2/3/25

 I don’t think we give “natural light” enough credit. Since I bought myself a standing portable desk, I find I am naturally drawn to working in my living-room, with the big window and endless supply of light.

Natural light helps us increase the serotonin levels in the brain to help with the wintery seasonal “blues”. I am finding since I got SUCH a boost of sunshine and vitamin D last week, this week has left me a little blah. Nothing terrible, just need to motivate myself to complete tasks.

I drank as much water as I could today. I try to measure how much water I drink and aim for a goal of 72 oz in a day. However, according to the Mayo Clinic, it is recommended that adult women intake 91.3 oz per day. Man, I better up my game. Why did I look that up?

Why is being healthy so hard but so simple? Drinking water helps with mood, cushions joints, stabilizes your temperature, helps your tissues and aids in digestion.

Drinking water and exposing yourself to natural light are essential to staying healthy. Why did I go down this rabbit hole today? I already knew this stuff, but now it is front and center of my brain.

Today I played pharmacist again for Ethan and Paul with their colds. Ethan sounds like he has funk in his lungs. We are going to do a coupage session tonight to see if I can rattle some of that stuff loose and get it out of there. He has a history of multiple pneumonias, the scar tissue in there can’t be helpful in this case. He felt better this morning. When he got home this evening, he was exhausted. He took his temperature and still no fever. He felt warm to me, so I made him use the oral thermometer. I was very careful not to given the dog’s rectal thermometer. Ha!

When I took his temp, he was 99.7. I sent a note to his transplant team to see what we need to do next. I told him to plan on calling in sick and likely we will be going somewhere tomorrow. Ugh! Bump in the road.

He went to bed early and was really pushing the fluids.

Paul came home hacking his brains out. I bailed. I went upstairs to get out of the “sick” air. I know it is a matter of time before I get this funk. At least I will try to be hydrated for it with a healthy dose of natural light.

I received a call today saying all of my physical therapy appointments since October were not covered. Really? I owe a crap ton (that is a legit measurement on a farm) of money…the usual.

The reason was because they found we had submitted the claims to two insurances. Nope! We sure didn’t.

This resulted in having to call the insurance company. I had a lady on the phone and explained my claims were denied for the reason of having two insurances, but that was incorrect as the only insurance I had was through their company.

She told me I had to “update my coordination benefits.” I asked what that meant and how to do that? She said “you have to let us know if you have two insurance policies or one and if ours is the primary.”

Um, didn’t I just do that? Ok, I will play the game but now I am annoyed.

I repeated that they are my only insurance policy. She said,”ok I will update that and resubmit all the claims from October.”  Is this an efficient use of their time?

Invested time in this project = 45 minutes of my life I will never get back. So stupid. I understand there is insurance fraud happening. Damn those people, they make it worse for all of us. Can’t you just follow the rules?

Keep your fingers crossed for Ethan tomorrow. I am hoping he doesn’t spend his birthday in the hospital.