cyclonefence
cyclonefence's JournalDo you know a disabled person who doesn't vote?
People who have disabilities, even intellectual disabilities, are eligible to vote (in PA, at least). My daughter, who is severely disabled, was registered to vote by her high school special ed teacher and has voted in every election since then. When it became too difficult for her to use the polls (and you can ask you local judge of elections to certify someone to go into the booth to help with the voting), she filed for and received a permanent absentee ballot. She has to re-apply for that "permanent" ballot every two years, but it's no big deal. Her doctor certifies that her disability prevents her from using the voting booth.
If you know a person with disabilities, ask her or her caregiver if she is registered. If not, offer to help register and to vote. Contact the judge of elections at the polling place the disabled person will use and ask for permission to have an assistant go into the booth with the disabled person.
My daughter's very existence depends on who is elected to state and federal office, and she has a right to a say in who that is. I believe she has more of a right to vote than I do.
I don't think Kennedy believes him
Kav couldn't give a straight, clear answer even to a friendly questioner. Kennedy thinks he's a foxy grandpa, and I bet he thinks a man telling the truth wouldn't have had so much trouble saying "No I didn't do it."
I think I know who the female sex crimes investigator will be
who's going to question Dr. Ford. I bet it's Linda Fairstein, retired from the NYC attorney's office and the only well-known female sex-crimes investigator anyone's ever heard of.
Thing is, she's strongly pro-victim and pro-woman. Graduated from Vassar when it was all-female, and a real smart cookie.
Hope I'm right.
Insurance company denied the PET scan
so now my doctor is seeking authorization for CAT and bone scans. She wanted the PET because it would tell us everything in one scan; there may be other scans besides CAT and bone I'm going to have to have to get the same information.
So another frustrating wait. And I repeat: BUT I HAVE THE GOLD PLAN!!!
This was especially frustrating because my surgeon's practice has a patient portal online where I can get messages and see test results, etc., and I had a message that the PET had been OK'd and here was my authorization number. But when I called to make the appointment, the scheduler said there was something wrong with the number--wrong prefix or something--and she needed to call my doctor, which she did. The nurse called me with the bad news, and then I called the insurance company to find out why.
Unfortunately, their explanation made sense. They said they would authorize a PET scan after my surgery, if the lymph nodes showed spread. Well, OK. It's just that I've had cancer in my kidney, too, and was told that that was a type of cancer that was likely to pop up elsewhere. I get kidney scans every years, and chest x-rays (the lungs are the favorite spot for the kidney cancer to recur in), so I guess I'm covered.
It just would have been nice to get it all checked at the same time. So I could know.
Well, it's stage three
breast cancer this time, and I'm going nuts again with the waiting. I finally got the biopsy, no surprises there, the radiologist pretty much told me it was bad, and now I need to have a PET scan to see if there's cancer elsewhere in my body before we can schedule surgery and plan any further treatment.
But to get a PET scan you have to have prior authorization from your insurance company, and that's taking forever. "But I have the Gold Medicare plan!" I yelled at my surgeon. Apparently not a factor.
I'm going to have a mastectomy (lumpectomy last time) without reconstruction. I am an old lady with floppy old lady breasts, and I just can't feature one floppy old lady breast and one pert teenage breast, so reconstruction is out. Plus I don't like the idea of implanted anything.
That's the only decision I've been able to make though, until I get this scan. I didn't know that I would not be able to have radiation (of the breast; if it's elsewhere, that's another story) a second time, and there's apparently a limit on how much more chemo I can have, too. Last time I had four doses; this time I may be able to have more, but that will depend on the oncologist, who of course I don't see until I have the fucking scan.
I think the thing that's scary to me is the fact that I had a clear mammogram in February, and this rather large mass showed up in early September. I feel a little invaded.
Spam callers are spoofing actual numbers
Editing to clarify: the familiar prefixes were just what made me suspicious. The real problem is that they are calling me using actual phone numbers of people I know and talk to. The caller ID shows a friend's number, but when I answer, there is a recorded spam call or sustained silence. If I block the call without checking the caller ID, I then can't get calls from people I want to hear from. And I don't always check the ID before I answer. Furthermore, how is the blocker doing any good if I can't block spam calls that are using a spoofed ID?
Others besides me have noted that spam phone callers have been using numbers that show up in caller ID as being similar to local dialing codes. My phone number, for example, begins with 893 (not really), and I get very few if any legitimate calls with an 893 prefix. My spam phone calls had reached maybe ten/day, so I bought one of the stand-alone call blockers from Amazon. It came preprogrammed with known spam caller numbers and had room for 5000 more numbers.
Last week I answered a call from an old friend, who said he'd been trying to get hold of me but kept getting a strange message that we were too busy to talk to him and to stop calling us. I was dumbfounded and couldn't figure out what could have happened. Then I remembered that I hadn't received an important call I was expecting, and when I checked back was told that they'd tried to reach me several times.
I checked the log of numbers on my blocker, and there both those numbers were. I went through the 75 numbers I have blocked and found a couple more that were legitimate numbers. I deleted those.
Here is how my blocker works: when the phone rings, I answer and if I hear either a recorded message about my credit card or sustained silence, I push a button on my blocker--while I'm on the phone; it doesn't work unless you're actually on the line--and the calling number is blocked. So these spam callers are now using *real* phone numbers which they are somehow harvesting from my legitimate phone calls--ingoing or outgoing--and spoofing those numbers to get me to answer the phone.
I'm posting this for two reasons: One, to warn others that this might be happening, and two, to find out if anyone has any idea of what the hell is going on.
I'm taking stupid pleasure
in the fact that the week my favorite aunt, Florence, died, she got a hurricane named after her. Dreadful as this storm is, it still reminds me of my Aunt Florence, who wasn't dreadful at all. Ninety-six years old and a class act to the end.
Our president* wants more immigrants from Poland.
Of course he does. Poland is among the oldest and most reliable sources of anti-Semites in the world, and the only (afaik) institutional denier of any involvement in the Holocaust.
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Member since: Mon Dec 5, 2016, 05:05 PMNumber of posts: 4,483
