Being diabetic & poor

I wanted to tell another side to the story that you might not be hearing politically. I won't try to sway your political leanings one way or the other but allow you to make your own mind up.

(And one thing I personally despise is someone coming to me & telling ME how or who I must be or feel.)

The Washington state governor is proposing to cut medicaid patients access to healthcare. They are also proposing to cut in March 2011 access to medications. They also have adult hospice, adult vision & dental care in the cross hairs.

There is more if you want to read the September 30, 2010 press release on the subject:
(http://www.dshs.wa.gov/mediareleases/2010/pr10088.shtml )

Now I do believe that DSHS has to absorb its fair share of cuts. In this economy, the state simply does not have the money to deliver every expectation a citizen has. And there are lobby forces at the state capital at work on just about every single issue trying to muster up the political will for its own causation.

But what I have a problem with is that they take certain medical care things LIKE podiatry or other basic life medical care (sorry my bias but I had to have this. Read my last entry as to why.) and call it "optional care?" Is it optional that I must seek podiatry care to stay out of a wheelchair?

in the following weeks before I have to move, I am going to be calling upon my state legislators (who by the way, they won in the perspective districts this past week) to talk to them about my medical situation. Maybe they can find it somewhere else to come up with the 400 thousand dollars to save my podiatry treatments. I know that there are going to be a lot of push and pull from many other sides to cut taxes and spending. By my life hangs in the balance if this continues.

Living with diabetes (what the hell..)

Since my blog really does not get a whole lot of attention, maybe this is a good time to start a blog session about the major cancer on society that I have, diabetes. Some of the constituents (people) with the disease really do have a wonderful life, from the young to the very old.

But my personal experience with Diabetes has been quite the opposite.

And you cannot measure or base one persons experience and success of the disease to another. Yes, there some mileage markers in the disease and there are treatments depending on how bad the disease is and how to effectively treat it.

WIthin the past decade from 2000 to 2010, I have had retina reattachment with diabetic blowout in the back of my eyes, two partial toe amputations, multiple hospital stays in Bellingham and Clark County for uncontrolled blood sugars, staph foot infections, degradation of my feet to point that now I am going to the foot doctor about once or twice a month for cutting out dead tissue without any pain medication, they call this debridement.

I have also had two stays in nursing homes for 30 to 90 days stays with intravenous antibiotics fed through tubes up my arm, up capillary blood vessels or return blood flows to my heart where the intraveneous solution was dispensed into my heart and put throughout my body.

I also have full body neuropathy, meaning all the feeling in my body is dulled to the touch, I also have no taste or smell either, its all numbed. I barely can eat much anymore.

I have heard all the comments about LapBand, stomach stapling and other surgical interventions. This would not be successful on me since I allready believe that I have kidney damage from the exposure of two decades of having the uncontrolled diabetes. The stomach control procedure also take a psychological couseling & every other avenue BEFORE they are tried. One in particular, gastric bypass is irreversible. So if you go back to your same old emotional or out-of-control eating habits, you will still gain the same weight back or have other complications from what I have been reading over the past few years since these surgeries became popular because of medical advertising.

I have also had butt crack skin removal surgery which was my first uncontrolled skin infection. I was not able to sit down for nearly a year while that area healed. Having Rocephin antibiotic injections along with antibiotic pills to try to attempt to kill it.

Then I moved back to Clark County, Washington in 2005. Boy, did my medical situation improve for better. No, it meant the monthly or twice-monthly debridements. I still use crutches & had other surgeries to help with my feet and other issues. Bu the frequent hospitalizations stopped and I am out of the wheelchair for the past five years.

Remember, your sacred humanity depends on...

Ok, guys, gals & the whatever crowd, I just want to remind everyone from which ever broadstroke or small stroke you are painting yourself with, Please, PLEASE take a minute out of your day & vote! (If you can legally.)

November 2, 2010 is a big year of initiatives here in the State of Washington. It's also going to be big year of new & fresh faces from the next generation filling in political offices.

If you need some help, please refer to the online voters guide here:

http://wei.secstate.wa.gov/osos/en/pages/onlinevotersguide.aspx

What one man can do with motivation!

