Saturday, June 30, 2018

Impossible...


The heat index today was 110 degrees!  This is our third heat wave in a month and summer only officially began last week.  This is my eighth summer in Fort Wayne and the first one that has been so incredibly hot.  We've been under a heat warning and air quality warning since yesterday noon and it will be stinkin' hot tomorrow, too.  If the forecast holds well, we will have two days of respite and then another heat wave.  It has been difficult to endure the heat, which is both debilitating and exacerbates my symptoms.

What is worse is how many folk tell me that I'll get used to the heat.  It isn't about acclimating.  It is about a malfunction in my body having a reaction to the heat that makes me ill.  No amount of acclimation or "exposure therapy" is going to make that better.  In fact, it will just make me worse.

Likewise, when folk tell me that I can just have my house warmer if I wanted.  I have had the thermostat set to 68 degrees in the summer for years, but I did move it to 70 degrees.  To me, that is a huge concession for those visitors who are cold.  To me, two degrees is like 10.  But, to be honest, I am trying to endure 70 degrees all the time to save money.  No matter how much I crunch the numbers, I simply do not have enough money for all my expenses.

I did spend hours and hours going over my non-fixed medical expenses from January to June to attempt to come up with a fixed number monthly.  What I need is more than my funds will allow.  So, I earmarked $250, the most I could reasonably carve out.  Before now, I had been paying my medical expenses in a slapdash fashion ... or maybe as a neglected step-child fashion.  But starting with June, since I could rework the month, my medical expenses will be a first-pay as opposed to a random-hoping-money-will-appear fashion.  Of course that means I only have $225 left.  With $125 earmarked for groceries and household items, such as paper towels, that leaves me a mere $100 to pay for everything else.  One tank of gas and the month becomes rather dire in the financial department.  SIGH.

As far as the $250 goes, if I do not spend all of it on medical, then I will sweep the leftovers into the medical savings account.  Likewise, if I spent over $250, then I will pay myself back out of the savings account.

I hope I can keep up this way, because I really do not need to be putting off my medial expenses.  I need to be planning for them from the get go.  I am sick after all.  And I need to find a way to live (and be ill) on the amount I receive.  After all, the financial situation I find myself in is not going to change.

My financial situation is near impossible, as is living with the heat.  I am failing at both and see little help in either department.  SIGH.

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