I have spent the past few days relaxing and failing to keep track of the past few days - a luxury I have now enjoyed for several months. C and I have relaxed and taken in some Swedish sights - the Fotografiska museum, the Nobel museum (today), and a trip north to visit a college friend of Corinne's, Seth, who owns a horse farm in northern Sweden. There were eight of us on this trip, a similar group to the Landsort trip last fall, with the addition of Nelson's spouse Mel. We stopped at a grocery on the way up to get our grub.
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| It was an exciting shopping experience |
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| Seth and the stove - the wood fire was in the upper drawer, which vented over the oven space under the hot plates |
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| Corinne getting some lanolin from a grateful sheep |
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| Harnessing the power of billy goat to pull Aldo in the spark (Swedish sled) |
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| Corinne and the horsie Bucky (or as the Swedish reporter called him (fucky) |
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| Riding the sparks! |
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| The whole stay felt like this |
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| The midday sun |
The weekend passed very peacefully - we slept near wood fire stoves (reminding me very much of Pepin!), ate giant meals we prepared for each other, played with the animals, with the snow, with Aldo and with each other (nicely). It was my last weekend in Sweden before flying to India on Thursday, and I feel like I had a good dose both of Sweden and of winter, that I had missed so much from back home. It was fantastic to spend so much time with such great people - I feel recharged and ready to start planning for the trip I take the day after tomorrow. (!)
On the international front, I'm sure you all heard about the tragedy in Moscow - it was the airport I was to have flown through on my way to India. This along with the violence in Tunis and Egypt have raised my alarm for personal safety and the fact that this kind of violence seems somewhat common place for people - somewhere, everywhere - it only so happens that I am geographically closer this time. I've sent notes to people I met in some of these countries now struck by violence, and feel differently about the violence having been there. It would be difficult to be sensitive to everything going on in the world, all of the pain, but traveling to these places, again only for a few days sometimes, has opened them to me in new ways. To put it mildly, there is crazy shit going on that is not being covered well by American media. I would be the first to claim this (and have before many times), but reading Al Jazeera and other non-Western sources in earnest these past few weeks have opened my eyes - particularly what they have to say about Obama and the Palestinians. Wouldn't have expected Obama to seem more pro-Israel than Bush. Not sure what the game plan is there.
That's that for now - if anyone has any travel suggestions for India, I'm all ears - the latest plan is to possibly check out Sri Lanka, then head north from there. The country is too massive to see much in even two months, which is what I am looking at. But there are certainly some highlights (mangrove forests, tigers, the Taj, etc) that I'd like to see. Thanks for reading!
And here is the second, 'post-script' portion of this post, relating the somewhat harrowing adventure of getting my medications from the US to my bloodstream. Again, it a bit involved, and I apologize to those of you who might not be all that invested or who might not have time but who like me have a hard time stopping when there is more to read.
So perhaps you are wondering how I keep this dilapidated body chugging along over here without the comforts of American health care. Indeed. First, I think I mentioned (but it deserves repeating) that the care I received in Cairo (at the Cairo Kidney Clinic) and in Istanbul (at the German Hospital) was superb at a 1/10 of the cost of care in the US. Istanbul has a thriving medical tourism culture, and the websites (and waiting rooms) of these hospitals is geared towards making folks from far away feel comfortable. I've not yet touched Sweden's socialist health care, as it would cost me. If you need critical care in Sweden you are covered 100%, citizen or no. If you are a citizen, then the whole thing is covered, but if not, you do pay out of pocket for non-emergency care. So scrips and office visits would be full price for me.
My other concern are having a nice steady supply of my prescriptions. I take roughly 20 some per day, one set in the morning and one at night - I mentioned some of them in the post about the close call in Turkey. I have a high deductible plan in the US which means that any charge after I pay 3000 is fully covered. Medical expences incurred outside of the US are considered 'out-of-network' so the count starts over - I'd have to incur 9000 in costs, then after that I am covered at 50%. Basically non-existent. So the plan has been to ship meds to me when I am running low (insurance would not give me a years worth, and besides that would take up a LOT of space). My pops would call in the scrips when they were up, pick them up, and ship them over easy-peasy.
I forget how much of this I explained before - long story short, without an address to ship them to, I tried the clinic, tried the embassy, no luck. So I ended up buying a months worth or so out of pocket (about 800$), and wait to have the meds shipped to Sweden at Corinne's place.
When the time came, my Dad made an interesting discovery - I had no insurance coverage, my insurance number was no longer active, and a few calls around showed that I had not had coverage since Sept 30th, 2010. This was likely due to a sort of clerical error - I had made my payment to school in the fall for all of my premiums, probably not an issue at all. However, the way insurance works in the US, companies are not required to pick up coverage on someone, even if they can pay, because of pre-existing conditions (which I MIGHT have) - the new health care bill, so demonized by Republicans, would make that illegal (used to be a person with a health condition couldn't even trade jobs for fear of not being covered, not a company has to pick up coverage if the person has coverage now). Basically, if coverage lapsed, I might be entirely SOL on the health care front, and would have to move to Canada. Or marry Corinne and move to Sweden. At least until that part of the bill comes into effect in 2014 (provided the Reps don't repeal it). These were both fine options in their own way, though not really in the plans.
So I and my Dad made a few phone calls, waited until the weekend passed so CDH would be open again and I could figure this whole thing out - of course, it was Saturday before MLK Monday, which made it a long weekend. Eventually CDH gets in touch and we are all clear - the scrips can be picked up under the coverage, saving my Dad about $1800. Step one. Next up was getting them here.
