Medicare costs out of control. Cataract surgery

Ripping off Medicare?

                How much does a cataract surgery cost Medicare?  I did not receive an itemized bill.  Happy to have the cost taken care of, I didn’t care.  I wanted the multifocal lens, to do away with even reading glasses.  That is not covered by Medicare, so it is an out of pocket expense of $2,500. 

                I had one eye done in the United States where I could use my Medicare insurance.  The other eye was done in Mexico, a cash affair.  To have a trifocal German Weiss lens put in, the total cost was 30,000 pesos, or roughly $1,500.  Obviously, without the multifocal lens it would have been well under $1,000.

                So, how much does Medicare shell out to an ophthalmologist for this basic procedure? 

                Let us compare to two procedures.

                In the US, I received the personal attention of the doctor’s technical assistant.  She spoke with my by phone about the medicines I needed prior to the surgery.  There were drops that were needed, to prepare the eye.  One small vial of drops cost $300.  She arranged to get a discount card for me, perhaps from the manufacturer, to reduce that cost by half.  I was given a detailed schedule for applying the drops prior to surgery.  The instructions included washing my eye with baby shampoo the night before and the day of surgery.  For the office visits, I sat in front of about five machines that measured my eyes.  Not quite sure what each of them measured, but it felt professional and efficient.

                On the day of the operation, I was instructed to go to a local hospital.  This hospital provides a wing devoted to this ophthalmology group.  Clear directions sent me from the hospital entrance around to their wing.  I was greeted at a polished wood reception counter, and checked in.  There is a carpeted waiting area with comfortable chairs.  I was invited to put on a hospital gown, to be more comfortable.  I was given a bed on wheels, and a tall shaven head man came to me and introduced himself.  He was the technician who was to prepare me.  He explained what would happen.  He was upbeat.  We quickly discovered something in common, and became best friends.  When the time came, I was wheeled into the operating room.  By this time I am so well informed that I am completely relaxes.  The local anesthesia is administered.  I am totally awake.  I am offered something that might take the edge off, but I tell them I am fine.  The procedure, done in a dedicated sterile room, was quick and painless except for one little pin prick.  I assume, by its timing in the event, that it was the lens going in. 

After the procedure I return to the other room.  I sit up, and am given a package of bandages and drops for doing my own after care.  Inside the bandage they’ve applied, there is a concave clear plastic tear-drop shaped perforated disc.  This will protect my eye, especially when I sleep.  I am given a sheet of instructions for the following three weeks.  It is a schedule, clearly written out, of how and when to apply each of three vial of drops I’ve bought.

I notice that the waiting room as well as the beds are full.  This is clearly an assembly line.  No telling how many of these procedures the doctor does in a day, although he may only do this procedure twice a week.

I have a follow up visit the next day at the town office of this ophthalmology group, which is pretty routine.  The doctor just wants to have a look at his work.  A week later I have another follow up with the referring optometrist, but I figure this is just his way of getting his cut, by charging the visit to Medicare.  There is nothing for him to do or see.  I blow it off.

During and after the surgery I have no pain or discomfort.  Given all the anti-inflammatory and antibiotic drugs I’ve been given, how could I.  I am given the instructions, not to bend over, not to lift anything heavy for at least a week.  They give a safe margin of error for the prognosis.  Three to six weeks and my vision will return to clarity. 

I think about how much all those machines cost, with which my eye was so closely examined and measured.

For months I have suffered with crazy vision.  One eye is normal, the other still needs corrective lens.  I try some old contact lenses.  They help a little, but they sat in sealed packets for years, and were probably slowly degrading.  Reading, for these months, is a big problem.

Finally I am free to go to Mexico.  I drive there from Florida, and settle into an unoccupied piece of land where I started and then abandoned a house.  One house on the community land is completed, and I am allowed to stay there.  I slowly make contact with the medical community, I see one doctor and then another, and I am told that the required lens is on order.  Once it arrives, my surgery will be scheduled.  I am in Mexico about four weeks before the day comes.

When I first met the doctor, perhaps the only one in town that does multifocal lens, and apparently he hasn’t been called upon to do many, he peers into my eye with one machine only.  Later a doctor friend would refer to this as a sonogram.  The appointment took perhaps five minutes.  He then searched out and ordered the lens, for which I would have to wait another two weeks or so.

