rather than make snap judgments based on what they see.

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Posted By Kathleen David on May 21, 2019

There have been a lot of endings to things that we have been watching for a while this month.

There is Avengers Endgame, which is ten years in the making.

There is Big Bang Theory, which is twelve years in the making.

There is Game of Throne, which is eight years in the making.

All are things that I watched from the beginning to the end.

Endings are bitter sweet especially when one has a lot of time invested in them over the years.

Without spoilers, I was happy with Endgame and Big Bang and not unhappy with Game of Thrones.

The pipe work for all of those endings had been laid through out the shows. Nothing seemed to be a gotcha moment. At no point did I say “Oh Come ON!”, which I have when it came to other series endings. Each had a logical conclusion. 

This weekend I took Caroline to her first concert that she wanted to see. It was an adventure in more ways than one.

She loves a group called BTS that stands for Beyond the Scene. They are also called the Bangtan Boys or Bangtan Sonyeondan. A seven member Korean boy band that has taken the world by storm.

We found out that they would be performing at Metlife stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey and got tickets for Caroline and me.

This was before the adventure to the LCCS was even in the works. So she went from never seeing her favorite band in person to seeing it twice in one week.

Also these were sandwiched between her Advance Placement exams at school.

Very busy week for her. Next is her Regents tests and final exams and then she will be done with her sophomore year.

Back to the concert, it took us longer to get to the concert and back than the concert itself. The traffic/parking situation at the stadium is insane. I don’t see how they have managed to get away with it considering all the big events they have there. We ended up walking to the stadium from the road leading to the stadium entrance because traffic was unmoving. Leaving took an hour and a quarter to get from where Peter was parked in the drop-off lot just to the entrance of the parking area to get onto the Jersey Turnpike where we found another accident, which added another 20 min to the trip.

The traffic within the stadium was pretty impressive as well. I do give them credit for changing so many of the restrooms to women’s rooms to accommodate the number of females. Anything you wanted to do was a line. 

The concert itself was quite good. And there was a lot of audience participation. There are these programmable light sticks called BTS Army Bombs that are Bluetooth enabled. The user can control the color and intensity of the light(s). At the concerts, you sync up the light stick to your seat number and then your light stick is part of the show. It was very impressive to see the colors in the stadium change with the beat of the music. They could turn them off and on making patterns in the stadium seating. A very clever device that I believe I will be seeing other versions of at concerts.

As to the music, it did not assault my ears in fact I am interested in to listening more. It was a Korean Boy Pop group with all that is included in that set of words. I will say that their lyrics are very positive and encourage people to be themselves and love themselves. 

At the end of the show each singer told the crowd how much the audience and their fans mean to them. Sometimes in English and sometimes translated from the Korean. They again encourage everyone to be their best and they were loved by the singers. 

Caroline had a blast. I don’t think she sat down for more than a minute during the three hour concert. She sang along with the songs and chanted various chants with her fellow fans. Her throat felt a little raw the next day. I haven’t seen her that happy in a while. It was so worth the traffic jams both outside and within the stadium. I just say BTS to her and she gets a goofy grin on her face remember her experience both at the Late Show and the concert.

Next Sunday is our eighteenth wedding anniversary. For the first time in a long time we will not be traveling or at a convention. It will be a quiet celebration at home.

I am grateful to BTS for giving my daughter so many hours of entertainment.

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Posted By Kathleen David on May 21, 2019

There was an article I read not too long ago talking about art and failure. They had examples of art that the artist thought was a failure but turned out to be very popular to this day. 

Failure is a part of art and life. It happens. What one does with the information garnered from that failure is probably more important.

There are people who come out of the womb with a pencil and the ability to sketch beautiful artwork.

Then there are the regular people who have to work very hard to become a great artist. They draw all the time and work on learning how to draw realistically or classically. They work hard to get what is in their heads out on paper or canvas or whatever medium they are working in.

