And welcome to caucus99...you will fit right in here I think!

and thank-you for a good first diary!

I've recently started to diary...and it only took me 10+ years!

Great post! I am dang near in the same boat as you, being 52 as well, ex-military (82-84), many health issues. I'm new here myself but have been welcomed as well. Seems like a nice place to exchange and explore ideas, discuss the issues, and not have the "Kos" breathing down our necks threatening us with banishment. (I though fur sur I get the axe by now)

on several of the topics that you've mentioned, and I'm attempting to follow budget negotiations that may result in entitlement reform/cuts, I'll be sure to let you know, the next time that I have something (to post).

(BTW, my spouse is a Category 3 veteran.)

Hey, nice to see you here!

Mollie
elin karlsson @ WordPress

. . . Integrity and courage are powerful weapons. We have to learn how to use them."--Chris Hedges

Yeah we had some similarities, growing "up" in the world, but my parents got really comfortable about the time they retired... their older thievier relatives kicked the bucket and they kept getting left chunks in relatives' wills. One didn't live to spend much and the other lived long enough but was too gaga and broken to live outside of managed care (something so much feared in the 80s and 90s that this particular parent begged to be killed rather than live life in a place where decisions about when to eat and what to wear and what time to go to bed or get up were decided for her); and a sibling and a cousin made out like bandits when that one passed. I was cut out because I wasn't there to be the body slave. I'd gotten married, learned to cook for an adult onset diabetic, had a nasty little coronary, a fall that left me in a cast for 6 months because the graft didn't knit and heal, and a few other simple little problems for which I was referred to as "that liar who ran away." I had no idea that adult female offspring had value only as body slaves taking care of the elderly parent or for selling to man who'd promise to take orders from is in-laws for life.

Hubs served in 'Nam and died chock full of tumors up and down his spine and nervous system and just blowing out his brain (over 50 of them in his cranium). I think it was agent orange, but the US Military refused to acknowledge it could kill our boys and girls for another 3 years after he kicked; and by the time he finished his service in 'Nam his attitude about the VA and the Pentagon, the military college he'd attended and left honorably and the high echelongs in branch of the military in which he served and his views on RACE had changed radically. Gone was a moderate conservative middle kingdom whitebread fuzzy viking and what it had morphed into was a sad progressive socialist. And all of this occurred before I even met him. He said no one could serve in country in the company of mostly black men, young black men, with brains often far quicker than his (and he tested Mensa level in IQ, at 48 when he and I both retested on a bet and both scored high... again). He said no thoughtful white man could serve boots on the ground in a pointless and often insane war and come out of it disrespecting the men he trusted his life to and who trusted their lives to him. He came out color blind; and sick of orders from men who STILL didn't break a sweat in their starched fatigues behind desks, barely boots on the ground there just long enough to rip out another promotion. He came back and got shit on by employers and in spite of that worked dedicatedly in an industry that pretty much ceased to exist just as he came to the age where he'd need a retirement pension and his Social Security, except that Agent Orange took care of that let down for him. 32 days after his 61st birthday and early provisional unofficial diagnosis, pfffffffffffffft.

Your health has also played you unfair and far earlier than my spouse -- and in this country that effing sucks unless you're wealthy and can actually afford TRUSTWORTHY one-on-one 24/7 care -- and none of the 99% can do that. Most of us can't afford access to doctors who know us as individual people with goofy families, pets, and foibles; rather than as faceless skinbags of symptoms. Most of us can't, though our parents often did, have one primary care physician all of our adult lives. They leave the profession, retire, or change physician groups, or we have to change employers and change health plans IF there is one, and take whatever plan we can afford and whatever physician goes with the plan IF the plan hasn't changed which physicians one can see from year to year.

Most of us who are over 60 can't even afford "maintenance" medications, and it's worse if we have a pet to feed. I shouldn't bitch. I have 3 cats. I don't eat quite as well as they do, but they don't need 7 meds a day including the albuterol inhaler which the Medicare supplemental insurer refuses to pay an effing nickel on (and it's a COMMON MED), which BTW, according to the current (oh that'll change for 2017, so help me Cthulu) medicare supplement health insurance company means that I'm 3 meds over an alleged "healthy limit for a normal and well-oriented elderly patient" and therefore they keep suggesting that I take "counselling" on drug abuse, from a HOME VISIT by one of their "counsellors" (who isn't a nurse or a physician and has no HPPA right to medical information in the first place) WTF!... since when do insurance companies who allegedly work FOR US -- NOT the other way around-- demand that we allow the to insert themselves into matters between my physician and me? I thought Roe v. Wade made that a freakin' no-no to all that butting in crap. I didn't think the decision was just about abortion, but about patient/doctor confidentiality in all health care. Oh, well.

So, Lenzabi, I'm sure that many here feel with you and for you, even if we're not as close to the precipice as you are and even if we don't have to play Russian Roulette. Some may have their toes curled out over it as you do. Me... I just walk weird because I have 2 bags of glass where I once had the most beautiful (and even envied) feet and ankles that carried me around faithfully whether in heels or athletic shoes or bare (and I loved showing them off, not painted toed, just elegant pointing with the great toe, drawing letters in sand. Raw arrogance. If it's not your feet and mobility and real pain, this crap becomes just a really stupid episode of the Bob Newhart show, where Bob's receptionist Carol almost marries this poet in orthopedic sandals.
So, please don't throw that clot. You might hit a vital organ, and you're too valuable for that... and oh, yeah ,nice to meet you, Lenzabi ! Stay as strong as your voice when you use it here Please!

BTW, my doctor thinks that single payer health care will cut down on price gouging all around.. He's part of a partnership of just under 90 physicians in various specialties, and a few hands-full of Nurse Practitioner specialists in fields particularly helpful to diabetics, the disabled and family medicine, and most of them feel the same way. They're not worried about losing income if the nation went single payer. They think it would be a good thing all round. And they think it's doable. It might even lower their malpractice insurance and in a really good way, come a lot closer to putting insurance companies out of business. And isn't a great deal of that what all this fuss about who gets nominated and then elected president is all about? THAT is why we really *really really need Bernie I don't think he'll live quite long enough to finish the monster job the greedy have dumped on him, BUT he'll sure give it a good start... provided... of course...(Congress.. and that's where herding cats comes into play, if we don't get enough TeaGagits out in this 2016 election, as well)

Now, if we could just get some of the goddamned millionaires and the minions of billionaires out of Kongress....

Oh, Bernie... about those greedy buggers who just won't pay their taxes dammit... can we roll back some tax breaks?