A New Year . . .

2014 is off and running.  I have paid my 4th quarterly income tax for year 2013, it is due on the 15th.  So I got it out of the way. Next will be the dreaded tax time.

2013 was a pretty good year of us, well at least for me.  I got the VA to give me hearing aids.  After three different hearing tests all of which show that I have the typical high frequency hearing loss, one test of which was conducted at the VA facility in Fort Worth, the VA ordered up hearing aids for me.  They are pretty high quality Phonak Q90's.  The Q means Quest program.  90 is the top of the line model for that kind of hearing aid made by Phonak.  Phonak, by the way, is a Swiss company not that it means very much to me.  So I have good stuff and can not hear the clicks and clacks that I have been missing for years.

I have two hearing aids one is right ear and the other is left ear.  They are distinguished by a tiny color dot located in the battery compartment.  Red is the right ear unit and blue is the left ear unit.  Easy enough, besides the configuration of the connectors are such you can not get them in backwards without noticing it.

The Veterans Administration did award me a "service connected"  (SC) disability rating for the Tinnitus.  I got nothing for the hearing loss itself.  You have to be virtually deaf in all ranges to garner a service connected disability for hearing.  Fortunately, nothing wrong with my "telephone" range of hearing.  I have been advised by my VSO, Veterans Service Officer, who is a member of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) organization, that the VA is going to give me a 10% rating for the Tinnitus.  I am a life member of the DAV and they have represented me well over the years. 
So now I wait for the VA to act, they are slower than cold molasses syrup and cold winter day.  But the VA back dates everything and are very thorough.  So the waiting time just takes a little patience (no pun intended).

The SC rating does not mean very much except that it will give me free hearing aids for the rest of my life.  The 10% addition to my present ratings will probably not change anything.  The VA has a funny "whole man" rating process that they have used since the American Civil War for aggregating SC disability ratings.   It is too complicated to discuss here except to say I do not expect it to change any compensatory findings. if it does I will be surprised (and pleased).

2013 has not been so nice to Judie.  She has developed lung problems caused by her hiatal hernia which has allow stomach fluids to invade her lungs (when prone as in at night sleeping).  The lungs do not like this and she has had a couple of case of pneumonia caused by it.  She takes daily lung treatments using a machine that literally shakes her from stem to stern.  The idea is that it breakers up formations inside her lungs.  She also uses a breathalyzer machine simultaneously.  So she gets a treatment into the lungs at the same time as the shaking process.  She wears a vest with air pipe connections to the machine and it pulses at a rate 10-12 cycles per second for 20 minutes.  She also has hand held breathalyzer much like asthmatic patients use which has a steroid of some sort in it.

She does her treatment twice a day, in the AM and later around 9 PM at night.  She is very tolerant of doing these treatments but I know she hates them.

Otherwise, we had a good year.  At least the stock market was up and thus a good thing for us.