I called ahead of that day to ask if I needed to do anything to prepare.  Any drops?  Shampoo for the eye?  No, there is nothing.  Just arrive at 10 am, fasting.

For safe keeping, I squirt my eye with remaining drops of anti-inflammatory left over from the previous eye surgery, that morning.  I scrub the eye with baby shampoo.  I show up at the doctors office before 10.  Then I am told the surgery will be at 11;30.  The receptionist said something about needing time to fill out history forms, but I thought my appointment got bumped.  The doctor was squeezing me in, as it was, as a favor to my physician friend.  And so I waited, light headed from a light supper the night before and no breakfast nor water.

The first referring ophthalmologist arrives, and waits in the tiny reception room.  I didn’t recognize him at first.  After some time, he came up to me and said softly, are you ready?  We are ready.  Yes, I agreed.  Ready.  It would still be some ten or fifteen minutes before I was prepared with gown, hair net and booties.

The procedure took place in a back room, on a guerney or examining table.  The referring doctor gowned up and was assisting.  There was not much talking, no mood lifting banter.  So far, three different drops had been applied, and they all stung to varying degrees of intensity.  The last were applied and I laid down.

The procedure took place.  I think the US doctor used laser tools, which this doctor did not have.  The first procedure felt smoother.  That being said, there was very little discomfort.

When it was over the eye was bandaged.  I was instructed to take care of it, don’t put pressure on it, don’t bend down or lift anything heavy. There was no plastic disc to protect the eye under the bandage.

These two Mexican doctors had done cataract surgery for my friends and their elders.  None of them requested the multifocal lens.  All had excellent results.

My question is obvious.  Is all that primping and pampering given the US patient and charged to Medicare necessary?  Yes, it feels good, but it doesn’t change the outcome.

Congress doesn’t dare cut Medicare funding, for fear of an outcry from the public.  I think the reduced funding requirements should come from within.  The medical profession in general relies on more and more instruments of measurement, expensive equipment and lab tests, to avoid liability from error.  Perhaps this testing is also a cover-up for the poor diagnostic skills acquired during medical training.

There is so much wrong with health care in the US.  I am only addressing one small specialty.  Of the broader field of western medicine, I believe that once treatment is applied, it is quality for the most part.  (I am sure there are studies out there reporting on this; I am not aware. I am being optimistic.)  But the expense around it is out of control.  There is a great body of traditional healing that is suppressed, not integrated into our system of health care.  When I lived in China I had access to many affordable natural remedies over the counter that relieved symptoms I might have gone to the doctor about in the US, if I could afford it.  In Mexico, and among my Mexican students in America, I have been acquainted with traditional healers.  I respect their work.

These are my observations from undergoing the same procedure in two medical systems.  And gratuitous ramblings on the topic of health care in general.  I welcome your comments.

Remembering an old friend and mentor

Birthday Blessings, Losar 2007

When you find a place you really love, it is hard to leave it.  Sometimes, however, there is no other choice.  While it is true that you cannot enter the same stream twice, that stream can still hold sweet water.  And so I left one Tibetan community and returned to another.

2006. This is a story about visiting an old friend, and reconnecting with a new friend.  Having left China (East Tibet) after being denied a worker visa renewal, feeling at sixes and sevens, I returned to a safe place.  India.  One goal was to visit the current incarnation of my deceased root guru. I learned he was in Bylakuppe, which is a Tibetan refugee camp a few hours from Mysore in Karnataka, southern India.  This is where the ancient Sera Me and Sera Je monasteries had been established, after the Tibetans were exiled from Tibet. 

Upon arriving at New Delhi (Indira Gandhi) airport, and spending a night in the refugee community, Majnukatilla, my feet trod once again a familiar path.  How well I knew this road, this 8 hour journey by overnight bus up a twisting bumpy mountain road to McLeod Ganj. This is where my life found its center, during 3 years in the 1970s.  This was my first time to revisit this mountain village in the Dhauladhar Mountains in Himachal Pradesh, north India.  I remembered a sleepy town where the only cars to brave the narrow and rough mountain road were the rare visitors to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  We lesser mortals rode the rugged bus, each trip a death-defying act over narrow ascending roads cut into the mountainside, or walked the half-hour path down to Dharamsala markets.

