Another Open Letter to Aetna Health Insurance

Dear Aetna:

Well, that’s not right. I can’t very well call you “dear,” now can I? Not when I find you utterly reprehensible.

So, let’s try again.

Aetna:

Let me start by saying that I will try to be professional, but that this is an emotional subject for me, so please bear with me if my emotion shows. I’m trying, which is more than I can say for you, Aetna.

You may recall that we’ve spoken in the past about my son. If you don’t recall, I’d like you to think really hard, because all that time you were giving me a hard time about paying for his various therapies, he was COVERED UNDER YOUR HEALTH PLAN.

Which is why my husband and I were amused – and then quickly irritated – by the letter you sent us telling us you could no longer cover his “pre-existing condition.” Aetna, Aetna, Aetna. There are some very specific reasons my husband doesn’t go into business for himself, and one of those reasons is health insurance. We are well aware of the laws governing group health care plans. Nice try, but you totally lose here. And you suck.

My husband called you to tell you this. Not that you suck – he is much nicer than I am. No, he called to point out that YOU COVERED OUR SON for the last 18 months, and that you STILL cover him, so pay up. And you said that there “must have been a mistake” and to just “ignore the letters.”

Aetna, I would LOVE nothing more than to ignore your letters, but you keep sending them, and you keep telling me that you haven’t yet addressed the claim submitted because the member is under review.

Let me make this clear, Aetna, in case I haven’t been already: DO. NOT. FUCK. WITH. MY. SON.

I want to stress that I rarely use such language, and I have NEVER used it on my blog before, but you earned it.

Aetna, do you think we are stupid? You must. But we are not, and we are well aware that this tactic, just like your automatic kickback of EVERY CLAIM WE SUBMIT ON BEHALF OF OUR SON, is simply a way to delay paying us what you owe us. And I hate you for it, and I curse you for it, and I really, really hope that one day you are the recipient of the quality of service you provide.

-WG

Epistle: To My Daughters, to be read when you have daughters of your own who hate you

My precious girls,

First, please know that I love you, and that it hurts me much more than it hurts you when your behavior warrants conversations such as the one we had last evening.

One day, perhaps you will stand in a bedroom that you cleaned as recently as the night before. You will be assaulted by the brightness of every light burning, despite the fact that no one is in the room, that no one has been in the room, for hours. You will take in the unmade beds, the floor littered with laundry and, well, litter, and the wet towels left to mold on the carpet. You will debate whether to look into the closet, but in the end curiosity will win out, and you will peek. Immediately, you will regret your action, because you will be horrified at the sight of the clothes that you JUST YESTERDAY REFOLDED AND HUNG strewn haphazardly on shelves and on the floor. And you will snap.

When your daughters come home from school, you will perhaps ask the younger one if she has located her missing binder. When she says no, you will grind your teeth as you question her about when she last had it. Your daughter will tell you confidently that she had it yesterday after school, when she sat in the library for an hour waiting for carpool, but during which time she chose not to do her homework.

You: Do you know you had it then, or do you just THINK you had it then?

Your daughter: I think I had it then.

You: When was the last time you KNOW you had it because you took it out and USED it?

Your daughter: Yesterday, in Morah J’s class.

You: Well, then, that’s where you need to start looking.

Your daughter: I already looked there.

You: Did you tell Morah J. you needed to look?

Your daughter: Yes.

You: What did you say?

Your daughter: Well, Morah J. said—

You: No. Do not tell me what Morah J. said. TELL ME WHAT YOU SAID.

Your daughter: So I said, “Well what if you don’t have your Purim packet because you can’t find your binder?”

Maybe the conversation won’t go exactly like that, but if it does, you will know that your own mother has davened very hard for this moment. At any rate, you will somehow find the strength to not break every dish you own or smash the granite countertops with a sledgehammer, because it’s JUST A FREAKING BINDER. BUT HOLY CRAP, COULD WE GO ONE DAY WITHOUT YOU LOSING SOMETHING?

Ahem. But back to you, and your future daughters, dear girls. Perhaps your older daughter will have finished her homework, and she will come and ask if she can watch television. And because of your new “no TV during the week” rule, you will say no, and you will add that if your daughter is so bored, she can certainly go upstairs and clean her sty of a room. And when you hear those words coming out of your mouth, the sheer horror of the fact that you are TURNING INTO YOUR MOTHER will not escape you.

Your daughter will likely respond with a series of grunts and foot stomping that leaves you staring at the creature before you wondering if she is actually human spawn.

She will announce that she is NOT going to clean EVER and she HATES YOU ANYWAY because you are a horrible, horrible person. You will not actually feel too bad about yourself at this point. That comes later.

Later you will go upstairs when your husband calls you to tell you that your daughter is, in fact, NOT cleaning. She is lying on her unmade bed reading. You will attempt to use logic and reason, but you will be rebuffed. Backed into a corner, you will eventually pounce, tossing everything from the closet on the bed and announcing that you are getting rid of everything. You will put back only the school uniforms, and you will take all the rest of the mess from the closet and bag it up.

