Marina, Mary under a prominently-placed Sohie B.Hawkins poster seen by hundreds of schoolkids, hookers, and johns  a week(do I win?)

Me, yuk

Current Florida Medicaid Hell

.I reached out to the community at Christmas and they reached back warmly, giving us food, bikes, and gifts.Mary's school fixed her computer. A lawyer gave Marina a used one, donated to her by a computer firm hearing about us.Friends got the girls bike helmets and tire pressure gauges and a pump and dressy dresses and Mary got her kimono and Marina got her computer... It felt as though pilgrimages were being made to us Christmas Eve, all these good people coming, Christians, with gifts, from everywhere, like they all just rose up in a trance--and there were coincidences, of one visitor unexpectedly knowing another--then old classmates, religious ones, began contacting me by email. I hear you, Lord!

Mary & her art. Why I hang on

Latest health news: Medicaid has just stopped paying for my home nurse who draws my blood for labs, forcing me to quit interferon. I cannot get to a lab. I've no car, they are all frightfully far and none on one bus, always 2. Buses are hard for me because you still have to walk a long ways from the closest stop and because I urinate 15 times an hour and each bus ride to a diagnostic center/lab takes an hour. What do I do--they don't have toilets on the city buses! I can't take the Share-A-Van because, as homeschooler of my little girl, I have her with me all day and she is not allowed to get in the van. Just the patient. Labwork is essential with interferon especially for heart-failure patients as interferon can aggravate the condition to a fatal degree quickly. The Florida Legislature just killed me, just snatched away my chance to get a heart transplant. And dig this--they made the Medicaid cuts so they could preserve programs that help the richest Floridians. I'm faceless to them. I'm just a member of a group they see as useless and so easiest to take money from. They see us as a bunch of overweight black women with bad kidneys who weren't going to do anything with their lives anyway but consume potato chips and act ornery. Like, no one of any consequence is going to miss any of these, our state's most desperate and poor,if they all got off the planet a few years earlier than they would have if the intangible tax (on stock portfolios )had been preserved instead. But--many of consequence would have more dough to send their mansion-dwelling kids to the best schools. Easy choice. poor people fall off the face of the earth when they die, the rest do constructive shit when they get more money to play with. I wanted to write juvenile fiction too.WAAA! Waaa! They aren't going to let me live! (pretend you see a bawling emoticon) I'm going to pee non-stop til I soon die. If they really think this is cutting costs! retards! Now I have to o to E.R. to see if I am diabetic or why I pee so much suddenly, and have torrents of sweat all day and night, rolling off of my forehead, soaking my hair and clothes. My PCP only does labs if I pay him $15 out of my pocket. There isn't $15 in my pocket. Or  $.15 either. I also have had a paralyzed right hand for exactly 2 weeks. My PCP referred me to a neurologist. I told him that a year ago when he did that, only one neurologist in the whole county took medicaid--the cancer center. He said oh no plenty do, I'll give you a list. I called every doctor on that list and only one took Medicaid. This time the cancer center can't see me unless I have cancer but the Tampa general Specialty Clinics have a neurology clinic. I called it and they said the first available appt was 3 weeks from now and then I'd be lined up for tests, usually 2 weeks later than that. They said they have no provision to let someone in ahead of the 3 weeks' of booked patients on an "urgent" basis. They said this has lastest too long and I need to go to ER not schedule to see them in 3 weeks. When I lay my hands flat on a table and raise them to the wrist, one waves at you all perkily and one lays flat on the table like the ones you see in coffins. I didn't go to ER yet because I assume they'd have to admit me to do tests a day or two later. friends ay don't be stupid, they won't admit me since it's not an emergency. They'll refer me for tests. To a neurlogist which means their clinic of course. Like, the clinic just wouldn't let me make an appointment because they wantd me to waste an extra day going to ER for no reason. But I have kids here, and no one to watch them. Their dad lives 35 minutes from Mary's school and she has to be there at 7:30 a.m. He also has emphysema so bad he's on disability and is often doing  too poorly to drive that early.She'd miss school right at end-of-semester tests. There are also pets here to feed, and crack addicted hookers bringing their johns to my driveway all night. Two nights of an empty house and they are going to know and break in. No, there's no one to get my mail daily etc. The neighbors are all empty houses, not friendly middle-class families like yours are.. Here comes the sweating again. They say they are cutting out our Meals on Wheels next. I wouldn't doubt they cut our free bus passes and eyeglasses out, too.

"When you have kids you can't  do yourself in. Kids just rob you of that option. They do. trust me." ---Phoebe Cates as Sophia Gold in the movie "The Anniversary Party"

Photos will appear here magically someday. The really kind lawyer who adopted my kids or Christmas took some photos of the Presentation and Mary has film in her camera to be developed but probably never will now that I have to take $20 taxi rides for my labs twice a month (if I find it to spare!) No one has yet photographed the girls on their new bikes and now they both have major wounds from spills--Mary also tore a hole in the knee of her only pants--a pair of jeans the lawyer got her; Marina broke a new front tooth... Would have liked a shot of those initial smiles when they saw the bikes---had only one hand past 2 weeks--oh god here comes the hot flash again, wish I could jump off a bridge--- All I have to leave of me to this world is my website. I want every member of the Florida Legislature to see it so they recognize that their constituents on Medicaid are jst as real as they are. Wish I'd been having an affair with one of them or something--how else do you get the interest of people like that? My people contributed to their lifestyles by modifying the bamboo rod so it could be taken apart and transported in a plane. My friends make them laugh by mocking the music of today on  Gold albums ( over a million copies sold). my children have promising futures; they are very creative. I published some letters to editors I hope someone read because they had  good points. We're not just sitting on the porch waiting for the welfare check.... Mary just got her audition date for  the magnet high school she wants to get in so bad. It's in 6 days! She has to have a one -minute public service announcement  on video, a script, a story, a poem, and  memorize  1 minute of a part in a play. It means our camcorder has to work! And transfer to VHS! I have been trying to remember how to do that for months. And my printer has to work--but they're going to cut off our electric! Oh my God!

--Deanne Young is going to be done thanks to the coddling by fat well-fed, waddling creeps, of their peer group I'm out of the "Here" loop

.I tried so hard to stay alive