The buses entered the small plaza, discharging their passengers before making tight U turns to prepare to head down the mountain again.  In this same plaza sometimes a projector and screen would be set up in the evening, and chairs set out to watch a rare movie.  At the wide convergence of the dirt streets leading up and down the hillside from the plaza, Tibetans on holiday occasions would form a circle and dance traditional dances.

McLeod Ganj is set on a mountain ridge at most one mile long. At one end was the small plaza.  Entering the plaza there were buildings straddling the ridge on either side. Behind the plaza at one end the mountain rose further, where there were stone-built colonial homes left by the British.  This was one of their ‘hill stations’, where they sent their families up from the plains to escape the unbearably hot summers.  In the center of this long narrow plaza there was a cement building housing a large rotating Tibetan cylinder filled with papers inscribed with ‘om mani padme hum’.  Each time it made a complete revolution a bell would tinkle.  Beyond that was a row of smaller such cylinders in rows, roofed but open.  Devout Tibetans came daily to turn these prayer wheels, repeating the same mantra or other prayers.  In one of these wooden buildings on the left side of the narrow road the Tibetan doctor had his medical practice.  When he was not seeing we mere mortals, he was occupied with tending to the health of His Holiness the Dalia Lama.  Or perhaps it was the other way around.  He was to go on to become a world renowned authority on traditional medicines, traveling and lecturing all over the world (Dr Yeshe Dondun). 

Further down the long narrow plaza, before the terminus of the ridge, there was a road sloping down to the right, towards a smaller prominence on the far edge of this ridge.  Except for a few hotels, there were no buildings here.  This was the path that pilgrims walked, alongside untouched woods, to the home of the Dalai Lama.  Hidden in the woods was a primitive nunnery for about 20 Tibetans.  (After I was ordained as a nun I asked if I could join this community of Tibetan nuns in this forest.  I was told it is too primitive for a westerner; I was denied community there.) Believers would take the narrow path below and around the ‘Palace’ repeating mantras, in a practice called ‘kora’ (circle).  They believed they were acquiring merit, canceling out some of their negative karma.

In the decades following the establishment of the Tibetan Government in Exile here, the focus for western residents (aside from those rare visitors who came briefly for a personal audience with the Dalai Lama) was attending the ‘Tibetan University’.  This was a project developed by the Dalai Lama with the purpose of preserving the Tibetan language, art, culture and Buddhist teachings by transferring them to westerners.  It was described in an article in Asian Times in the 70s.

A lucky few could find rooms in the apartments built around the government center, halfway between McLeod Ganj and Dharamsala.  These two-story buildings were mainly for the exiled Tibetans, and westerners who found housing there were usually visiting scholars come to study with the lamas and or to do research at the Library of Tibetan Books and Archives.

My shack was part of 'shanti bhavan', above McLeod Ganj in the forested former Raj-era compounds.  To attend the daily teachings at the Library entailed a walk down some 2,000 meters of altitude, on a dusty winding road. The walk down in the mornings was pleasant. In spring it included a short cut through a flowering rhododendron forest.  The road down was very steep, the view breathtaking.  A large lake was a shimmering ribbon of silver on the distant horizon, drawn on a canvas of blue haze.  To the right was the mountain wall.  To the left was a sheer drop off and the other side of the gorge.  It was a steep gorge cut by a river of melted snow runoff.  The return journey was arduous, in the burning hot afternoon mountain sun. 

On cold winter mornings, shivering in my nun’s traditional robes, I would rush down the small slope to a chai shop in McLeod Ganj for morning sweet chai and a roti, and maybe a cup of freshly made sour yogurt, before the long walk down the mountain to the Library.  The shop, with its worn linoleum floor and made of wood slats, darkened from years of cooking fires, was balanced precariously over a precipice. The cooking fires warmed the room.  A handful of other westerners were also there for the same reason. It was a cozy, intimate experience.

Because much of the housing construction was of unlined, uninsulated wood, winters were brutal.  Luckier, wealthier students and monks lived in concrete block houses, but these were also unheated.  The cold was unrelenting.  Each year there would be a mass exodus of lamas, and their followers, to the warmth of Bodh Gaya on the plains of Bihar state.  Usually from December until the Tibetan New Year, or ‘Losar’, the center of devotion would shift to the sacred area where Buddha was believed to have attained enlightenment.  Buddhists of all traditions were there. It was a rare opportunity to study with other traditions.  Notably was a Burmese teacher name Goenka, who led intensive 10-day meditation retreats in the Vipassana tradition.