While you do this, your daughter will scream that she is going to court to sue you. You will ask her who will drive her. Then she will announce that she is moving out, and she will begin removing the sheets from her bed. Your husband will helpfully chime in that she can’t take those, because they’re not actually hers, which will only fan the flames.

You will spend the evening wondering how it is that you have turned into everything you hated about your parents, and what this means for the future. And you will tell yourself that this is normal, that this, too, shall pass. But in the end, you will probably cry yourself to sleep. Because you just aren’t sure, at the end of the day, if your beautiful daughters will know, will remember just how much you love them.

They do. They will.

And at the very least, their trauma is probably not significant enough to get them a book deal.

So, I saw my doctor for a followup visit today. I mentioned that while the night sweats have definitely abated, there is the small matter of me bursting into tears all the time. And even though I thought it was better, it's not as good as it was with the Zoloft. So, now we've moved on to Lexapro. And I agreed that I would not Google it obsessively to try to develop every crazy possible side effect there is.

In other news, D. is rocking his purple cast. You might think that parents who have a kid who got hurt on a ladder would not place the same child on top of a trash can for a photo op, but you clearly are not friends with Mr. WG.

Apparently all the kids in D's class spent the morning trying to give him their favorite toys, but he's too cool for that. And everyone he sees gets a lifted cast in greeting with an "It's my purple" to go. He did reasonably well at the doctor yesterday. I mean, yes, he fought the cast technician, but no more so than any 4-year-old kid would have done. When we got to Mrs. Block (because astoundingly, they did get us into the doc at a convenient time), she got out a baby and a doctor kit and said, "Oh, D., my baby hurt her arm." D peered into the doctor kit, reached in, and plucked out a car. "Thwarted by poor sorting skills," sighed Mrs. Block, but we agreed that there doesn't seem to be any lingering emotional trauma. So we're using this an opportunity to force language. With one hand out of commission, D. can't do things for himself with brute strength. So he has to ask for help.

As long as Mr. WG and his endless supply of candy isn't around, anyway.

Because if nothing happened, what would I write about?

So yesterday, D. wanted the ladder, which is not unusual. It’s true that many parents probably don’t let their children carry 8-foot ladders around and climb them at will, but in our house we call it Working on Gross Motor Skills.

Anyway, D. wanted the ladder, and he found it in the master bathroom, and then there was like a crashing sound, followed by D. howling.

“THE LADDER IS NOT A TOY,” I shrieked helpfully, as I stormed off to Mr. WG’s office with the offending hardware. Mr. WG chose to focus his attention on D., who was sobbing hysterically.

“Where does it hurt?” he asked him, and D. of course did not answer. “Do you want ice cream?”

“Yes,” cried D., and so he had some. And shortly thereafter, he fell asleep on the couch.



The day went on. Friends came for dinner. And one of them said D. was favoring his left arm. Much armchair doctoring took place, asking D. to bend and wiggle his fingers, lift his arm, and so on. Everyone was reasonably certain he was fine, so the decision was made to take him to the hospital for an x-ray.

Mr. WG and a friend took D. and everyone else cleared out. The other kids went to bed, and I cleaned the kitchen. I checked my email and called my good friend Teej to get her advice on dealing with a client. Business done, we sat and chatted. Forty minutes later, Mr. WG called my cell phone.

“Oh shit!” I said. “I totally forgot that he’s AT THE HOSPITAL WITH MY KID.”

So, OF COURSE, my kid has a broken arm.

They splinted him last night but couldn’t cast him because there was no on-call orthopedist. So today, I will spend my day begging random orthopedists to take my son and cast him. I would like it to be at a time that does not conflict with therapy with Mrs. Block or my interview with a client. When do you think I’ll get in?

The Good, the Bad, the Worse, the Humiliating

The Good:

D’s evaluation on Friday went reasonably well. He did not run out screaming or pitch a fit, and we were officially invited for a visit to The School, to be scheduled for sometime after their spring break, which is next week.

The Bad:

The woman who did our eval spent a lot of time asking me about my other options, and I don’t think she appreciated my answer (vodka and a sharp knife), which makes me feel less optimistic than I want to be.

The Worse:

I totaled up our debts over the weekend. We owe $27,000 to various credit card companies. This comes ENTIRELY from paying for therapy via 0% balance transfer offers and then rolling them from one card to the next. I can actually match it up, bill for bill. And remember when my parents said they were going to help? Yeah, that’s the last time I heard about it, too. They did mention the other day that they finally bit the bullet and called their broker to sell some bonds to pay their tax bill, but they didn’t mention anything about cutting us a check. Maybe they changed their minds. I don’t know. I guess, if it comes, it comes, and if it doesn’t, I’ll rent Baby J. out for parties or something.

