Back from the Cave

It has been a long time since I last wrote. I'm not sure if I ought to apologize for the lapse or for bringing it to an end. There are several reasons for this. One is that the major events and forces in my life lately have not been things that I could speak of too easily for several reasons. They either have had to do with clinical issues on the island I haven't felt comfortable discussing, various political issues, or personal spiritual and psychological events.

At any rate, I probably should announce that I have been accepted into graduate school. If it is not exactly what I hoped for more in accordance with my expectation I was accepted for the masters program rather than the PhD. One of the main motives for applying for the doctorate program was that acceptance guaranteed full funding. As it turns out it seems quite likely that I will be able to obtain sufficient funding that I will be just fine with doing the masters. It also turns out in hindsight that this may be fortunate in that I may be better able to revert to an earlier plan where I could get the skills I want from this program and then apply them in a different context of research more closely focused on what I'm interested in at a different school for the doctorate.

On a completely different topic, I've had a recent unfortunate experience that certain people would surely consider me an idiot for. I get health insurance through my work, a fact that I've felt some irritation about from time to time particularly the fact that only the last couple of years I've been required to have it by law. As everyone knows it's not cheap and I've been paying for it the last four and half years and haven't in that time seen a doctor once. I'm a decently fit person and have found that I've got a pretty functional immune system. Anyway, I recently got sick in a somewhat serious way (a strange bug I think one of my roommates brought back from Mexico) such that one of my coworkers talked me into having something done about it. So anyway, having not seen a doctor since I moved out here I really had no idea who I had as a primary care physician, or if I even had one. Turns out there was a doctor that had been sort of chosen at random when I first signed onto the plan but because I had never been seen by her before, she refused to see me until there was an opening in about a month. So, eventually we found a walk-in clinic that helped me out. However it turns out the insurance company may not cover the cost without getting a referral from the primary care physician. I again called her office to ask if they would provide a referral and was rejected again. At the end of the day, I realize that this situation is really my fault for not taking care of all this a long time ago. At the same time I'm more irritated by the fact that I've basically been giving my insurance company money all this time for what may turn out to be nothing in return.