When we all returned to McLeod Ganj to live out the short remaining winter weather, it was time to celebrate the New Year.  The high light of this time was receiving the Dalai Lama’s blessing.  He would sit in the main temple on his elevated seat, and a long line of devotees would snake outside the building waiting for their moment.  As I approached his seat, hands folded and draped with a traditional white silky scarf called a ‘khata’ that I would offer him, I would cease paying attention to whom else was in line.  My breath deepened, my spirit stilled, focused on the strong peaceful presence of the man who was about to lay his precious hand on my head. I knew that he knew who I was, and that his blessing was personal. 

Thirty years of change greeted my return.  Buildings had blossomed everywhere on the mountainside.  The dusty narrow steep road down to the Library and Dharmsala beyond was now paved.  It was regularly traversed by taxis and a few private cars.  There were frequent jams, where the road was not wide enough for two cars.  The narrow streets in McLeod Ganj proper were made more narrow by rows of vending tables, nevertheless cars dared traverse its 200 meter length, threading throngs of pedestrians with blasts of horn. 

Much of the forest that had been the front yard of His Holiness’s home was gone.   Many luxury hotels crowded the cliffside, shops and boutique restaurants hug the hillside, and there were new monasteries.  On the cliffs edge of the narrow road, stalls lined the sloping connecting road leading to the Palace.  Leathered brown faces sat beside blankets or tables filled with turquoise and coral stones set in silver, or mani beads.  These are strings of 108 beads, made of fragrant wood, or eye of the Pepol tree, or smoothed semiprecious stones.  

The small ‘ani gompa’ or nun’s temple had been replaced by a far more comfortable nunnery.  The Dalai Lama had done much to raise the level of the nuns.  They received more profound teachings than were available to them before, and were respected for their spiritual depth and learning.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s His Holiness would come down to the plaza, sit with his students over chai and laughter.  By the time I had arrived, the population both Tibetans and westerners had grown to an uncomfortable level.  He could no longer stroll anonymously in his village streets.

By the time of my return visit, the population had swollen to a seemingly insupportable size. His Holiness would give regular teachings each month, announced on his web site.  Throngs of westerners and Tibetans alike would travel in for the week-long teachings and sacred initiations.  The hotels were full, the Tibetan family homes were crowded with distant relatives sleeping on couches and floors.

My plan was vague; I was running away from disappointment, looking for a healing solution.  While passing through Bangkok from China I managed to obtain a ten-year tourist visa.  My goals included getting back in touch with my teachers, get some teachings, do some retreats, and otherwise jump start my flagging spiritual life. 

After a few days in a hotel in McLeod Ganj I was lucky to find an apartment halfway down the mountain towards Dharmsala, in an area that used to house the exiled government secretary.  In its day its address was home to a publishing house, which specialized in translations from the Tibetan scriptures and commentaries to English.  Now the area was developed and still developing, the now-asphalted path lined with concrete construction.  My apartment was in a 2-story quadplex.  It was modern, with tiled floors, a large shower and well-equipped kitchen.  

I applied for and awaited my permission to go to the Bylakuppe refugee center in Karnataka, were I would visit with the young incarnation of my deceased Library teacher. This would be a new experience for me.  Would he recognize me?  Would he find it strange that I treated him like an old friend, this 11 year old boy?

My year was coming to an end as the Tibetan New Year approached.  I had renewed my acquaintance with some of my teachers, sat in on illuminating teachings, and spent months in retreat meditating on these teachings.  I had made it down to Bylakuppe, and met the young ‘yangtse’.  As it happened, the holiest day of this Losar would fall on my birthday.  It was raining, cold and miserable in McLeod Ganj.  My summer wardrobe was hardly appropriate for this cold and wet weather.  My stay would be short.  I found a bed in a lodge run by a group of monks from a traditional monastery, right on the central plaza.  Losar was a holiday festival, a time for everyone to relax and enjoy themselves.  It was fun to be around the monks in these days.  Their childlike sense of play, and the laughter that filled the shared restaurant-reception area was infectious.

