This week’s artwork is the first set of pages in that handmade paper bag book I flashed at you a few weeks back. I was supposed to mail it to Amy on Friday. Didn’t happen. Part of this week was gobbled up by an outpatient procedure to give my doctor a little look at whatever is growing in me. She tried to do this in her office last week, but couldn’t make it happen, so I spent Monday doing pre-op lab work, and Wednesday at the hospital. I get the results this coming Wednesday. I’m not worried.
Anyway, between running around doing medical things, and recovering from the anesthesia, it’s been hard to get any artwork going. These pages aren’t great moments in art, but they are a sort of recreation of something Amy and I experience online every week or so, when our little art group does a FUCK THIS list. It usually starts with one of us posting that we need to tell everything bad in our lives to fuck off, and then each of us posts rapid fire comments, naming various things. Lately, I’ve been listing lots of medical things. They can all fuck off…
So, that’s where this page comes from. It’s sort of the offline version, with pieces of watercolor paper tucked into the pocket to hold our thoughts. Again, mine are mostly medical this time around, but I’m hoping when the book comes back to me in a month, Amy will have added some things, and I’ll have something else to complain about. Probably bills.
Bills. I’m starting to get them for the second trip to the emergency room. So far: one big one from the hospital for $3,500. I’m not sure if it’s for the whole trip, or the admittance, or the emergency room only yet, because they send a generic bill with the total, and I have to call and ask for the itemized charges to be sent in a second mailing. It’s an entirely backwards system.
I had a long talk with someone from the hospital’s financial services department this week, which started with “you need to pay us $6,000 before we do your procedure on Wednesday”, but quickly worked its way around to “honey, I went through the same thing when I had breast cancer, and you just have to let those bills pile up until you’re well, and then ask the hospital to consolidate them and let you make payments”. So, now I have a friend in financial services, and she knows my situation, and that I’m doing my best to make sure that people get paid by whatever means available. She had a lot of good advice.
The title of this post, I’m Sorry It’s Not More, is what a whole lot of people wrote when they sent in money through the donation button on last week’s post. I know. Believe me, I know. I will be saying that to creditors for the next decade, trying to get out from under the blizzard of bills this little medical drama is generating. I’m sorry it’s not more, but this is what I have right now.
It makes me a little weepy when I get messages like that, because people have been giving me money, and then apologizing for not giving more. It’s like giving me a free cupcake, and then apologizing for not giving me a dozen. I understand the sentiment, but seriously—thanks for the cupcake.
Here’s hoping that someday, we all have more to give. Today, we’re all going to do what we can do, and not feel badly about it, OK?