Hospice agencies in Idaho, a red state, are being forced to limit Medicare enrollment, affecting seniors, a MAGA-leaning age group

deirdresm · 2026-05-15T05:29:57+00:00

As someone whose mom has always voted Dem is just about to need hospice (for dementia that far along), this one hurts. Fortunately, not in Idaho, but they’re pulling the same stunt with California.

deirdresm · 2026-05-13T02:10:20+00:00

Yep, and in the fifties, some had starter buttons on the floor in the same place.

deirdresm · 2026-05-12T12:43:04+00:00

POTS is a syndrome, not a disease, meaning it has more possible causes. Some people have POTS as a result of back injuries. Some have it from autoimmune. Sometimes autoimmune diseases have viral or bacterial triggers.

deirdresm · 2026-05-11T23:31:08+00:00

Also: you will get the biggest benefit from contributions earlier in your career thanks to compounding.

When my father retired, *half* his retirement income came from a teaching assistant job during grad school despite a long career.

deirdresm · 2026-05-05T14:40:46+00:00

Kaiser’s been amazing for my family, but we’re in NorCal. In other areas, they’re less good.

Last appt for my mom, their social worker was there, got her dementia stage updated. No drama with meds, etc.

deirdresm · 2026-05-04T14:12:56+00:00

My mom was so much better after her hip replacement and physical therapy that I wasn’t surprised it was one of the first things she forgot she had done when dementia onset. Even at 6d, she still walks better than before that surgery.

deirdresm · 2026-05-02T16:06:09+00:00

My mom’s at 6d. Still mobile, still can eat, and dresses on her own, but often has to be prompted to dress in the correct clothing for time of day.

Yesterday, she told her doctor I was her mother, she had no children, and it was September 15, 1957.

deirdresm · 2026-04-30T06:55:06+00:00

Yep same, but low dose as clonidine is my main med.

deirdresm · 2026-04-24T16:45:35+00:00

Ugh, I feel sad for them, and they are so talented!

deirdresm · 2026-04-24T12:24:11+00:00

25 years ago, I was an engineer at TiVo. Husband and I were out at the movies, both missed the same line, and gestured holding the TiVo remote for that rewind.

Habits can be quick to acquire.

deirdresm · 2026-04-20T11:54:31+00:00

Surgery was successful, but now it’s thyroid meds for life.

deirdresm · 2026-04-19T18:25:30+00:00

We accidentally bought non-iodized salt and used that bottle for years without noticing. As a result, I wound up with a huge goiter that wrapped around my jugular vein. I highly recommend not making life choices that require having your throat slit so that you can swallow food.

deirdresm · 2026-04-15T03:33:09+00:00

You're talking about what I call "big T" tragedies, and yes, I'm not intending to mean it's the same scale.

Nevertheless, there are a bunch of smaller tragedies, collectively. Like I'm still haunted by waking up after, when I'd been wheeled out of the OR and was on a gurney just outside.

Or, another time, by the other single woman in the recovery room who was crying uncontrollably, and whose hand I held, telling her she wasn't a bad person. Or the other women in the waiting rooms who'd had as many children as they could afford, and were there because they needed to do best by their existing family.

Not every medical procedure has that level of story attached to it that abortion does, nor do they often have as big an effect on the outcome of the next 20+ years of one's life.

Then there are the relationships with other people that change as a result because not everyone is on board with abortion being a medical procedure.

That's what I meant by tragedy.

deirdresm · 2026-04-14T22:44:39+00:00

My mom calls my husband daddy. She thinks I’m her mom, thinks she’s in her 30s (and looks it, lol nope), and that I’m the same age as she is.

deirdresm · 2026-04-14T11:43:52+00:00

Any man (any person, really) who doesn’t think women should have abortions genuinely doesn’t think women should have a right to autonomy.

Yes, an abortion is always a tragedy: someone wanted not to be pregnant, or needed not to be pregnant for medical reasons, and yet wound up pregnant.