Reflecting on the old days of receiving His Holiness’s personal blessing at Losar, I wished to re-experience that intimate connection.  In reality, during the intervening years he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and become world-renowned.  It would be impossible for him to continue that practice of touching each of the tens of thousands of visitors who waited expectantly for his blessing.  Instead, the day’s activities in his temple would take on a different aspect.

I could not face these crowds of strangers.  Instead, I decided to spend the hours doing kora around his holiness’s home and temple.

Even that had been built up.  Of course, much of the path on the exposed side of the mountain was still narrow and unpaved.  But along a broader strip of land new homes had been added to the mountain slope, for honored reincarnate lama teachers, benefitting the monks studying in HH’s monastery.  Devoted followers had donated shrines, small buildings housing precious reliquary and candles.  Near the end of the long circle there was a small plaza, lined on one side with mani wheels and on the other by an enclosed shrine.  I reached that point at the end of the kora, just as the sun came out dispelling the drizzle.  I folded my umbrella, and stopped for reflection. 

I closed my eyes, and focused on that precious presence.  I wished him a happy new year prayer.  To my astonishment, a warmth flooded over me, accompanied by an inner light and profound peace.  It lingered for a long moment.  He came to me, and wished me a happy birthday, letting me know that he had not forgotten me.

Upon that joyous note, I soon booked my travels back to Kham, East Tibet, where my friend was awaiting the arrival of her first child.  I was the designated doula, or midwife.  I was returning to China as a tourist, for a short stay of three months.  The future was uncertain, but I knew that whatever came my way I could weather it, knowing that I was held in the heart and under the protection of a very special spiritual being.  Though I be alone in the world, I know I am tethered by an unbreakable cord.

Respect your gender

Respect your gender

These are confusing times, when a three-year old boy wants to play with dolls so his mother says he is a girl.  This is my send article on this topic.  As you will see, I have been giving it a lot of thought.  These are my conclusions.  Please feel free to dialogue, through the ‘comments’ section. 

I was a tomboy.  I played cowboys and Indians.  In winter, with the neighbor boys, I built snow forts and fought off the invaders with snowballs. 

I remember a two-foot tall doll I was given for a birthday, perhaps it was my eighth.  I did not know what to do with it.  I propped it in a corner, looked at it, wondered what to do with it.  It felt so alien.

My favorite dress was blue jeans. I never enjoyed clothes shopping, I simply had no clue.  I remember a time in high school when, with my own money earned from babysitting, I went shopping for clothes.  Of course, mother took me, and had ultimate say over what I chose.  I picked out a gabardine pleated brown skirt that pleased her, and that was too small.  I spent all my money, and I never wore it.  My shopping mind set has always been to walk into a store with a specific target, hunt it down, buy it and leave.  Wandering the mall just looking at things gives me a headache.  What’s the point

I never wanted to marry.  High school flirtations were all about seeking the love, acceptance and intimacy that was denied me in childhood.  Boys were not drawn to me.  I felt like I just didn’t give out the right vibe.  I had my flirtations and explorations, but that feeling stayed with me throughout my life.

One of those explorations resulted in a pregnancy.  There were no options, no discussions.  I knew what the right thing to do was.  And maybe now I would finally have that love and intimacy that I craved. 

I have to laugh when I think of it now.  I didn’t have the usual slut vibe.  I was a serious kid.  But I was a horny kid, once I discovered the pleasure of sex.  I guess I had the masculine sensibility of it all.  Men sew their wild oats, while a good Catholic girl is meant to be modest, chaste.  Hmm.  I had a few wild oats of my own to sew, though my virginal pregnancy and marriage postponed that.

As a mother I was a good mechanic.  There was some kind of maternal connection that was missing.  I loved my kids, but did not find motherhood satisfying.  My mind lay fallow.

I left my kids, and suffered the condemnation of abandonment for the rest of my life.  They suffered it, too.  Yet to stay with them would have been suicide.  I remember being in the car with the family.  We were ‘happy’.  Yet I wanted to push open the door and jump out at a high speed, in hopes to end my futile existence.  Now, some fifty years later, I understand.

When I began to understand reincarnation, I made sense of my maleness.  Of course.  These feelings were simply left over from a previous life.  I am a man in a woman’s body.  So be it.

