Growing Up As An Imaginative Single Child, I Loved To Play With Barbies. I Loved Creating Elaborate Drama-filled

I feel like I should make a post about this because it’s not something that’s very well-known, and that Americans in particular may need to know about given the uncertain state of our healthcare system at the moment. I’ve wanted to write this out for a while, It’s kind of a long post, so sorry about that!

If you have an emergency and have to go to the hospital, you’ll owe the hospital a lot of money. (I got into a car wreck and broke my ankle and my arm. My hospital bill was around $20,000)

You’ll also owe the ambulance provider, if you need one. (My ambulance bill was about $800)

You may get separate bills from the anesthesiologist or surgeon. (My anesthesiologist bill was $1,700)

You may need follow-up appointments. (My orthopedic surgeon billed me for the appointments and his surgery together and it was about $1,000)

You’ve also got to pay for medical equipment you need afterward, like crutches or a walking boot. (Mine cost about $75)

Altogether, I ended up with almost $24,000 in medical debt from one car accident. That’s a really scary number for someone like me who makes $10/hr at a 12 hour a week job.

I got my debt down to $1075 by making some phone calls and submitting some paperwork.

The first thing I did was contact the hospital. They don’t make it easy to find, but many hospitals (perhaps most hospitals?) have financial assistance programs for people who can’t afford medical bills. I don’t make a lot of money, and I have bills to pay, so they were able to help me. I called the billing department and asked if they had any assistance programs for low income people who can’t pay their bills. I had to call multiple times, and I got transferred in circles by people who didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, I got an appointment with someone in “Eligibility Services” (I don’t know what other hospitals call it, if it’s something different). I had to bring my pay stubs and copies of all of my bills. When I got to the hospital for the appointment, nobody knew what I was talking about so I had to wander a little to find where I needed to go. I spoke with the guy in Eligibility Services, and I waited for a decision on how much of the bill they would forgive. A month later, I got a call telling me it was totally forgiven.

I did the same thing for my ambulance bill and my anesthesiologist, but the process was a LOT easier. I just had to mail some paperwork and it was totally forgiven.

I didn’t bother with the medical equipment suppliers, since the bills came from separate companies and I didn’t feel like going through the process twice for $75. I was assured at the hospital that they had similar programs for debt forgiveness, so I could have probably avoided paying that too.

The only thing I couldn’t get taken care of was the surgeon/follow-up appointment cost, but they were able to put me on a no-interest payment plan.

Medical debt is scary because it’s something that can come from stuff that’s already really scary. I didn’t need the burden of $24,000 in debt on top of trying to get around on a crutch with a broken arm (it’s not easy, believe me!).. but I can’t imagine what it would be like with a bigger debt or a more severe medical emergency. I see lots of people in even worse trouble than I was in, both financially and medically. Please know that there are options for you when that GoFundMe doesn’t do enough. Even if your income is higher than mine, it’s worth a shot even for partial debt forgiveness.

Cats with knives.

Dragon Age Writing References

Been meaning to pull this together for a while.  If you know anything good that I’ve missed, stick ‘em on the end!  I’ll reblog in a while with additions.

Dragon Age Wiki–first-stop resource for basic character and plot information, class and area info, and a lot of codices from all three games.

An Illustrated Timeline of Thedosian History–What it says on the tin, put together by @penbrydd.

Travel Times:

Ferelden travel: distances and times–DA: O specific areas, also includes interesting discussion of forced-march speeds

More travel time ideas including Inquisition areas

Thedosian Titles–Ranks and titles in Thedas, as taken from the tabletop rpg guides.

Thedosian slurs–a compilation of derogatory terms used by various Thedosian peoples.

Thedosian calendar–Thedosian dates and holidays with a speculative matchup of the Gregorian equivalents.

Human names–information on naming in Thedosian human cultures.

Qunari, dwarven, and elven names–some information and examples for each group.

How old everyone is in Inquisition–answers or best estimates using in-game or WoT information.

War Table spreadsheet–all the War Table missions, options, and outcomes.

