For those who have followed the short soap opera of my CAD issues, I'll give ya a little update.
I had a meeting with some folks at my employer's office today (I work for a large health care company as a computer programmer...or did, anyway) and it resulted in an agreement that I should retire immediately.
This is good news...but with maybe some rough edges. I've been trying to get disability retirement for about 8 months, and I've been denied once. Ohh..my employer (I'm actually still an employee...for the moment), while having its own health insurance division (seems weird for a company to run a bunch of hospitals, employ the doctors and also provide the insurance coverage), has Long Term Disability coverage thru the Hartford.
There's supposed to be a 6 month waiting period until the disability takes over...and I've been working part-time during that period. But since I was extremely poorly advised at the outset about what was allowed and what wasn't, I was denied on a technicality (I actually did what I was asked to do instead of saying, "no...I can't help you"..and as a result, the Hartord said that I must not be disabled if I can help someone out of a computer problem....picky SOBs.)
Today I found that my employer's "employee health coordinator" (who actually was in charge of the meeting we had today) has "a good working relationship" with the Hartford (her own words) and will be trying to negotiate something so that I don't have to wait the entire 6 months all over again. That's the uncertainty part. The insurance company needs to be convinced of the same things they my employer has now come to believe. I suppose it helps that I had a note from my doctor stating in part, "due to cardiac and other issues, Mr. Buck should retire immediately."
So now it's a waiting game. I have about a week of Paid Time Off and then I'll be without a source of income until the disability income starts. But my wife works and can buy groceries. I also have a little bit of savings left (I've had to dip into it pretty deep to pay for non-covered medical costs, etc.) so we're not gonna starve and we're not gonna lose our home...at least at the moment. We're fortunate in that we have relatively few bills (mortgage, 1 car payment and 1 credit card) and everything's paid current. It could be a whole lot worse.
I have another appointment with my cardiologist Friday and we'll see what he has to say. I'm gonna ask him to increase the dosage of Imdur (I'm on 30mg, once a day) since that's the very minimum dosage and it's effects are only lasting a couple of hours...according to everything I've read, it should last up to 8-12 hours. There's no problem with getting my blood pressure too low, because with all the stress I've had lately, it's back up to the 150/90 range. Oops, I take that back. I just took it now and it's 167/104. But then it's been an extremely stressful couple of days...and the angina has been severe enough to be troubling, but not debilitating.
So like I said, I guess this is good news with some rough edges.
More to come as it happens...film at 11.
Ray
ChevyAsylum.com