I had the best of both worlds.  I was perceived as a woman. I participated in the sacred mystery of having a life grow within me, three times.  My body was fertile!  On the other hand, I did not understand how to be subjected by a male partner, nor what it would entail to make him happy. No doubt, this is why my attempts at marriage were doomed.  I have always been fearless.  If I could imagine it, I could attempt it.  I traveled freely, which was my destiny.  I have had an independent life.  Observers say I am not homely, yet I have never been a magnet for men who were seeking a partner.  My intelligence, confidence and independence were surely effective deterrents. 

I cannot imagine what I would have become if I stayed in my marriage with my children.  It is simply unimaginable.  For their sakes, I am happy that I had the opportunity to bring life into this world.  That is a humbling experience.  They can never forgive me for that.  Had I changed my gender in my youth, as people today are doing, I would have avoided causing these people this pain.  On the other hand, they would not have been born!  Which is the more noble path?

People seek happiness and fulfillment today, IMHO to an absurd degree.  Of course my life had its share of emotional pain and suffering.  But what life does not?  I took my gender ambiguity in stride.  I did not obsess over it.  What has happened in our world to shift the balance, such that people are not willing to accept this dysphoria and get on with their lives?

As a woman, I have never knew an insurmountable barrier to doing what I wanted to do, to fulfilling my destiny.  I have worked on my car, changing the oil, replacing a manifold gasket for example.  I have remodeled a house, doing carpentry, plumbing, putting up sheet rocking, painting. Perhaps the greater difficulty is with a man who feels like a woman, who wants to wear makeup and high heel shoes.  Who would rather play with dolls, who likes soft and frilly things, who isn’t interested in ‘manly’ things.  Perhaps in our culture that is more an obstacle than to such as myself.  Yet in my childhood and among my peers in adulthood I have known of husbands and fathers who preferred to cook, to sew clothing and frilly drapes, and to do other traditionally feminine things while their wives worked and had a career.  Why is that not enough any longer?

I shake my head.  Are these rhetorical questions?  My curious mind wants to know.  These things trouble me, as I see the culture, the social order crumbling around me.  The answers do not matter.  We have gone too far into devolution.  There is no remedy.  We are on a collision course, we cannot heal the planet nor our societies.  We are all doomed.  Pass the tequila.

Retirement stalemate; some ramblings

I am going to ramble a little here, unlike my usual 'polished' essays.  As the Brits say, I am at sixes and sevens.  I have no answers, only questions.  In the Mexican Prologue I said I didn't know whether to go forward or back.  It seems I have been rocking constantly in the six intervening months.  One step forward, one step back.

Hindsight, ain't it great?  I wish I had put the house on the market 'as is' and be done with it.  But the predominance of opinion by those advising me seem to be, remodel--you'll get more money.

Wrong!

Contractor quagmire 

The remodeling began.  I withdrew the last of my IRA funds, what savings I had left from China, and a withdrawal from a credit card to pay a contractor to remodel the house.  To make a long story short, he did not know what he was doing, beyond scamming me.  What work he did on the house had to be torn up and redone.  He walked away with almost $12,000.  I found a new contractor, recommended by my realtor.  This contractor said he could do the job in a month, more or less.  Three months later, the house is still not ready to go on the market.  I reduced the price in order to unload it anyway, but the buyer was coming in with a VA loan. This meant an excruciatingly detailed inspection report.  The house failed. The buyer walked away.

I paid the new contractor with borrowed money, assuming the  house would sell quickly and I could repay the debt.  Wrong!

The debts became due.  Turns out, just paying off the monthly bills on these credit cards uses up all my monthly social security pension check. I found myself going to bed hungry.  Food money going to pay for the gas and light bill, and servicing the swimming pool.  Soon the home insurance payment would be due.

Logically I know that to every problem there is a solution.  I found none.

I reached a wall.  The only way out is death.

These were my bleak thoughts.



Mexico House

The low cost of finishing the Mexico house, as estimated by our community leader, was for a very basic, primitive home.  Maybe okay for periodic meditation retreats, but not for a full retirement life. To finish it as I envision it would take most of what I would garner from the sale of my Florida home.  This doesn't make sense, because renting in Mexico is so inexpensive.

I am not putting anymore money into the house, except to brick up openings and repair a broken window so that the house is sealed from the elements.  It will sit there, awaiting future developments.

