January was okay. No major bumps in the road, healthwise everything seemed to be okay after the A1C scare and a couple of really high blood pressure readings.
February on the other hand sucked the big one.
1) Sick almost the entire month between stomach flu and viral bronchitis. I missed about 3 weeks of work.
2) Because I missed so much work I didn’t have enough money to make either of the February space rent payments–park manager is being understanding because DUH I was sick for 3 weeks and my last February paycheck was well under $400.00 when my paychecks are normally twice that much or more)
3) because I missed so much work I didn’t work enough hours to keep my health insurance for the month of March (there’s nothing like still recovering from bronchitis and praying that you don’t get sick again/injure yourself/any other need to see a doctor).
4) There will be two bills from a) Family Urgent Care and b) St Charles Immediate Care which will not be covered by my insurance because even before I lost coverage for March (this month) I hadn’t reached my $1000.00 deductible for 2018.
For most people these would be minor things but when you are living paycheck to paycheck, paying off back space rent (with the threat of eviction hanging over your head), and have less than $50.00 in savings these are pretty major bumps in the road.
Here’s hoping March (and the rest of the year) is better.
And on the bright side, I did make $8000.00 more in 2017 than I did in 2016. Working full time for $12.00 per hour (instead of part time for $11.75 per hour), getting quite a bit of overtime, and not having to pay union dues helped a lot. I’m on track to make about the same this year (a little over 24K) so things should continue to improve even with the added medical bills and paying off the last of the space rent.
Another bright spot in my life is that I managed to talk my doctors’ office/medical clinic into allowing me to stop taking Eliquis (blood thinner).
I now take one 325 mg regular aspirin every day. This helps financially because the co-pay on my Eliqius (with the new–not nearly as good as Safeway/UFCW insurance) insurance would have been $50.00 per month.
I discovered a sale on 325 mg aspirin at Safeway for $1.00 per bottle–100 tablets per bottle.
Each bottle will last 3 months so that is 18 months of blood thinning for SIX dollars total versus NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS for the Eliquis for the same time period (in addition, I take several other prescriptions for high blood pressure, diabetes, low thyroid, and depression so the $50.00 per month would have been just ONE of several co-pays).
ALSO A MAJOR BRIGHT SIDE: NO MORE ROOMMATES!! On May 1, 2018 it will be a year since I kicked out the last one, and I have to say I do not miss her one little bit. With the better paying job, I don’t even miss her money!!