Sweden says that a person cannot receive scrips through the mail (which makes sense), my understanding is that they can come in with me, but to mail them would require the approval of the Minister of Health (the same in Egypt, Turkey, possibly everywhere) - red tape central. So we decide to mail them anyway, lacking recourse. So after the go-ahead in St Paul, the box is expedited via UPS - shipped Wednesday evening. It is a bit uncertain what will happen once it arrives - Sweden would be in their rights to hang on to it. I go to hang out at C's place till it gets here - scheduled at 12 Friday. Sure enough, the doorbell rings at 1204 - package delivered! I can go on living. No, really it was a pretty smooth operation, but the nerves were involved. Thanks for reading!
On the international front, I'm sure you all heard about the tragedy in Moscow - it was the airport I was to have flown through on my way to India. This along with the violence in Tunis and Egypt have raised my alarm for personal safety and the fact that this kind of violence seems somewhat common place for people - somewhere, everywhere - it only so happens that I am geographically closer this time. I've sent notes to people I met in some of these countries now struck by violence, and feel differently about the violence having been there. It would be difficult to be sensitive to everything going on in the world, all of the pain, but traveling to these places, again only for a few days sometimes, has opened them to me in new ways. To put it mildly, there is crazy shit going on that is not being covered well by American media. I would be the first to claim this (and have before many times), but reading Al Jazeera and other non-Western sources in earnest these past few weeks have opened my eyes - particularly what they have to say about Obama and the Palestinians. Wouldn't have expected Obama to seem more pro-Israel than Bush. Not sure what the game plan is there.
That's that for now - if anyone has any travel suggestions for India, I'm all ears - the latest plan is to possibly check out Sri Lanka, then head north from there. The country is too massive to see much in even two months, which is what I am looking at. But there are certainly some highlights (mangrove forests, tigers, the Taj, etc) that I'd like to see. Thanks for reading!
And here is the second, 'post-script' portion of this post, relating the somewhat harrowing adventure of getting my medications from the US to my bloodstream. Again, it a bit involved, and I apologize to those of you who might not be all that invested or who might not have time but who like me have a hard time stopping when there is more to read.
So perhaps you are wondering how I keep this dilapidated body chugging along over here without the comforts of American health care. Indeed. First, I think I mentioned (but it deserves repeating) that the care I received in Cairo (at the Cairo Kidney Clinic) and in Istanbul (at the German Hospital) was superb at a 1/10 of the cost of care in the US. Istanbul has a thriving medical tourism culture, and the websites (and waiting rooms) of these hospitals is geared towards making folks from far away feel comfortable. I've not yet touched Sweden's socialist health care, as it would cost me. If you need critical care in Sweden you are covered 100%, citizen or no. If you are a citizen, then the whole thing is covered, but if not, you do pay out of pocket for non-emergency care. So scrips and office visits would be full price for me.
My other concern are having a nice steady supply of my prescriptions. I take roughly 20 some per day, one set in the morning and one at night - I mentioned some of them in the post about the close call in Turkey. I have a high deductible plan in the US which means that any charge after I pay 3000 is fully covered. Medical expences incurred outside of the US are considered 'out-of-network' so the count starts over - I'd have to incur 9000 in costs, then after that I am covered at 50%. Basically non-existent. So the plan has been to ship meds to me when I am running low (insurance would not give me a years worth, and besides that would take up a LOT of space). My pops would call in the scrips when they were up, pick them up, and ship them over easy-peasy.
I forget how much of this I explained before - long story short, without an address to ship them to, I tried the clinic, tried the embassy, no luck. So I ended up buying a months worth or so out of pocket (about 800$), and wait to have the meds shipped to Sweden at Corinne's place.
When the time came, my Dad made an interesting discovery - I had no insurance coverage, my insurance number was no longer active, and a few calls around showed that I had not had coverage since Sept 30th, 2010. This was likely due to a sort of clerical error - I had made my payment to school in the fall for all of my premiums, probably not an issue at all. However, the way insurance works in the US, companies are not required to pick up coverage on someone, even if they can pay, because of pre-existing conditions (which I MIGHT have) - the new health care bill, so demonized by Republicans, would make that illegal (used to be a person with a health condition couldn't even trade jobs for fear of not being covered, not a company has to pick up coverage if the person has coverage now). Basically, if coverage lapsed, I might be entirely SOL on the health care front, and would have to move to Canada. Or marry Corinne and move to Sweden. At least until that part of the bill comes into effect in 2014 (provided the Reps don't repeal it). These were both fine options in their own way, though not really in the plans.
So I and my Dad made a few phone calls, waited until the weekend passed so CDH would be open again and I could figure this whole thing out - of course, it was Saturday before MLK Monday, which made it a long weekend. Eventually CDH gets in touch and we are all clear - the scrips can be picked up under the coverage, saving my Dad about $1800. Step one. Next up was getting them here.
Sweden says that a person cannot receive scrips through the mail (which makes sense), my understanding is that they can come in with me, but to mail them would require the approval of the Minister of Health (the same in Egypt, Turkey, possibly everywhere) - red tape central. So we decide to mail them anyway, lacking recourse. So after the go-ahead in St Paul, the box is expedited via UPS - shipped Wednesday evening. It is a bit uncertain what will happen once it arrives - Sweden would be in their rights to hang on to it. I go to hang out at C's place till it gets here - scheduled at 12 Friday. Sure enough, the doorbell rings at 1204 - package delivered! I can go on living. No, really it was a pretty smooth operation, but the nerves were involved. Thanks for reading!
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| Contents of the package! Yes! |
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