Lost Inside My Head

Lost Inside My Head

By John Hoyt What a difference a few seconds can make. I fell two and a half stories off my roof and hit the crown of my head on a six foot 4x4 wooden post and then landed on a steel “T” post just under my right jaw which broke the jaw, two teeth, fractured the voice box and three vertebrae in my neck and stopped just a micro millimeter short of cutting the secondary vein to my brain, but I still threw a blood clot which caused a mini stroke. That was October 31, 2000. Now I am 100% disabled with a TBI. The strange thing was that after the fall my family knew that something was wrong but the doc’s and everyone else were focusing on the facial and vertebrae damage and not on the brain itself. Consequently it took five years before I started to get some help and only after finding communityworks, inc. by default. The saddest part of all this is that I lost my thirty year marriage and strained or damaged all the relationships and foundations of my life taking all the blame for being lost in my head, never knowing it was a brain injury which was at the core of my problems. Now is a better world and life than then. Healing is a better direction than lost. Future is a direction I can live with instead of dreading; a peaceful mind and life is a reality I can live with instead of the mental and behavioral chaos that I endured for too many years. What the support system which I now have in place has provided is first and foremost is confirmation that I can find and achieve the right direction. In short, as I battle the day to day frustrations and setbacks, it is the positive guidance I receive which quite frankly, on my worst days, keeps me going. As I move towards achieving the goals which I have set for myself— some lofty, some mundane, it is this support system which helps me maintain the balance and yes, minimizes the discouragement. Am I still lost inside my head? At times. The short term memory loss is still the most frustrating, but I am grateful that the long term memory is sharper than ever. Simply put. There’s hope after TB

Medicaid Funding at Risk

ACTION NEEDED!

Extend Extra Medicaid Funding Through June 2011

June 7, 2010
BACKGROUND:
We are writing to ask you to contact your Senators, Brownback and Roberts (KANSAS) or Bond and McCaskill (MISSOURI) to ask them to support the extension of the current elevated Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage (FMAP) that is currently being debated in the U.S. Senate and will be very important to states come the end of this year!

Originally, both the House and the Senate acted to extend the extra match through June 2011, the end of the fiscal year for states. However, the offsets that were supposed to pay for this extension went instead to help pay for the health care reform legislation. Without an extension, the money will run out Dec. 31, 2010, and many states will be forced to make drastic cuts to the federal-state program. The 2009 federal stimulus package provided $87 billion to increase the federal share of the program through December (it included a 6.2% increase of the federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP) under Medicaid).

Last week, House Democrats debated HR 4213, the vehicle for this extension and chose to remove the provision extending extra federal Medicaid funding. With states in fiscal peril due to the recession and unemployment, it is vital that the extra federal funding continues in order to keep health care accessible for many brain injury patients and caregivers!

SCOPE:
Everybody can Take Action

TARGET LEGISLATORS:
All Federal Senate elected officials

Sample Message To Senators:

As a person in your state affected by brain injury, I ask you to reinstate the extension of the current elevated Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage (FMAP) into HR 4213. States are struggling financially due to the recession and increased unemployment and it is imperative that people with brain injury continue to receive access to care through this federal match. Your constituents deserve timely access to brain injury treatments so that they can become able to function within the community again, and avoid long term care, permanent disability, and as a result, increased financial strain on our public programs such as Medicaid.

I ask you not to ignore this devastating blow to access to affordable health care. While implementation of health care reform continues in the next few years, there are people in your state that need this important care now!

Sincerely,

(Your name and address here)

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To Contact Kansas Senator Sam Brownback CLICK HERE: http://brownback.senate.gov/public/contact/emailsam.cfm, or write, fax or call him at:

Senator Brownback
303 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Phone: (202) 224-6521
Fax: (202) 228-1265

To Contact Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, CLICK HERE: http://www.roberts.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=EmailPat, or write, fax or call him at:

Senator Roberts
109 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-1605

Phone: 202-224-4774

Fax: 202-224-3514

To Contact Missouri Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond, CLICK HERE: http://bond.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.ContactForm, or write, fax or call him at:

Senator Bond
274 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-2503

Phone: (202) 224-5721

Fax: 202-224-8149

To Contact Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, CLICK HERE: http://mccaskill.senate.gov/?p=contact, or write, fax or call her at:

Senator McCaskill
717 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-2504

Phone: 202-224-6154

Fax: 202-228-6326

Thank you for your support!