I'm sitting here reflecting on my day - and wondering how I haven't fallen into pieces yet. I have been trying since June to work out my insurance for my surgery - there were 2 major obstacles.

One was from a previous employer, a year ago to be exact. They never notified the insurance carrier that I was no longer working for them, so they still had me on their records. I couldn't use the insurance, but it kept showing up on my caseworker's computer that I had "other insurance", so none of the bills were getting paid. Finally, after calling SC constantly for a month, I received a letter from them acknowledging that my insurance ended last year, 8/2/02. First battle won.......

Second issue was from one of employers that I am on a leave of absence from. One of these companies that don't have a "live" person to talk to - to verify dates of employment, last paycheck date, etc. You get a form, send it to corporate and wait. Unfortunately this corporate files the forms in the trash and doesn't respond. I call the store, talk to the HR manager and try to enlist his help. He gives my caseworker verbally all the info she needs to open my insurance back up, but wait - verbal is not good enough. She wants it in writing, which I can understand.

My caseworker tells me she has another website to go to and verify the info........she tries it and nothing. I get an 800 number for her to call, and set up a pin number for her - it doesn't work. Meanwhile, all my doctors and the hospital are breathing down my neck and all my caseworker says is "it's pending."

I am calm, and confident that things will work out in time - until this morning. My husband wakes me up by shrieking that I can't have my surgery, my insurance is cancelled, we'll have no food, etc. etc........yells at me to get downstairs and work on it <sigh> In case I hadn't mentioned it, he is manic-depressive and not on meds.

It took me all day to get it straightened out - my caseworker now has the documentation on a company letterhead which fixed that problem. I had to call my surgeon and make sure I wasn't rescheduled because of this.

The point to all this I guess is that I am so tired of juggling all the problems. My husband tells me that we are married so he is supposed to worry.........the problem with that is while he worries, he does nothing to help, except stress me out and yell at me continually. I have to constantly keep him calm, keep him in a good mood so he doesn't yell at our son, and worry AND fix any problems that come up, because he "can't". He wasn't worried about my insurance, he was worried about his stomach eating........how many rabbits do I have to keep pulling out of the hat, how many more balls can I juggle before someone worries about MY STRESS LEVEL?

Then he tells me that if it wasn't for me and our son, he would have killed himself a long time ago..........just what I needed to hear. I told him that keeping him calm 24/7 stresses me out and that he is not supportive of my emotional needs. When I told him to stop worrying about things before they happen and calm down, his wonderful reply was, "then f**k me and I can relax". Great, huh?

Thank god for this website.........it keeps me sane and I can vent - thank you all for putting up with me.

Mary Alice