And there goes my last nerve.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHGGGGGGggggggg!!

Trying to deal with the frustrating mess that is Social Security / SSI / MediCal has fried me. My son Matthew is disabled. When he turned 18 we enrolled him in SSI and MediCal per our regional center case worker recommendation, but Matty stayed on our private health insurance. He is now living in a group home which means that our private insurance can no longer cover him (drat!) so I've been trying to A) get a piece of paper from the insurance company stating that he is no longer covered, and B) tell MediCal that they are now the primary insurance. This has been a friggin nightmare of one agency representative after another telling me I'm shouldn't be calling here (all very apologetic --- "I'm so sorry... why did they tell you to call us? They shouldn't have done that...") Just getting the termination letter was difficult because Matthew was no longer in the system and therefore a letter couldn't be printed! Ironically the very letter I needed arrived late that afternoon, but well disguised on the back side of the COBRA coverage explaination. (sigh).


Somewhere in this muddle I was told to physically walk the magic termination letter into the Social Security office. Waited for over an hour with knitting (but alas, without iPod), and when I finally got my turn the drone behind the desk looked at me like I was an idiot and I got the "why did they send you here?" speech. I came this close to smacking him with my knitting bag. I explain (again) and he disappears to speak to his supervisor, returning after a lengthy time, still muttering and looking annoyed. Papers are churned out, copies taken, and he finally tells me that since the regional center is the payee that "they" (again with the "they" stuff!!) should be taking care of this, but he's put it into the system. I retreated to my car and called the regional center from the parking lot, left a message for our vacationing case worker's stand-in, and went to Draeger's to buy the really good Belgium chocolate.


The regional rep called later that day telling me that she'd called MediCal and everything was taken care of. Yay! Two weeks go by, then the pharmacy calls to say that they still cannot fill Matt's prescriptions - MediCal is refusing payment because they're not the primary insurance agency. Round two: Call MediCal. "Why did they tell you to call us?" Explain. Again. Fax papers, get told it will take 2-3 days to take effect. Pharmacy calls and says MediCal often does not handle these issues (i.e. they lie) and that I need to follow up. I call again this morning - it isn't done. "Why did you call us? You should be calling Social Security." My head explodes.



I sat down and knit a row or two of this:

Still looking like a lace amoeba, it will be teacher Denise's Luna Moth. I checked out how the Swarovski crystals behaved with the Colinette yarn and it wasn't a pretty picture. The crystal chewed through the yarn quite nicely - I don't know if it is because the yarn is more fragile than the Elann Super Kydd I've used in the past, or because I'm using bicones instead of rounds. Either way I'll need to sew these on so I'll be making a run to the Really Expen$ive Bead Shoppe to get beading thread that will (cross fingers) match the yarn.

Wool fumes really do make thing better. Now if only I had more chocolate...