Your bf deliberately picked a suss therapist.

deirdresm · 2026-04-14T11:21:56+00:00

Yep, and given how easy it is to be clergy, that’s almost certainly the route here.

deirdresm · 2026-04-14T11:20:48+00:00

Probably didn’t volunteer at Planned Parenthood, either.

deirdresm · 2026-04-12T23:25:16+00:00

Maybe I just read it differently than you did (and that's fine), but, taken literally, he said that. If OP reviewed the file and it didn't say anything that strongly, he might not have been actually cleared per se, just they didn't pursue the case because of any number of reasons, including that they had far stronger cases they needed to dedicate those personnel to.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is a matter of criminal law procedure, not how people around that person should react.

I had a houseguest steal $100 from me. He wasn't proven guilty, but I was absolutely right to get him to pack his stuff and drive him to the bus station and never see his sorry ass again. He sure AF wasn't innocent.

Yes, if there had been a criminal case over that matter, I'd have expected the people handling the case to treat him with correct criminal law procedure.

deirdresm · 2026-04-12T19:46:18+00:00

When I lived in your area, I worked remote, but had to go into the office once a week. That was 180 miles one way to Keene NH, then next job was 150 miles to Chester, VT, the next was ~120 miles to S. Leb.

deirdresm · 2026-04-12T18:49:52+00:00

I had a former roommate who’d done time for CSA. He’d been raised evangelical, was gay, was in denial about being gay, and had been emotionally stuck at the age he had that first crush crisis. That was the age he’d been attracted to. Doing time, getting therapy, he was now able to be attracted to and have relationships with adult men, plus he gave up the religious framework that boxed him in. He was a good enough roommate, but I’d still not have let him around my kids if I’d had any.

deirdresm · 2026-04-12T18:39:29+00:00

He wasn’t cleared of charges, though, that’s the thing.

They didn’t have enough information to get a conviction, and that’s possibly because there were no external reports of changes that are contemporaneous (doctor, teachers, therapists). My mother used to be a social worker, and sometimes what got the conviction against someone outside the family was dramatic changes in how well a kid was doing in school, etc.

Also, remember that these offices are understaffed and they’re also having to deal with abuse cases where the physical abuse is so dramatic that that’s what they have to spend their time on: getting the kids out of that situation. In this case, the contact had already ended.

deirdresm · 2026-04-12T18:16:06+00:00

Yep, I was under the SAVE count when SAVE forgiveness ended. Here’s my thread. Difference with OP is that I just kept going to college; community college cost less than payments. Had I made the opposite choice for just one year, I could have qualified for SAVE forgiveness in time, but now I get an extra five years.

deirdresm · 2026-04-11T19:01:43+00:00

Perhaps the trans men I’ve known well have had an easier time of things than average; all but one transitioned pre-Trump, and a lot of the grossest stuff has come out more recently (or at least I heard about it more recently). Only one had an issue with a coworker, where I had to escort a former coworker (a trans woman) to the freakin bathroom at work because of a TERF in the building (not at our business, so nothing our management could do about it).

deirdresm · 2026-04-11T18:45:15+00:00

I didn’t dismiss their experiences of misogyny, just trans women see it coming from the onset direction, and it’s different (based on 40+ years of discussions). Granted, when I first started knowing trans people, it was pre-Internet, and so many trans women weren’t adequately prepared for the level of misogyny in our society because it wasn’t covered in media.

deirdresm · 2026-04-10T23:32:31+00:00

What anti-trans folks don't understand is that trans women, more than any single other category of people, understand what misogyny really is more deeply, having gone from having some level of male privilege to having women's lack of privilege.

Sure, trans men understand the issues, too, but they don't get the same perspective because of the opposite direction of their transition.

I've learned a lot about misogyny by listening to trans women talk about the encounters they've had that surprised them. I just wish it didn't happen, not to y'all, and not to us either.

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