I look at the puppets I made even a couple of years ago and I can see how much I have learned. There are puppets I can make now that I could not even figure out how to make twenty years ago. The one exception is a frock coat. I apparently was born knowing how to pattern a frock coat for a puppet. However the coats have gotten better and more complicated over the years.

There have been epic fails in my artwork. There have also been minor failures and many that only I can see the flaws. To the untrained eye, they look perfect.

But through this I have learned all kinds of things.

Like puppets don’t care if their seams are not finished inside their clothing, they don’t feel the rubbing of the raw edge of the cloth.

Silk is a pain to work with but can be so worth the trouble.

With the advent of 3-D printing, it is easier to get the proper looking buttons but expensive and a lot of work.

3-D printing doesn’t solve every problem.

Always double check what you are sewing to what and make sure you are not going to be pulling out your seam ripper to get it right….again.

What adhesive you use is very important.

Each of these came out of failure and each failure taught me something.

If you need it, I give you permission to fail. To fall down and get up again and try to make your inner vision come into this dimension.

I am grateful for those failures that have lead to great successes. 

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Posted By Kathleen David on May 17, 2019

Here there is frank talk about miscarriage and other female issues. I am warning right now for it.

First I would like to talk about what should be called hormone control not birth control. I know someone who advocated back when the pill came out that it should be called hormone control because medically that is what it does. Birth control is a side effect of taking hormone control.

I first went on hormone control because I was having periods that were very hard on me. They were irregular and would show up at the worst time possible. They would just wipe me out and make it hard for me to do what I needed to do. It had nothing to do with birth control because I was not sexually active. It has everything with putting me in control of my body and allowed me to be productive.

Caroline is on hormone control because of the same problems I had at her age. Again she is not sexually active but using it to get her hormones under her control so she could function in school.

But even with all that, it is possible to get pregnant while taking hormone control. There are other medications you can take for other problems that cancel out the birth control side effect. Antibiotics are in this category as I found out the hard way.

Caroline was about two and a half. I went back on hormone control after I had her for a variety of reasons. I got a serious sinus infection and was put on a strong antibiotic to kill it since the previous one had the infection laughing at it.

During that time I became pregnant. I didn’t know I was pregnant until after I found out I was not pregnant.

I thought I was just having a heavy period, which is what miscarriages are a lot of the time. More women miscarry then we know because for many it is just a very heavy period that hurts a lot.  According to my OB/GYN, he believed that I had a number of miscarriages before Caroline caught. 

I was getting concerned because I was changing my pad every hour and dropping large clots when I went to the bathroom (I did warn for graphic).

I went to see my nurse practitioner at my OB/GYN’s office. She took one look at what was going on and sent me directly to the hospital.

If you are female and in the ER they do a pregnancy test for many cover their ášš reasons.

I will never forget when the doctor came in to tell me that I had a positive pregnancy test and I was having a miscarriage. It was emotional whiplash the likes I rarely experience.  To know that I had a child growing within me to knowing that the child was no longer a part of me in less than a minute is hard to process. 

It still hurts. What could have been. But I also know that a lot of times miscarriage is the way that the body takes care of pregnancy that aren’t viable for whatever reason. There is the logic and the emotion.

The reason for this entry is that more and more states are passing ‘laws’ that regulate what women can do with their bodies. And to add insult to injury, in a number of them if you have a miscarriage, you are investigated to see whether it was a real miscarriage. If they think not, then you can be prosecuted for the miscarriage.

Stop and think about that. You are dealing with what happened to your body and now you have to prove that it was none of your doing but the natural process doing its job. It is hard enough to deal with all the emotions of a miscarriage but now you have to deal with legal ramifications? I honestly see the suicide rate among women going up because of this.

You now know someone who had a serious miscarriage through no fault of her own other than her body deciding it was not viable.

I want people to call the pill what it really is that is hormone control. You know like men have for their hormone problems. Not really any different.

I am grateful for hormone control and how it helps women regulate their own bodies.

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