Of all the luck...

[Dragynphyre]

Ok, so he has a rare genetic defect (Wilson's Disease) that affects only about 30,000 Americans out of some 3 billion...

Ok, so he had a doctor that was incompetant and/or didn't care enough to send him to other doctors, as he had been testing for elevated liver enzymes over a four year period , to determine what the cause was...

Ok, so there was a point at which even a liver transplant might not have saved him...

Ok, so now he needs to be on drugs to control the amount of copper in his body for the rest of his life so it doesn't reach toxic levels again...

Ok, so he can't ever eat shellfish, salmon, or drink alcohol again unless he wants to commit suicide...

But my DARLING (lying, theiving... see my previous rants) baby brother has just won a HUGE amount of money in a malpractice settlement - and gets $1,300 a month for the rest of his life in addition to a lump sum of about $200,000 - and this is after the lawyers get their cut. And, now that he's working about 36.5 hours a week for $9/hr - that's just supplemental. The monthly annuity payment would well take care of the monthly rent on an apartment - his job (his friend's father runs the mailroom at the local Jesuit university - so my brother now gets free tuition too) would keep him in food and cigarettes with no problem.

And here I am, working my ass off, 40+ hours a week, just to make ends meet, and try to have a little bit of money left over for some fun, let alone have a bit to save up towards moving out on my own... I haven't even been able to afford (time/money) to go back to school to get my Bachelor's, so I'm pretty much stuck at this pay level with my Associate's, rather than being able to creep up into management level positions that pay much better.

Jealous? Maybe. I had a serious health problem of my own (Hodgkin's Lymphoma) a year after his problems, but my doctors did a wonderful job of treating me and getting my life back to a relative normal state. My job didn't lay me off while I was on disability even though they laid off 66% of my entire department (6 out of 9 were gone when I came back). So, there was nobody to sue! :">

Now, I'm not looking for a handout from him - if he decides to give me some money as a gift, it's his own decision. I'm not going to beg and grovel or treat him any differently than I have been treating him for the past 23 years.



(Back In Black)
Delissandra Splitshadow - Veteran Deceiver of the Circle of Unseen Hands
Grandmaster Poisoner (250), Master Potter (191), Grandmaster Lush (200)

Cause I'm back on the track
And I'm beatin' the flack
Nobody's gonna get me on another rap

[DarthEnder]

You could always steal his money. Its the rogish thing to do. "Classes are not that out of balance -AbsorEQ"

[Dragynphyre]

It would also be 'turnabout is fair play' considering it is because of him that I put a lock on my bedroom door...

Although, I doubt he'll have tons of cash lying about, and though it'd be very rogueish, I'm not much of a 'hacker' to be able to get into the bank's computer...

[Kaielen]

But for the rest of your life, you know you can invite him over and sneak some alcohol into his drink or feed him seafood.

No worries.

[EZ_Talius]

Put a keylogger on his keyboard or a software logged on his comp.

Get his # and PW for online banking.

Go on there, do an email cash to a fake email and a swiss account.

Sweet cool cash

[Stalk]

Speaking from experience, Talius?

[Dragynphyre]

No dice, Talius. He doesn't have a computer.

[EZ_SincroFashad]

And people wonder why malpractice insurance costs so much... -Sinc

There is no I in team, but there is a U in suck.

[EZ_xoom]

I don't think there's 3 billion Americans.

[EZ_Talius]

What? Uh...no... I mean...
I must have saw it in a movie...
Ya...

*takes big sacks marked with dollar signs and runs*

[EZ_Gyorg]

Don't you make a decent living?

[deuce]

I'd be jealous too!!!

Well actually don't, I was in your seat once to. I won't get into specifics because my brother reads this board too and its his personal info so if he wants he can talk more about it.

But from my side of the story there times you have a hard time dealing with it, but you realize after awhile that he's had alot taken away from him that'll he'll never get back and the money he's gotten will never really replace what was taken from him from the mistreated care.

So there's times where I go damn i wish i had that, but I wouldn't trade working my ass off for what happened to his life + soem money. And I know in a heartbeat he'd give the money back if he could get what was taken from him too.

