Craigs list: "Wurlitzer organ: Make me an offer". It's a 1958 electric organ, my grandmother bought it used in the 80's and played it for twenty years until she died. It's been sitting in a back room gathering dust for eleven years. I just wanted it to go to someone who would enjoy it.
Got a reply in less than a day. We agreed on $50 - and although it cost me as much in gas (and him probably twice that) to drive to a location halfway between us to make the exchange - at least it was going where it would be used.
As my girlfriend and I were moving the organ out the back door, six feet left to go before I put it on the trailer, I told her to swap places with me because I knew the difficult end would be where the threshold of the door is. We'd been dragging it not so much lifting it, but now it had to drop about two inches.
One...Two...Three....
It felt like someone had unleashed a taut garage door spring from my elbow up towards my shoulder. My left bicep muscle was all balled up near my shoulder, there was a weird gap just above my elbow on my left arm that did not look anything like my right arm. Something was missing that used to be in that space. Oh, yeah - and the pain.
Short answer: My bicep is no longer attached to my forearm; it will not reattach itself on it's own. Surgery scheduled for Tuesday morning, because if it is not attached in two weeks or less, it won't ever go back.
$26,000.
Twenty-six thousand dollars.
Twenty-six thousand dollars.
Twenty.
Six.
Thousand.
Dollars.
I go in at 9 am, and barring any adverse reactions to the anesthesia or other complications, I should be home in time for dinner.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but after taxes, that's more money than I've ever made in a year.
Did I mention I dont' have health insurance because I'm unemployed?
Gonna be fun trying to find a job now, dontcha think?
But hey, if I listen to the Republicans tell it, I'm the source of all evil in the world because I've applied for medical assistance, because I did not have a job in the first place, and because I did not make myself become a different person who was talented enough to make enough money to have insurance and not be in this situation in the first place, because hey -
that's what our founders intended for us.
So I either get medical assistance,
or I add $26,000 to my debt level (with no job) as I try to get a job with basically one arm.
OR
or I just live the rest of my life with a lame arm. I'm 43.
But don't worry.
Nobody needs the government to do anything for them; government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
So, would you take the public assistance (and the according shame the Republicans insist belongs to those who do, because they're lazy, stupid, worthless, or all of the above)
Or just get used to not being able to curl your left forearm upward from now on?
Just thought I'd ask, because I'd like to post this at RedState, FreeRepublic, or HumanEvents -