My brother, who himself went through bankruptcy proceedings, urged me not to dismiss this option, but to seek legal counseling.

Using AVVO, I paid $49 for a 15 minute on phone consultation.  From that brainstorming session, I came up with a plan.

I will come to terms with the banks, let them know I am not in a position to pay them.

I will apply for food stamps.

I will take the money back from Mexico.  It will pay the insurance bill, maybe some of the tax bill when it comes due in November, furnish my house from Salvation Army or whatever, pay arrears for electricity.

I will bite the bullet and pay for a new junction box installed, since the inspection revealed that this one is out of date and no longer acceptable, even to the insurance company should they inspect.

I will continue forward with volunteering at the Pet Resource Center, to give myself some human contact.  i will adopt my own dog, to give me a companion at home.

God has a plan

In January when I went to Mexico to buy my car, I was dazed and confused that it did not work out. I kicked myself for not having anticipated the road block that I encountered.  I had already converted the dollars to pesos, and didn't want to lose money converting it back again.  So I left it there.  As I mulled it over, I came to the conclusion that only the future would reveal the true reason why I made that trip.

Now I see it.  Had I not left the money in Mexico, surely it would have gone into the bottomless pit of the remodel.

The exchange rate gave me a lot of pesos for my dollar.  The exchange rate has changed again, in my favor.  It is time to reclaim my dollars.

The best thing of all is that I received a very caring note from my siblings saying that they were in this together with me, with their help we would get through this.  I have always been very independent, not wanting them to see me as a freeloader.  My path has been very different from theirs, and I think historically that they saw my path as being irresponsible.  Externally my life may have appeared to be that of a carefree hippy unbound by societal conventions, unfettered by responsibilities.  I think my achievements since those days have demonstrated that that is a misread.

The time has come to accept myself as part of a family unit.  It is humbling.  Yet I know I have come to the end of my knowledge.  In this culture I do not know how to maneuver to get myself out of this situation.  I accept whatever help is proffered by my dear sister and brother.  They know the lay of the land far better than me.  I gladly accept their wisdom and experience.

For now, I will move back into the house, reconnect the utilities (which I canceled when I thought the house had sold), and begin my retirement.  I will focus more on my writings, even though I know at my age, no publisher will accept a first book by someone of my age.  Though the subject matter may be interesting, I am still a very green writer.  Nevertheless, I will get my storied down on 'paper'.  This is always how I said I would pass my retirement.  Let it be so.

Lost and Adrift, Luna at the Pet Resource Center

Lost and Adrift; Luna at the Pet Resource Center

Luna could have been running with the pack on any street anywhere in the world, she is just that common a mixed breed.  A lean body, almond husk brown, medium height, a long thin snout and expressive ears the folded over at the top was how she looked when I met her, but she was still a puppy of 8 months; she could still grow.

I have not been without a pet since 1990.  All along it had been cats, until the very end.  Then, two years before I decided to retire and return to America, I met MeiMei.  A friend handed me a tiny puppy, at most 8 weeks old.  Now I was a dog owner, too.

Having had my career in English teaching abroad for most of the past 15 years, I had lost contact with American society.  No friends met me at the airport.  No welcome home parties.  I was on my own.

Culture shock is common in such situations, of living in a new culture.  Since I am American, it is called reverse culture shock.  The disorientation and emotional upheaval is pretty much the same.  Since I was also without a job with hopes of retiring, at the same time, I was deeply at a loss, in a daze.

I moved back into the house I had left 8 years earlier, when I tried briefly to make a go of living in America once again.  That hadn’t gone well, but at least I managed to put what savings I had into something solid.

The house presented its own problems.  Trying to deal with these brought me into contact with tradesmen and craftsmen.  I felt buffeted about, needing to make decisions, floating without an anchor in a world that technically spoke the same language, but was fraught with misunderstandings and treachery.

I thought I would go mad without the comfort of my feline and canine friends.  I tried to adopt a dog, but quickly discovered that he needed order, structure, a schedule.  Being adrift as I was, I was ill equipped for his needs.  After two weeks, I returned him. He found a good home the next day, I later found out.

