Tired and Angry Just Go Together

"Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage." Babylonian Talmud

One of my professors recently spoke about the connection between anger and fatigue. Apparently it's not uncommon for people who are mad to get tired. It's a substitution. If you can't express your anger, you get tired. Or maybe you get tired because it takes so much energy to suppress anger.

I'm tired. About thirty minutes ago I just hit a wall. All I want at this moment is to lie down and take a nap. I guess this could be due to the fact that I've had a fairly busy day today. My uncle arrived for a brief visit, and I spent most of the day painting. So why the sudden rush of exhaustion?

Then it hit me. I got a letter from the school I work for telling me they are changing their payment policies for adjuncts. Now, if you are teaching an online class, which I am, paychecks will be sent at Midsemester and after the final class. Apparently, if you are teaching online, you don't need to pay your bills throughout the semester. Either that or they assume that if you are teaching online you have some other REAL job upon which you can rely until they see fit to pay you.

This is utter crap and I'd like to say unacceptable. Except it isn't. There is nothing at all I can do about it other than refuse the teaching assignment. It's their way or the highway.

And so, with no way to constructively express my rage, I get sleepy...very...sleeeeeepy. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't fifty percent or more of my fatigue. Maybe I'm just reeeeallly pissed off. (I know that's a big "yes" but seriously, could this be part of the problem?)

Along with the letter from work was a letter from the office of my Pain Management doctor. That was a bill for the entire cost of my last visit because they "have no record" of my insurance. Of course you know that I gave them BOTH my insurance cards to copy BEFORE even sitting down in the waiting room.

This is the third time in the past week and a half that a medical provider has "lost" my insurance information. All of the aforementioned providers have dealt with me before and billed my insurance which had not changed since the last time they billed my insurance. Do you think this might be contributing to my elevated stress and anger levels?

There are times when it really does feel like dealing with the medical aspects of my life is a part-time job. The rub is that all these little annoyances - dealing with incompetent office workers, insurance red tape, scheduling snafus, etc. - all come at a time when I, and others dealing with MTBI are least able to effectively deal with them.

Perhaps the answer is a medical concierge service for people with brain injuries. I'd love it if I had a case manager who would take care of stuff like this for me. It would be a godsend if I didn't have to research laws and insurance regulations as well as medical information in order to get the care and treatment that I need. It's not too far a stretch to assume that other people with brain injuries are going through the same thing and having the same problems. If I didn't have to spent so much time dealing with this crap, I'd look into starting a business dealing with this crap for other people.