Enough About Me, How is the Doll House Doing?

Thanks for listening and for the suggestions on my bone health. Just a quick paragraph. At age 59, before my husband retired and we had to self pay a reduced benefit policy, I went for every test possible. My bone scan was fine. The information about dextroscoliosis and degenerative bone spurring in the spine was in the second page of an online chest x-ray report before surgery for my extremely painful spiral fracture a year later and each x-ray is listed separately with separate reports and I did not go through all of them.  When I reached Medicare age, I went for all my testing again and was surprised when she called with the results. (not that she provided any information about the results, just a recommended treatment). The report says I meet the criteria for osteopenia and shows a 15.9% decrease in bone mineral density from L1 to L4, a 15% decrease in bone mineral density of the left femoral neck and a 13.1% decrease in bone mineral density off the right femoral neck "when compared with the prior exam". I do not have a copy of the report from the prior exam. Anyway, I am over it. I am waiting a year and making an appointment with someone else and discussing it with them. In the meantime I have added 2 Oscal 500 plus D tablets to my morning pills and I am ignoring what I think is a radical treatment that was suggested.

I did get Santa and all my elves to bed for the year. While going through some of the miscellaneous boxes I re-found four little dolls that I think belonged to my mother. I placed them downstairs in the dollhouse for safe keeping. My youngest granddaughter is very upset about this. 

She thinks the bigger dolls are out of place. And she is especially concerned about what Santa will think about this when he wakes up. 

I tried to do a little research on the littlest dolls. The bald doll is listed on Ebay a few places as a "Russian Peasant Doll". Mine is not exactly the same as the others. My clothing, which I am sure is original, seems to be sewn better than the other examples, but the face, legs, feet and tiny hands are identical. And mine is missing a wig and a head covering. 

The doll in the felt dress seems kind of 1920's to me. She is stamped "Made in Japan" on her back. I see similar examples to mine - most with curly blonde molded hair in the back; mine has a dark bob. And the dress on my doll seems unique, though period. Her straight arms and legs are jointed with crude wires which is how the similar ones I saw on Ebay were made. They were marked "vintage" and did not give an age.

The baby doll in the front is plastic and the one in the back of the room is a Madam Alexander Baby Dionne Quintuplet. I do know those were my mother's dolls and I remember that she and my grandmother let me play with all five when I was too young to appreciate them. I would change their clothes and I think that I do have one more sun suit somewhere. As the threading in the limbs came loose, I am pretty sure the other sisters got thrown away. Oh, what we didn't know then.  

I bought this Christmas refrigerator ornament on clearance at our local Hallmark store maybe in the late 80's or early 90's? I had no idea there was a matching Hallmark Christmas stove until my neighbor shared she had found one. Well, the cost is now about ten times what they cost new, but I decided that was what my husband needed to get me for Christmas this year and I am absolutely in love with it. 

It is very difficult to take any interior photos in the house's new location. Fortunately I have found a doll house store within a road trip away and I think I am adding some kind of lighting to the rehab project. 

Albert Spinestein or Jon Bone Jovi

I thought I would share this story which I wrote as a comment to my friend Self-Sufficient Sam (who used to be Farmgirl Sam until gremlins took that account). She wasn't happy with the information highway from her doctor's office and I had a similar experience last December. It has been something I have been ruminating about in my mind for a while. 

When I turned the magic age and joined the Medicare club, I made a doctor's appointment to get my prescriptions renewed on my new Plan D. My supplemental since age 60 did not cover doctor appointments and Covid had allowed me to coast through renewals for quite a while. 

My medical office makes you come in for an appointment and then orders lab work. I have begged to reverse this several times over the years, since it makes more sense to me that you would want to review current lab reports with the doctor. I have not won this argument. I took a list of health concerns I had at the time to the appointment and left with orders for lab work. My doctor said he would see me in a year. 