I started making regular visits to the Pet Rescue Center.  In my county it is a large and very well managed place.  Nevertheless, it was constantly being overwhelmed by newly arriving dogs and cats.  I walked down the many aisles, looking at the data sheet hanging at each kennel.  I quickly realized that the small dogs moved in and out very quickly.  They were in high demand.  The larger dogs, the American Staffordshires, fighting bull dogs, German shepherds and mixtures of all three, had been there one, two, even three months.  Euthanasia would be their future. 

Another item on that sheet was holding back otherwise adoptable slightly smaller dogs, and pure breeds like boxers.  There was a line, Heartworm, followed by either positive or negative.  The positives did not get adopted.

I inquired at the front desk.  Was this condition incurable?  I was told that a cure was available.  It was expensive, however, and so the Center could not treat these animals. 

How expensive?  I asked.   I sat at the desk.  It was a long convex counter, with about seven computer stations.  Rarely were all manned, but I was lucky to find an assistant who was free to explain the facts to me.  It required one trip to a vet.  There the vet would administer medication; I think he said it was a pill.  One follow up checkup, and it was done.  The cost was about $250, he said.

During my strolls down the different kennel buildings, I spotted Luna.  She had been there a month already.  I wondered why.  She wasn’t overwhelming in size, she had good coloring.  She was a German Shepherd mix; mostly brown, peppered at the brow with some black hairs.  It was an attractive effect, though not striking. 

In the late afternoon when the dogs were tired, and there hadn’t been a lot of foot traffic, the kennels were quiet.  But early in the day the cacophony was deafening, as all the dogs roared.  Luna was among them.  When she barked, she bared her teeth. This made her appear ferocious.  Her descriptive sheet hanging on the kennel was marked with a big B, for biter. 

I started visiting her every day.  I went to the Pet Smart shop and bought yummy beef treats, which I unashamedly used to bribe her.  She perked up, and paid attention.  On subsequent visits I found a dog grinning at me, wagging her tail.  I wondered if she was intelligent, trainable.

The procedures at the kennel provided for a meet-and-greet.  So I went through the steps to ask to meet with Luna.  A request went out on walkie talkie for a worker or volunteer to come to cage A-15 for a meet and greet.  Sometimes the wait was so long, that I sat down on the cement floor.  Luna would lay down, tail wagging, pushing her paws through the bottom of the gate.  We would talk, I stroked her, held her paw, until someone finally came.  Each time we went out to an enclosure, she would immediately pee.  I had noticed that her kennel was usually clean, when other kennels were smeared with feces.  I took that to mean that she was fussy about sanitation, a dog who would not easily have accidents in the home.   If we had a 20 minute visit, she would poop too.  These were good signs.

I brought a ball, and we played fetch, sort of.  I tried to get her to run with me, assuming she never got enough exercise.  We went over basic commands; sit, come, down.  She responded quickly.  As for the biting, it didn’t seem to be in her nature.

Each time I asked for a meet and greet with her, I had to sit at the desk and listen to a reading of her file.  The ‘biting’ incident was totally understandable for a german shepherd, especially if the household failed to understand her nature.  A strange child ran across the year, approached the porch and rushed the dog.  The dog, in guard mode, lunged for the child with open mouth.  No blood was drawn, but everyone was freaked.  The dog was dangerous, and had to be surrendered.

Luna calmed down.  When dog seekers walked down the aisles, she did not bare her teeth and bark.  She barked, of course, but half-heartedly.  When not responding to the barking pack, she would greet visitors with an expectant gaze and wagging tail.  She was more receptive to what might happen.

After spending time with her every day for a week, I came to see her as usual but found her cage empty.  Someone had adopted her!

I signed up to be a volunteer.  There were a number of steps involved, it was not an immediate process.  I went to orientation.  Then I would get training for specialization.  I could choose to work with the vet techs.  Or get trained to work with small groups of dogs for socialization, play time.  There was the job of cleaning the cat cages early in the morning.  This pet center ran a tight ship.

I missed Luna, but was very happy for her.  I was still not in a position to adopt a dog.  I have been having a very difficult time figuring out a livable, affordable retirement plan.

Before I could go on to the next volunteer step, my circumstances swept me away again and I left town. One thing is now clear, though, about my retirement life.  I will return to my house, and adopt a companion. With this goal in mind,I will find a way to afford living in my home.  One point of structure for this new life will be my schedule as a shelter volunteer.