jellyfish:enhanced

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This is a recent image of an actual jellyfish. It has been digitally enhanced. In the original it fades into the color of the water too much. If I'd had a better photo editor I would have sharpened it as well but I was just using Microsoft Office and the options were limited. No need to remove red-eye.

 We always called them nettles. I never hear that anymore.

 So as to my own enhanced life. Monday I called my mother's primary care office and said outraged  things about never being called back so they tried to have the office manager speak to me but I then explained that if a nurse would just speak to me I didn't need the office manager. The nurse helpfully told me that we couldn't go up on the Vicodin so we should see an orthopaedist - me: we don't have one of those since she last saw a guy who did kifoplasty (made up spelling) to glue the previous compression fracture. Her: go see them. Me: them's not orthopaedist. Her: GO see them. End of consultation. I handed this next phone call off to my man.

 Is it a man thing? Because he made a phone call. They called him back. Within hours they'd looked at the x-rays from the ER (ok sometimes the digital world has advantages) and they'd crammed my mom into the doctor's schedule today, scheduled an MRI for the previous day and outpatient OR time the next day to be ready for a decision to do the procedure. And just like that my week was planned. Or unplanned, or however you want to think of it. My mom cried when I first told her  -she's so hopeful this will bring her relief. I tried to temper that by pointing out we had several hoops to jump through (albeit very quickly), one being Medicare approval. Then I went outside. Then she had my daughter call the man, at work, and she proceeded to insist on talking to her lawyer because we weren't going to have her treated until we got "welfare" to cover it and pay for our care-taking and also a lot of stuff about being cut off from medical care because she is 94. Really. Not that he wanted to upset me but my man did have to check with me to find out exactly what I was saying to my mother.

 Later she didn't want dinner -or to speak to me but some how I got through to her that insurance pre-authorization is just a fact of life -completely apart from Obama care (can you tell she watches too much Fox News?) and we'd had to jump through this particular hoop many times, especially for our 1st born (my ace in the hole for all things medical). She admitted she'd been listening to too many dire health care scenarios -she didn't explain why she'd think we would be looking for welfare handouts -except to remind me she's 94 and m i s e r a b l e.

 Me, I'm a sea nettle. All squishy and wind blown and at the mercy of the tides. Digesting any fishy thing caught in my tangled tentacles. But I have nematocysts. Lots of them. Ask my kids.