Christmas... Not As Good As Halloween But Almost

Well, at least this Christmas rates up there. Yeah, yeah, deck the halls and all that but really, in my self-centered world, the best present of all is my return to the ice.

After five and a half months of being injured, I finally played in a game last Saturday!

I felt out of sync, out of shape, and out of step but I didn't care. It felt great. It felt weird. It felt like the mother ship calling me home. My thoughts raced on every shift:

"Wow, this feels weird, playing full speed again. Wait, face the play... what are you doing? Don't turn your back to the puck! Have you forgotten everything Coach Lance has taught you?! Hey look, I'm skating okay, well sort of. Oops, that move wasn't so slick. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten my skates sharpened my first game back. But my knee feels okay. Wait, don't think about your knee. Just don't think about it - go for the puck, there it is. Bend your knees. Stay low. Your team is losing, do something!"

In the end, we lost 0-3 and the team didn't play so well. Needless to say, I wished for a different outcome. I wanted to be a hero - score a couple of goals and assists, block a couple of shots and maybe achieve world peace while I was at it, but I only managed to put up one good shot and that missed wide. I also got mad at a girl that boarded me so I wrapped her in a momentary head lock.

Ahh, hockey... how I've missed you so.

Merry Christmas!

Cave Diving

I'm often reminded when I visit other countries that it doesn't take a lot of electronic gizmos to be happy, or to get your groove on. The local people in the Dominican Republic love to dance and sing and they don't even need a fancy boombox like in that last video I posted. People down there were constantly breaking out into song without even being attached to an iPod. The hotel lobby had nightly hootenannys that appeared to be impromptu ensembles of those with musical talent who played and sang into the wee hours of the morning. Aside from my occasional Facebook update via my iPhone, it was good to get away from everything with an on/off switch myself, at least for a little while.

While my sister and her boyfriend were vacationing on Catalina Island out there in California, we had the other Catalina Island in the DR covered. It's just a short boat ride away from Punta Cana, which was an hour bus ride from Boca Chica, where we were staying.


Also near Boca Chica, are some fresh water caves that we dove - a first for me. There wasn't much sea life to look at other than some tiny crustaceans, but there were beautiful, cathedral-like stalactites and stalagmites, some cool fossils of shells and snakes, and a dreamy, surreal effect when the fresh water mixed with sea water in one section. Between being in a cave, the darkness, and not being able to see two feet in front of my face when it became murky, I'd say this experience was a pretty high butt-pucker factor. But the stained-glass effect of looking up at the cave entrance as we ascended out of the wet darkness was well worth it.

I tried to capture that very thing on this video but of course, it doesn't do it justice. It's a bit dark until the end but stay with it to see the grand ascent.

Is It a Party Boat, Or a Dive Boat?

All's I know is that those Dominicans are damn happy, and know how to shake it.

This Might Hurt a Little

Like many of you, health care has been on my mind lately. Mostly because these past four months since my knee surgery has been the first period when I've needed my health care insurance for something other than a routine checkup. After the surgeon grafted a new ACL from my own hamstring and sewed me back up, I was given crutches, a brace, an ice compressing machine, and passive motion machine to use. I was worried about the hospital bill and all the other add-ups. I had no idea if I would be able to pay the bill and didn't know what was covered and what wasn't. Not for the lack of trying to find out beforehand, mind you. The doc had warned me about my provider, United, as being known not to cover all the hardware if I had the surgery done in a much more economical surgery center versus a hospital. United only covers two pins used to hold the ligament in place and my doc used three, but only if the procedure is done in a surgery center instead of a hospital. Huh? I tried to call up and confirm some of these things with my insurer prior to the surgery so I could make a decision where to have my operation, but after being put on hold for numerous hours, not getting straight answers, and getting different answers from different people, well, I'm sure you know the rest. It seems like everyone has a similar experience.

That's the problem. Everyone has a story to tell about their insurance, or lack thereof. It's never simple. Don't get me wrong, it's first and foremost, absolutely horrible that we as a country don't provide free health insurance to the folks that need it and can't afford it. But it's just as incomprehensible that I have paid for insurance all my life and rarely need it, and then when I do, to not be fully covered. It's "we cover this but not that" or "that's a pre-existing condition" or "that's not proven to help given a 100 year study on wounded butterflies" or some bullshit.

For me, I rolled the dice and told my doc I wanted to have my surgery done in the hospital because then my hardware would be covered. I wasn't sure about the deductible. The agents on the phone told me I would have to pay 10% of the bill no matter where I had it done. What's 10% of the pricey hospital bill versus 10% of the surgery center plus the cost of the pins? Why was I put in such a position to try and figure out what game to play with my insurance company in the first place? It's crazy, I tell you.

In the end, I got a bill for $82.42 because I'd already reached my max out of pocket for the year, or at least that's what I think. I'm very fortunate. I paid that bill, like the day after I got it, for fear that it is a mistake and someone will discover it and send me another.

However... now my PT office has told me that United is refusing to pay for any more physical therapy appointments. Evidently, 20 PT visits is all you need to recover from having your hamstring hacked off and placed in your knee. But that's per calendar year, so if I can just put my recovery on hold for three weeks, then I can continue PT in 2010. People, keep this in mind - if you're going to injure yourself, do it towards the end of the year. That makes total sense, doesn't it?

How in the world did health care get so screwed up in this country in the first place?

While on vacation last week in the Domincan Republic, SV and I were riding in a van to dive site with a German guy who works for Procter & Gamble and spoke very good English. So I asked him what it's like to have universal health care. He had nothing but good things to say about it other than the "old way" of thinking in Germany is still present in that they charge a married man based on his income, not a married woman, no matter who makes more money. I asked him if he thought Obama was a socialist for trying to invoke such a plan and he laughed. He asked me why so many Americans were so against it and I apologized for not having a good answer. He asked me to confirm, "You have free school systems, right?"

Right, I said. Point taken.