I'm not usually one to badmouth written instructions. I spent most of my working life writing technical documentation, and apologizing for it. I know how hard it is to explain something in a way that will provide all the information anyone would need, and be totally clear to everyone who might read it.
Maybe the problem is that I expected this to be confusing, so I'm making it harder than it really needs to be.
Or maybe I just assume that anything having to do with the healthcare delivery system is going to be a pain in the butt. You start with healthcare, then throw in insurance and the government, and it's got to be bad. Wouldn't you think?
Maybe I just don't want to be doing this. Well, that part's true, for sure.
But I've got to tell you, trying to figure out what I need to do about my upcoming eligibility for Medicare, and how it may or may not coordinate with the insurance I'm buying through Scarecrow's employer, is giving me a new perspective on what it must be like to live with a learning disability. I can still read the words. I can still understand each of them individually. At least I think I can. I'm just having trouble extracting information that might be encrypted in those words, arranged in that order. I read them slowly. I read them multiple times. It's like reading a webpage that Google has translated. Each of the words is right, but they're just… not… coming… together.
I was recently reading a page that was originally written in Russian. I don't know any Russian, so I don't know how good or bad the translation might have been, but I thought I was kind of getting the gist. Then I came across this:
"But as in all of Russia, the big crisis came to Bobruisk, in connection with the attitude of the Jewish population to the Russian school in the 70's. This crisis was, as is known, connected with the executing of the law of general military service in Russia (1874), which gave great privileges to people with Russian education and origin--shorter military service. It was a stray parsley! Even in extremely religious circles the "fence-breakers" multiplied."
It was a stray parsley!
Oh I know.... I suggested to my girlfriend who is getting a "friendly divorce" to investigate the possibility of a legal separation instead just to avoid tackling the Medicare headache.
ReplyDeleteHopefully she will. It's a nightmare. Plan D, Plan F, Or Combo Plans, ARGH....!
Aach! That's horrible! Google's translator doesn't do much better with German.
ReplyDeleteyou just gotta hate that dang stray parsley... always out there causing problems!
ReplyDeletei find that i am having problems reading instructions/directions. things that used to make sense - or that i could figure out - now don't come to me so easily... makes me really angry... for me this is the worst symptom... i can deal with and live with all the other junk...but my mind... man... that one makes me furious!
I do not know how disability is done nowadays! I know that lawyers claim to know....
ReplyDelete"...is giving me a new perspective on what it must be like to live with a learning disability. I can still read the words. I can still understand each of them individually. At least I think I can. I'm just having trouble extracting information that might be encrypted in those words, arranged in that order. I read them slowly. I read them multiple times."
ReplyDeleteZoom, I thought this was a priceless and profound description on trying to interpret bureaucratic instructions.
Oh, online translators...a friend of mine at work and I used to mess with this some. I'd send him an email in Norwegian, he'd translate, I'd respond again and so on. It got pretty "out there"!
Lykke til med Medicare.
I wondered what happened to my stray parsley!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, my mind does the strangest things - mostly it somehow does not process information well anymore.
I gave up trying to fill out forms a few years ago. I leave it to KRP and if she is not around I just look at the person and say something that that makes me look even dumber LOL