I went to the hospital and had blood work, a mammogram and a bone scan which was a last minute after thought, I believe because the office knew my insurance would cover the cost. 

Two days later I received a call from a young woman who I believe to be the receptionist. My lab work was normal which was better than I expected, but my bone scan showed big time problems. She chattered away about some shot he wanted to order for me that I would need to administer once a month and that I should start over the counter calcium supplements. I was stunned and did not ask the right questions other than how to spell the injection drug and whether I needed to make an appointment. She sputtered a bit and said I could talk to him at my next appointment. I said, well he said he would see me in a year and she sputtered and said she guessed that was okay.  

I looked up information about the injection and found there are a lot of side effects for the drug and once you begin the shots, you must self administer the shot every month for the rest of your life. If you need to miss a shot (for example, you have to skip a month if you have a dental appointment) you must do so under medical supervision. It sounds very scary to me.  She also gave me no advice on the supplement so I went to the drug store and made up my own regime with an over the counter supplement. 

I did go back to my account at our hospital and pulled up all my test results so I could study them. While doing so, I decided to print past test results, too, so I could compare them.  I found a chest x-ray I had prior to my surgery for my broken arm two years ago and on page two it mentions degrees of disintegration of my spine the chest x-ray picked up. I am sure that neither my doctor or my orthopedist looked at this x-ray. It was done for the anesthesiologist prior to my surgery and I bet he was the only one who read it. And skipped that part. 

I guess the moral is that I need to make sure I copy and read all my medical reports from now on so I can make my own diagnosis. Of course, now that I have read the bone scan, every time I get a back ache or any ache I am pretty sure it is one of my hollow bones collapsing. 

I did reach out to friends of a certain age (my age) and ask them what they know about these shots. No one has had them. Only one person had heard of them and said she heard they were awful. And anyone who did have any irregular results on a bone scan were put on an once a month pill.  Hopefully by next fall when I return for a visit I will be finished pouting about this and will be able to come up with a page of intelligent questions. 

Since I was new to Medicare and new to Part D, and because i already had to switch the Part D I had for three months of 2021 to a new Part D in 2022 when the cost of the first one tripled, I looked up the injection on the various Part D plans in my area. It is a tier 3 drug and would be quite expensive out of pocket. The whole situation is still maddening and I am counting how many months I have fretted about this.  

I know I am extra cranky about this today since my two year old sleepover pal woke me up with a stomach flu this morning at 3 a.m.  He is still hanging out while mom has appointments and I am really looking forward to sleeping late tomorrow and waking up in a better mood. 

Please Watch The State of the Union Part 2

 I am adding a local newspapers account of the events in my last post. Again, I am so proud of my friends and so honored to know them.  

The Sandusky Register, Sandusky, Ohio, March 1, 2022, Page 1

https://sanduskyregister.com/news/373046/sitting-with-the-first-lady/?fbclid=IwAR3J4qdO0zRzB3N1gycIxTqI-BHUDLEYLCEAuu5PJfcCu1wt3lRa22sQvAo

Sitting with the first lady

Matt Westerhold

Mar 01, 2022 7:00 AM

SANDUSKY — A former Sandusky woman who has fought for veterans' rights will be sitting next to first lady Jill Biden this evening when President Joe Biden gives his first State of the Union Address.

Heath and Danielle Robinson and their daughter Brielle. Susan Weber

Danielle (Kaufman) Robinson's husband, SFC Heath Robinson, 39, was a member of the Ohio Army National Guard who died on May 6, 2020, after suffering for years from illnesses associated with toxic exposure to smoke from burn pits maintained by the U.S. military.

"Heath should have been the person invited to the State of the Union address during his battle and fight, not me," Danielle told the Register Monday afternoon, shortly after learning about the invitation from Biden. "Since he is no longer here with us, I am honored to be the person sitting for him and all his brothers and sisters in our military family who are affected by toxic exposure to burn pits."