I think i worded that right eh bro?

!Deuce

[EZ_Prenn]

So here's an idea. How about your chicken @#%$ mother kick his violent, abusive ass out now that he'll be able to care for himself for the rest of his life? Sensei Pren{Dragon Army}[Tribunal Server]
So I take shelter in tomorrow
Tomorrow will bring a brand new day
Think I can make it right tomorrow,
Think I need more sleep today...

[freonsmurf]

My mom has the same sort of settlement from security dog's attacking her when she was a electrician.
Sounds like he got around a million dollars from those figures, not including the lump sum.

It's only wrong if you get caught.If consequences dictate my course of action I should play GOD

blog html
Hell

[EZ_Fablar]

Hmmm ... ~£800 a month, but I can never drink alcohol ... hmm, sod the cash, gimme the booze!

what's he gunno spend the cash on ... stick in a @#%$ post office savings account?
Don't get annoyed cos he got free cash, be happy he got compensation for his disability.

Some people get hung up on cash .. don't get me wrong, I've been rich and I've been poor - rich is better, but not worth getting stressed over.

[Dragynphyre]

Ya know, I wouldn't be so annoyed except for the fact that all he did for a long time was sleep on the couch... when I got up in the morning for work he'd be crashed out because he had been out all night with his friends... stealing me and my mom's money while we were sleeping whenever he felt like going out to buy some weed...

...while I've been busting my hump to actually earn my $47K salary (out of which is paid my state and federal taxes, SDI, Social Security, medical insurance, dental insurance, etc... so, like everybody else, I take home maybe 2/3 of it).

I wish him luck holding onto that chunk of money - he never had a problem spending other people's money like it was water.

[Nimmbull]

Try focusing on your life rather than his. You may be able to squeeze some enjoyment out of it...

[Dragynphyre]

Quote:And people wonder why malpractice insurance costs so much...
In this case, the doctor is lucky that he had insurance, because he was clearly in the wrong for not taking the time to actually care for his patients and question why blood tests kept coming back with bad results. The doctor's answer to elevated liver enzymes on my brother's blood tests was that my brother was unusually large for his age - both height and weight. (I think he was about 6' 4", about 300 lbs at that point - by the time he got into high school, he was a 6' 6", 325 lb. bruiser of an offensive lineman that enjoyed burying the defensive line in the mud.)

I also went to this doctor. I don't think I ever spent longer than 5 minutes with that doctor - I'd hardly have walked in with a cough before I was being prescribed amoxicillin and going up to the desk to pay...

Quote:Try focusing on your life rather than his. You may be able to squeeze some enjoyment out of it...
Oh, I do focus on my own life, Nimm, it's just that he's made mine so miserable for the last year or so that I'm a bit ticked off at the universe for making his life rather comfortable at this point, while I still have to spend at least 40 hours a week at a very stressful job.

It's why I come to the Rant Hall

[EZ_Prenn]

Hi, I'm that little voice that says KICK HIM OUT ps: tell the cops he has lots of money to pay disorderly fines

if that fails use mass times acceleration and knock him out a window. Sensei Pren{Dragon Army}[Tribunal Server]
So I take shelter in tomorrow
Tomorrow will bring a brand new day
Think I can make it right tomorrow,
Think I need more sleep today...

[Dragynphyre]

Inertia, Prenn, is a bitz. My acceleration times my mass would not defenestrate his mass if he doesn't want to move. Neither would I be able to alter his course if he was moving on a vector opposite mine...

With luck, he'll decide to leave on his own

[EZ_Geidon]

Now is the time to bury the hatchet and buy an ounce of some dro or better and smoke a nice phat blunt and chill out and move the hell out of your house if he is so bad.

[EZ_Northerner]

YOU have become better at Litigating (250)!

Up here you would be lucky to get the lump sum. Better or worse, I am only noting the fact. Celeris Tujimson
Maurading Deceiver of The Nameless

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
E. W. Dijkstra

[Dragynphyre]

Quote:Now is the time to bury the hatchet and buy an ounce of some dro or better and smoke a nice phat blunt and chill out and move the hell out of your house if he is so bad.