If you want to see one man's hell bent on getting computers, knowledge, experience and love of people, please go see Ken Starks. You'll see what he has been able to accomplish for the lower income and class of peope in the Austin Texas and surrounding areas.

He continues to amaze me with tenacity, broken limbs, health limitations and just about a heart of gold what one man can do with help from others to bring change to his community and to help his kids out with working machines.

There is a variety of posts, some political, some not and what he continually does on a very limited budget of personal donations to him of dollars and hardware and how he makes his non-profit linux can do with so little.

There is a former Free Geek non profit (www.freegeek.org) from Portland and EmpowerThy (http://www.upgradeyourcommunity.org) in Vancouver Washington that has a similar feel to Ken's zeal here in Vancouver. Executive Director from Both programs is Oso Martin. If you are from the Portland Metropolitan area, please check out both of these wonderful non-profits that are helping their communities with education, social action and many other wonderful community aspects.

Or may you have the shear tenacity to start a program of your own. Be sure to never over extend yourself or allow your location to become the local trash dump for electronics. Follow all of your local state, city and regional laws, seek area people who may have done this before to avoid making big mistakes and face BIG fines.

Basically what I am saying is find a local or regional leader (also known as a mentor and there are many different models to doing this type of work, so no one way is the right way unless you create a huge dump!) who has done this before, get involved in their operations, talk to them and find out what pitfalls they faced in starting up and learn from them.

What happens when the internet goes down?

After thinking about this for several months and reading a story from the Seattle Times, (link to Microsoft's new Office 365, an online version of Google Apps.) I began to wonder what would happen to those office workers and other people would do if the internet went down for several hours to several weeks?

With cloud computing becoming of a platform for Office applications, Email, BookMark Syncing and the list could go on?

What would happen? If your wireless router, business router, home router, link up the router food chain went out?

What would happen if your ISP went down and you had no connection to the internet. Or a Backbone provider kicked your ISP provider for failing to pay them for service and you were the customer of that ISP?

Even a natural disaster could take out communications for days, if not weeks, maybe months in a situation.

Maybe its time for the average home user starts thinking of backup solutions for this type of situation. And mobile platforms are not as secure as one thinks from this type of issue. Mobile phones could be kicked off for non-payment, overloading of phone circuits, bad tower connections or a natural disaster could knock them out completely. If this were to occur, I would think your LAST thought would be if your Cell phone, PDA, Iphone or connected tablet is your first issue!

If your business "depends" on the Internet access, even in the worst of times, what is your plan on having it? I know for the average person, they can wait until a phone, cable provider, internet service provider, local co-op or ? can come in with an installer, trouble-shooter and fix the average problem.

With more and more of our daily lives from Office Apps to Games to buying your average food, book or other online purchases through various providers, could you deal with no internet access? Do you have backup plans for no power or for an extended time without power?

There are a lot of questions that I have. May be someone out there has answers. I would love to hear them.

Daily Couve gives all the locals a stroke of laughter.!

If you have come to my blog, you'll have a further hoot to our local impersonator in electioneering who runs this hoot-n-blog over at the Daily Couve: http://dailycouve.blogspot.com .

Please do stop by if you are a clark county resident, have no sense of humor and need a good pick-me-up to talk to your local representatives at any level. And please do not fail to mention to them that they might be the next subject of a little jib or jab, in-jest fun!

C-tran eliminates low income all zone passes to Portland

All Adults C-tran bus passes will now as of September 1st, 2010 will no longer allow Adult All zone access to Portland. That basically means all travel passed Jantzen Beach or the Delta Park - VanPort Maxx station will require additional fare.

The only exception to this rule it seems is the Youth Pass, which will continue to have this attached to it.

If you want to verify this comment, please see the same source that I did.

Link: http://www.c-tran.com/Sept1_2010ApprovedFareGrid.html

And you can review further information here: (August Newsletter?)

http://www.c-tran.com/newsletter.html


I first saw the elimination on the #37 Highway 99 bus tonight while I was riding home. So if you are concerned about this, please contact your local C-tran representatives by phone at 360-695-0123, email off the c-tran website: http://www.c-tran.com