Sunday 26 September, 2004 at 1:00PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (3)

It's been a whole 12 days since I last had a cigarette. That's the longest I've gone without one for many years. I last had one on Tuesday September 14th (and I only had one smoke that entire day), which was the day I was sent to hospital. I've had some really strong cravings for a smoke but have managed to resist so far. There is a full packet of smokes sitting here which I have not touched, I figure if I threw them out, part of me would think the only reason I haven't smoked is because I didn't have any cigarettes. I figure if I can resist the temptation then it's because of my own will, not just because I didn't have a choice. Seems to work for me anyway - make it as hard as possible so I know I've done it by sheer will power rather than just deprivation.

We have nicotine patches and gum, but I've managed to go without their assistance so far as well, although I might need them tomorrow. I will return to university tomorrow and hope like hell I'm not kicked out of any of my courses for being absent (regardless of the fact I was actually in hospital). I dread how much catching up I will need to do, particularly with calculus. I was lost in there as it was, and have serious doubts about being able to pass it while still maintaining high marks in the other four subjects I'm doing even if I had not been absent.

I've missed 4 College Trig classes, 6 Calculus classes, 6 English classes, 4 Health & Phys Ed classes, and 4 Psychology classes (would've been more but there was some Jewish holiday in there somewhere so the college was closed). I know they take marks off your final grade based on absenteeism (and can boot you out of the class if you've missed enough), but I friggin hope that is not the case if I was in hospital and can get medical certificates to prove it.

I tried calling the Dean last week (after talking to a bunch of others first who kept transferring me). The Dean said I will need to talk to each of my class Professors about it. Since my voice was pretty much gone by the time I finished talking at that point, I am going to attempt to talk to each professor tomorrow, although how I'm going to do that when I have non-stop classes all day tomorrow with only 10 minutes between each one to run to the next one, I don't know. I also need to go back to the hospital on Tuesday so they can see if I've recovered sufficiently, and I need to go to my own doctor to get my second (and final) measles shot. I then have to take proof of that shot back to university as it seems they've lost all the records of immunization I gave them when I enrolled. I also need to go to the bursars office apparently about my FAFSA grant. I'm going to be an extremely busy little weasel for the next couple of weeks, that's for sure.

I haven't heard yet if my stint in hospital will be covered by medicaid yet since I'm a fulltime student without medical insurance. I really hope so, as I just got the bill for a blood test I needed to be able to enroll at college here.. the doctors charged me like $50 for the visit and the blood test, and told me the labs woud also send me a bill which would probably be about $50 as well. It wasn't. It was $308.75! That's for one single blood test! In hospital I had cat-scans, chest x-rays, multiple blood tests, three lumbar punctures (spinal taps), and was on an IV drip for two days straight with a bag of fluids and another bag of antibiotics being pumped into me. I am still taking antibiotics now (actually just finished the course this morning). All that will easily be into the tens of thousands of dollars in cost, easily.

I've had to censor the bulk of the rest of this entry for legal reasons. It was covering the Inland Revenue Child Support Dept of New Zealand and their unjust practices. I will be writing to the Minister of Social Welfare in NZ first, and failing any action there, I will go public with it. Until then it is best I say nothing ..other than they're a pack of complete and utter bastards imho. The only other thing I will say at this point is that they are charging me child support since leaving NZ of an amount that is three times higher than my total pre-tax income over the same period of time, and they see nothing wrong with that. It's a lot more involved, believe me, and more recently they actually admit to giving me the wrong info three years ago which led to much of this mess, but then tell me I should have known better than to believe what they told me back then, and that I should know more about their department than they do (because they gave me incorrect information originally which I should have somehow known was incorrect), which they then somehow figure is justification for ripping me off! Unbelievable.

Add to this the matter of trying to get our landlord to fix anything here. They have half completed the work they said they'd do months ago, but only after missing 12 separate appointments where I had to sit here all day each time waiting for them not to turn up. I have already had legal advice on this and now have to write a letter to them detailing all the problems, and then tell them we are hiring an independent contractor to do the work and will take the cost out of our rent. Because Ice is working full time and I am studying full time now, they will have to come in the weekends to do the work, which will cost a lot more. I'm still wondering if we should also charge them for the 12 separate days wasted waiting for them to turn up. Bastards. There's very little in my life that doesn't suck at the moment - IceQueen is the one good thing I have going for me. Thanks babe.

Most of this I've written down to get my own thoughts in order before I start writing letters to the media, but first I have a couple of weeks of university to catch up on.. sheesh. I can't help thinking sometimes it would've been better if I had not made it out of hospital. Damn, I really want a smoke now.