Juat another stressor

I found out today my car wil cost $2,300 to fix. So much for the scooter I wanted to buy. I would've been so cute on that thing, too.

I still don't know when Mike's disability payment will arrive. I can pay off some of the debt I accumulated during the three years he was sick. He had no income for most of that time, and it took three years for him to be approved. As I work on a story about delays in the system, I'm hearing horror stories about people waiting five years with no income. Some wind up in homeless shelters or on the street. Some die.

Mike never got to use any of his disability money. He was approved just a month before he died and by then he was too weak to go shopping or pay bills or much of anything else. I've been writing "deceased" across the doctors' bills that still come from Savannah and sending them back. I want to write, "deceased because you treated him so poorly," but I've refrained from that. But I also want them to know they won't get any money out of me.

I'm trying to keep it all positive by working on lifeomike.org -- a good place to visit, I think. Janet and I have spent a lot of time over the last week getting it up and organized. Now we just have to get the word out. We want people to visit it and tell their own stories about coping with no health insurance or too little coverage.