The Humiliating:

I went back to the business manager at the school my children currently attend. “Do you have a minute?” I asked him. “Oh, sure,” he said, and turned around to face me instead of his computer.

“So you said I could come and see you if I needed more aid for this year,” I said, whereupon he got up and closed his office door, bless his heart. Then I kept it together reasonably well as I laid out the numbers for him. And he came through for me, and he was really nice about it, which kind of makes me feel worse. Like, if he were mean, I could go home and feel all justified about lowering my payment. But he was so understanding that I just feel like I have failed to properly support my family.

So as not to depress you all entirely, I will end on a relatively good note: I contacted the Small Business Administration today. They offer free counseling/coaching services to small business owners. Maybe they can help me take my business (or at least my income) to the next level.

It's So Easy to Make Me Happy

So, guess what happened yesterday? D. and Baby J. and I were hanging out when my cellphone rang. And guess who it was? It was LisaB, calling via that there Grand Central link on the right!

We had a lovely chat, during which Baby J. banged on the piano and D. ran the vacuum cleaner, presumably because they couldn’t find anything LOUDER to do in the house. Seriously, though, it’s funny to see how quickly you can fall into natural, easy conversation with someone you’ve never met. Lisa, it was a real pleasure, and feel free to call again during the mornings or evenings, when it’s not quite so nutty around here!

Also, speaking of Lisa, if you haven’t read her amazing take on Holland, you need to do that. Right now. As Mr. WG said, it’s even better if you understand what a genetic microdeletion is, but even if you don’t, it’s still awesome. So! Why are you still here? Go read Lisa!

The Wonder in Small Things

Yesterday, D. had a truly amazing therapy session. It was kind of like watching a regular kid play. At one point I asked Mrs. Block, "This is really happening, right?" She assured me that it was. The pretend play was incredible, he was engaged and on task for the entire 45 minutes, and his conversation was amazing. Mrs. Block was also appropriately impressed by the ice cream story that I told her.

It's appropriate that after a session like that I find myself nodding along emphatically when I read: "Often times we do this with special needs children--we let them get away with inappropriate behaviors because we assume they 'can't help it.'"

So often, I find that if we simply stop cutting D. slack, he eventually sighs and says, "FINE. I'll act like a typical kid." It is really amazing to watch it happen.

Late yesterday, I got a call from The School. D. has an evaluation scheduled for this Friday morning, the first step in our second attempt at enrollment. Let's hope it goes a little better than the last time.

Amazing Conversations with my Children

At the end of an enjoyable episode of Blue’s Clues, D sees that WG is texting away on her Blackberry.

D: Let’s go upstairs. Put the phone back.

(WG has the audacity to attempt to finish her text.)

D: Put the phone away RIGHT NOW.

(Chastised, WG does.)

D: I’m so proud of you!



WG leaves to drive carpool. Mr. WG stays home with D. and Baby J. Baby J. wanders into Mr. WG’s office. D. follows him in.

D: Come on, Baby J. Daddy working.

They leave, and D. closes the door to Mr. WG’s office. Mr. WG apparently has NO experience in childcare and thinks that D. is simply trying to help. He hears the boys open the door to the garage, then hears them go upstairs to play. Some time later, D. returns with an ice cream cone in hand. Mr. WG is on the phone and tries to convey his displeasure solely via facial expression. (In our world, this is actually an extremely important part of conversation – D’s ability to recognize the meaning of that expression is great.) D. turns and hightails it out of Mr. WG’s office. Finally, Mr. WG finishes his call and comes out.

Mr. WG: Where is the ice cream?

D (sadly): I put it inna trash can.

Mr. WG: Show me.

D. takes Mr. WG by the hand and leads him to the pull-out trash can opens it, and shows him the last bite of ice cream, thrown away.

D (mournfully): Here is the ice cream.




Later, WG returns and checks in with Mr. WG. Baby J. enters the office.

Baby J.: Mommy! Didi spilled.

WG: Really? Didi spilled? What did D. spill?

Baby J: Didi spilla ice cream.

WG: Really? Where did D. spill ice cream?

Baby J.: Didi spilla ice cream upstairs!


I love to hear my boys talk. Even when I really don’t like to hear what they have to say.

You Never Call

So! I know this makes me sound like a total loser, but I prefer to think of myself on the cutting edge of blogging, taking this form of communication to the next level.

Check out the Grand Central link over there on the right side. You click that, it does a funky spin-around thing and gives you a place to enter your name and phone number. You don't have to enter your real name, and you can check the box marked private to hide your number. Then Grand Central calls you and connects you to my real, live cell phone. And if I'm able to answer it, I will! Or you can leave a message.

So if you have a friend who might have a kid with Sotos, or you just LOVED what I had to say about the price of tea in China or whatever, and the whole commenting thing just seems SO 2005, you can call me to tell me what you think. And, loser that I am, I will answer.