Dragon Age Meta Nexus–a collection of meta posts drawn from Tumblr with standardized tags to facilitate search.  Fairly new.

What if the fade being ripped open in da:i has nothing to do with templars and mages but everything to do with those weird side quests in da:o like activating the places of power and watch guard of the reaching and summoning sciences

I mean the warden did a bunch of weird shit in da:o without fully understanding what any of it does

My sister rang me today.

Ever since she was six, she's had pain in her legs, which turns into pain in her hips and back for stretches of time. She's tried for years to get a diagnosis, with absolutely no joy. As a kid they thought she had collapsed arches in her feet; then it became clear her feet were fine, but something was wrong with her tendons; and then in her 20s they just shrugged it off with a "We'll never know probably" and that was that. She keeps on top of it with daily yoga, generally, though flare ups happen periodically. If she has to pause the yoga for some reason, she fairly rapidly regresses. Currently she has plantar fascitis again, which has halted everything once more, so right now she's back into a pain slump.

Anyway, she called me today while going from Doctors to pharmacy to get the codeine they've prescribed her for it.

"I think one of my yoga moves to help the fascitis might have exacerbated the legs," she said. "Trouble is, there's never been a diagnosis. I just have to trial and error what might help."

... And I had one of those lightbulb moments, you know? My brain suddenly went "Wait hang on, this is very familiar isn't it?" and rang the bells of memory.

"Did they ever test you for fibromyalgia?" I said.

They had not. It's never been suggested, even. My sister said she'd look up the symptoms and see if it chimed, and rang off.

Fifteen minutes later, she calls back.

Turns out she got to the pharmacy and gave them the prescription. While waiting, she googled fibromyalgia symptoms and found the NHS website.

"It was like someone had written a profile of me," she tells me on the phone. "Like, spookily, scarily accurate to me, right down to the temperature regulation bit. It felt like a practical joke."

And of course, as she stood there in the pharmacy, suddenly staring at the age of forty at the apparent answer she's been trying to get since she was six years old, she burst into tears.

"Oh no!" Said the pharmacist, hurdling the counter in a single leap and scattering the queue (I am exaggerating for humorous affectation.) "Quickly! Come into our little exam room, we'll get you tissues and water!"

My sister was duly ensconced into a Safe Place, and encouraged to cry it out. It took several hiccuping minutes, but finally, she managed to calm down and get back to an Extremely Watery Smile.

"Do you want to talk about it?" the pharmacist asked sympathetically.

"It's just..." my sister said, overwhelmed and searching for words. "My whole life I've been in pain, and they've never found why..."

"Ah," said the pharmacist thoughtfully. "Have you explored fibromyalgia?"

...

"TWICE IN ONE DAY," my sister yells on the phone to me later. "HOW THE HELL HAVE TWO SEPARATE PEOPLE ON THE SAME DAY FINALLY GIVEN ME THE ANSWER, AND NEITHER OF YOU IS A DOCTOR"

Anyway she has a doctor's appointment for tomorrow to discuss it, so we'll see

Heya! Idk if you’ve already answered this but what do you use to make your colors so cohesive and kinda linocut-ish? Your art is so cool, it gives me so much inspo ✨✨💛

Thank you for asking! <3 I never know how to make tutorials/how to explain how exactly I do things, but I post GIF walkthroughs ocassionally, so hopefully these are helpful at all? :D I stream my process regularly at https://www.twitch.tv/jaglane too! A big part of the texture/traditional feel my art has is the traditional, pencil sketch I often use as a base for my works, but I'm not always doing it. Here are two examples of two recent arts of mine that were done partly traditionally:

Sometimes I do everything digitally and just try to mimic the effect, but my fully digital style is slightly different, less textured/rough. Here are two examples of that, you can see the initial lines are completely different!

I hope this helps a bit, thank you for your kind words <3

“my bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonnie lies over the sea,”

are we talking about the same body of water here, which is weird, or different bodies of water, which is even weirder

Last I saw this thread there were over a hundred comments but not a single person could agree on what this is or what happened