"Being Observed"

October 9, 2012

Good morning.  Gosh, it's only a little after 6 a.m. and I've been up for a couple of hours.  Pogo must have brought in a new collection of fleas from outdoors, and they all snuggled into my little bed just waiting to snack on me.  I have a whole new collection of bites now, and I will have to wash all the bedding again.  I am allergic to insect bites, and especially hate fleas!

I just checked with the weather channel on TV, and we are looking at temps around 56 degrees F today with more rain.  Thank goodness I was able to get out yesterday for a while and enjoy the sunshine. 

Speaking of yesterday, I was so excited to pick up my prints at Costco, but was soon shot down.  The prints were automatically color corrected and came out just awful.  The girl waiting on me was very nice and offered to re-do the prints.  The new ones came out much better.  Alas, when I got home and placed the new prints beside the original prints, the new ones were too dark.  Such a dismal outlook for entering anything at camera club tonight. 

My son in law, Eddie, is supposed to be coming over later this morning.  Maybe we can take a ride back to Costco to see if they can re-do the prints a bit lighter.  At this point in time, I have nothing to lose by trying.  While we are waiting, we can scoot on over to Home Depot and find me a new toilet seat.  Bag two birds with one stone!

Today, I have for you a photo that I took on my way home from work yesterday morning.  I had stopped by the pond to get photos of the mist rising from the water.  What a surprise I got to find a cormorant way out in the water.  Sad to say, he was too far away for me to get a good shot of him. 

The AARP newsletter had an interesting article in it, with some very important information about a real problem.  It's called "being under observation" in the hospital.  Let's say you spend a few days in the hospital "being observed" and then you are sent to a rehab facility for a while.  When you get out, you will find that you are responsible for the entire cost of rehab if you were never admitted as an in-patient at the hospital for at least three days.

When you go to the hospital either because you are sick or you go in as an emergency, and they decide to keep you for a while to observe you, make sure you are "admitted as an in-patient".  Because of all the new Medicare rules and findings, hospitals are keeping more and more folks for observation as an outpatient (sometimes for several days).   This can cost the patient thousands of dollars. 

Bottom line, when you go to the hospital constantly check on your status as a patient.  If you find that you will need rehab that is not covered by Medicare, ask your doctor whether you qualify for similar care at home through Medicare's home health care benefit.  If you can pick up a copy of this newsletter (magazine), it will be worth your while to read the whole article.  (October 2012)

I can see a speck of daylight coming through my window, so it's time to get busy and maybe put in a load of laundry and run the vacuum.  Not my funnest things to do this early in the morning, but Pogo is too small to do any of it for me.  Just kidding.  I don't make Pogo do any of the housework.  So, till tomorrow, Y'all have a wonderful day.

Hugs, Edna B.