Former "Daily Show" host and activist Jon Stewart on behalf of veterans — especially those suffering from sicknesses caused by burn pits — contacted Danielle on Monday and relayed the invitation from President Biden.

Lost sons, husbands

Biden's son, Beau Biden, died in 2016 from a rare cancer believed to also have been caused by exposure to toxic smoke from burn pits.

Beau, 46, and Heath both had served in Kosovo and in Iraq prior to their deaths, where the military disposed of everything — chemicals, weapons, computers, other toxic materials and everything else — in giant burn pits near where military personnel were stationed. The military maintained hundreds of burn pits at military stations the size of football fields, and the toxic smoke streamed from them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

There were no safety precautions taken to protect military personnel or the local populations. The military and the Veterans Administration have denied benefits to veterans suffering from burn pit illnesses, including Heath and his survivors and Beau Biden and his family.

Robinson served in Iraq for 13 months. He and Danielle, 36, a 2003 Sandusky High School graduate, had been married for seven years when he died. They have a daughter, Brielle, 8, a third-grader who struggled coping with her dad's illness for most of her life before he died.

Danielle, and her mother, Susan Zeier, of Sandusky, took up the battle for soldiers like Heath and Beau Biden soon after they learned what caused Heath's strange illness. He had been a model of fitness and prided himself for his endurance before he became ill.

He started suffering from a rare lung disease not too long after returning from Iraq, where he had served for 13 months, losing the ability to breathe.

Fighting for veterans

Zeier also will be in Washington this week as legislation is being introduced that, if approved, will grant presumptive benefits for any soldier who served in any of the countries where burn pits were maintained and who contracted one or more of the qualifying illnesses. House Bill 3967, the Honoring Our Pact Act, will be introduced Tuesday and voted on as early as Wednesday, Zeier said.

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Youngstown, a candidate for Ohio's U.S. Senate seat, is a cosponsor of that bill and of the SFC Heath Robinson Burn Pits Transparency Act, introduced in 2021, which, if it is approved, would give Congress oversight into all claims coming into the VA regarding burn pits illnesses and would require the VA to provide quarterly reports.

"It basically grants Congress oversight," Zeier said. "The VA is denying 78% of the claims related to burn pits."

Zeier said she and members of Burn Pits 360, an activist group she joined to fight for veterans, will be watching the debate from Ryan's Capitol Hill office. Guests are no longer allowed in the gallery because of COVID, she said.

Zeier said she was thrilled to learn her daughter had been asked to attend the State of the Union.

"After everything she went through for three years, taking care of Heath and not getting any help from the VA, she's ready. She's strong," Zeier said. "She'll be able to tell this story."

The invitation also gave Zeier renewed hope that legislation to protect the men and women who fought for the country and their families will finally get some traction in Washington.

"It means all our hard work with the Burn Pits 360 team has paid off," she said. "Lately, we've been feeling like our voices aren't being heard or we were losing our voice because of COVID and because of the violence on Jan. 6 (2021). We don't have as much access to lobby for these bills. This now is happening... it shows the president is aware of this and we are being heard. We're not going to let Congress slow-walk this anymore."

How it started

Zeier, 65, first began going to Washington in 2017, when Heath was diagnosed with the lung cancer.

"I didn't know what I was doing, but once I met Rosie Torres (who founded the Burn Pits 360 group after her husband returned from Iraq with a debilitating lung disease) things really took off."

She gave up vacations and trips to Columbus for Ohio State football games and other things she liked doing so she could afford it.

"There were all these people fighting for veterans, and veterans fighting, some of them sick and dying. I feel like I'm healthy enough so I gave up vacations, gave up going to OSU games, bowl games. We would budget our money," she said.

She's been to Washington about 10 times but less frequently since COVID hit, and since the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

"We haven't been able to go back. We weren't allowed to go in the building or allowed to go on the grounds after Jan 6," she said. "These are areas you used to be able to walk freely before, and now the fence is back up because of the truckers' protest."