Ok, lose my job when my random drug screening comes up, and move out into a cardboard box because I don't have any money saved up to move out...

Good advice Geidon. Very practical.

I am not treating him any differently than I have in his entire life. If he thinks that his money is going to make me kiss his ass and wait on him, he is terribly wrong.

He can take his disrespectful, macho attitude and flush it along with his head in the toilet that he refuses to clean because he considers it woman's work. But that's another rant...

[EZ_Evilmagus]

What's he thinking...how can you clean the toilet when you have to be in the kitchen all day!

~Evil

[EZ_Swipey]

I know this rant isnt about your finances... but if you make $47K/year, have had that income for some time, and have been unhappy with your living situation for some time, how the (*^&( is it that you have been unable to save any money to move with?

[Dragynphyre]

Well, Swipey...

Back in Jan. of 2001, I actually did have quite a bit of money saved up, I decided I was going to put a down payment on a new car because my old car was falling apart, and had a few thousand dollars saved up, intending to move out a few months after that... I didn't take out disability insurance on my car loan, an important thing to note when taking a look at what happened shortly afterwards.

And then in February of 2001, lightning struck - I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma - I was out on disability as of April 2001, and until I went back to work in March of 2002, I was living off of my short term, and later, long term disability, which wasn't nearly as much as my regular take-home, so I supplemented with my savings. By the time I went back to work, my savings were gone due to car payments, medical co-pay (when you have to pay a $10 co-pay 1-4 times a week...), prescriptions (prescription plan only takes care of so much - was still spending at least $100 every 3 weeks on prescriptions), car & life insurance, etc.

Since then, I've been struggling to save up money, but have not been able to get more than $500 ahead at any given point in time, at which point something always winds up happening that takes my money. (like recently - I tell my mom that I really can't give my cousin more than $50 for his wedding, she gives me a dirty look like I'm a cheapskate, and she goes and gives him $400 and expects me to give her $200 of it!!)

Now, I help my mom out by paying half the rent, which went up to $1,000 a few months ago so that now I'm paying $500. Car payments will be done next July, but until then, it's $525 a month... Oops, there goes the first of my 2 monthly paychecks... the other one goes towards paying phone, gasoline & car care, transportation & parking, food, medical, car insurance, life insurance, etc.

Again, my rant is that I have a health problem too, one that could arise again and perhaps not be quite so easily put into remission (if you count a year of chemotherapy 3x a week as easy)... the only difference is that my doctors were great, there wasn't damned thing they did wrong, and I'm relatively healthy right now (albeit feeling a hell of a lot older than before chemotherapy)...

I'm also pissed off that my brother makes light of the seriousness of my cancer, saying that it can't possibly have been as bad as what he went through, etc., and I'm really sick and tired of it.

I'm torn in two because I feel that I should love my brother, and don't get me wrong, he has his moments where he is very loveable, but at the same time, I cannot stand to be near him...

Oh, and Christmas is cancelled this year. At most, I might be able to bake some cookies for folks...

[EZ_Swipey]

A new car and a serious illness (and the fact that Uncle Sam, in all his forms, probably takes a good 40% of your money too) accounts for it, all right.

$47,000/year still sounds like a lot of money to us peons making only a smidge more than half that, though.

[EZ_Gyorg]

I'm still hearing that your making 47k/year and spending it all month-to-month.

And you'd have a lot easier time loving your brother, (and your coworkers too) if you'd stop blaming them for the misery you feel in your life. I don't mean to point out the obvious, but some of that misery might be self induced.

[Dragynphyre]

Gyorg, you're right. I should just start blaming you! :">

Heh...

Remember though, that I don't write about the GOOD things that happen in my life in the RANT HALL... that wouldn't make for good rantage. My rants are a completely one-sided account of those things that tick me off.

I'm really not all that miserable, I'm quite a happy person most of the time. My posts here are just venting so that the little @#%$ that bugs me doesn't affect the rest of my life.

Of course, I have a flair for the melodramatic, so the little @#%$ looks like it encompasses my whole life when I write it here.