Plodding by faith

Coming off of a high-dose prednisone is always a little iffy emotionally. Add to that having to deal with both the insurance company and a prosthetics supply company, neither of which seem to either know what they are doing or be able to articulate to me what I am supposed to be doing, and the combo is ripe for stretching the limits of my emotional stability.  I have little patience in general with people who do not understand how to do their job, or with customer service field operatives who do not have a clue about how to deal with the customer.  But add that prednisone in the mix, and I have to be extra careful not to rip into the incompetent insurance "specialist" who can't seem to discover what a gradient compression sleeve is categorized as under my plan, and therefore can't determine or explain my benefits to me, or the prosthetic supplier who can't seem to figure out how to get said sleeve ordered unless I can tell them what my insurance benefits are.  So here I am, in my lovely catch-22: the insurance can't tell me-- the prosthetics folks can'r order unless the insurance tells me.  I have already gotten one sleeve-- can't someone just look up how we did that and employ the same method to get the second one? And how hard can it be to tell me if I am eligible for more than one for each side in a calendar year?  This does not seem like rocket science to me, but after months of trying to wade through this quagmire, I have accepted the fact that everyone I talk to is incompetent, and I will not know what is covered or not covered until it is or isn't.  That is an unsatisfactory set of affairs, but it reflects reality, and I can't just bang my head against it forever.

There are lots of life lessons in this little tangled affair. Look at how important I am to myself, for one thing.  Nothing is quite as important as me getting what I want-- not the feelings of the folks I am wrangling with on the phone, certainly.  And how often in life do we actually get any guarantees about future events?  But I digress...

Despite the frustrations on the sleeve front, all signs of the hives are gone, I am returning to more normal sleep patterns, and I am resuming activity with some sense of returning strength and energy.  The truth is, God is in charge, and so all must be right with the world, despite the visual cues that might point otherwise.  So I plod along by faith, believing God is in good charge of all despite what I see, even in charge of things like gradient compression sleeves and insurance policies, and am thankful for returning health and continued blessings.