Conquering Negative Body Image

Conquering Negative Body Image By Viola Jones and Edward Willett

This book was designed to help teens with topics around body image. I actually decided to read this book right after my abnormal psychology class to see how good it was. For teen and preteen readers I felt like it still did not go into the topic deep enough. It felt more like an elementary book. It also mostly focused on trying to get kids to talk to an adult and the role peer pressure can play. I think it would have been much better if it would have made negative body image something that anyone could have issues with and not just teens. I see this book making teens think that it is something that they could just grow out of instead of being a lifelong issue and that it's the larger society that is putting pressure on us and not just peers. I know my college level research showed that sometimes parents can actually be a massive driving force behind a lot of mental health issues including concepts around body image and this book should have went more into that as well. I think the book just needed expanded a lot more to actually be meaningful for its target audience. 2 stars out of 5 or a D+.

Picture from: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27113569-conquering-negative-body-image

'Patients First Medical': Corrupt Business Practices at an Aurora Doctor's Office

I want to share my personal medical experiences with people so that you know not to make the same mistakes and know what the medical fields/practices are like here in Colorado and beyond. Below is my family's run in with a private practice doing corrupt business practices and I do not want you to be hurt by them as well. After Dr. Jackie McCollum retired this year all of her patients were forced to find new doctors and after having her for over 20 years it was a personal loss to my family. Then we found this mess so that you can avoid this practice.

Patients First Medical

2121 S. Blackhawk St.

Aurora, CO 80014

Dr. Alfred Nash

When we first went to them we verified with them that they took our insurance. They did not say that past the primary care visit that they charge for what they call 'chronic care' which most physicians just include in primary care since that is what most people go to them for besides colds/flu.

We go twice to the practice. 1 time to meet with the doctor to get first base visit in and get med refills scheduled/set up with pharmacies. Second was a follow up primary visit, but it should have counted just as a primary nurse visit since we met with his nurse to go over blood results and do additional blood work that he had forgot to request in the first meeting.

The later we get hit with a huge bill saying that how they coded for 'chronic conditions' is not covered based on their contract with the insurance company. We called the insurance company and verified with them that they had used a 'bad code' and that they would need to use a different code and have the bill reassessed for correctness. 

Well the doctor's office refused to do this saying that their codes are correct. I even spoke to the doctor's wife who helps with the 'business' and she said that they bill like that on all of their patients. She was so proud of the fact that they rip people off and have been getting away with it because most of their patients don't know how insurance works. My mother worked in the insurance industry for years including at Anthem. So she knows that when doctors do stuff like this it is actually them abusing/breaking their contract with the insurance companies. 

There are ways to report your doctor if they do this and the insurance company can cancel the contracts with doctors that pull these tricks. The problem is that most people don't know that the doctors are breaking the contracts or how to report them. So this is now on our plate where we are having to work with the insurance company on a corrupt doctor. The good news is that the insurance company has the proof they need based on both the billing history, our experience, and other reviews on line from people who have had their own experiences with this doctor doing the same to them. The oldest I found was from 5 years ago so this 'business' has been hurting people for awhile. 

I should have read the Google reviews before we went, but we so needed someone open on the weekends due to our schedules. Don't trust 5 star reviews or people that give out all to mostly 5 star reviews. Most of the time those reviews are either bought, pushed for, or done by family or friends of the business. Look for people with lots of reviews, diverse scores, and that don't have short meaningless reviews.

Another person with the exact same problem. They continue to do this to hurt people and with this long of a history they know exactly what they are doing.

Proof that they have been pulling these types of tricks for years.

 

They do a lot of shady things.

Below is the complaint I have left on Google Maps since they give you limited space:

The moto on their business card is a lie and they only care about lining their wallets with your money and not the patients. We caught them over billing/coding on my mother's primary care visit. We verified with the insurance company, Anthem that they were using a code that they are not contracted to use. As a primary care doctor on a specific contract with an insurance company they are required to bill with specific codes and they refuse to use the codes that they are approved to do so for the insurance plans that they have contracted to be a part of as a primary care provider. We verified with the insurance company that all they had to do was use a different code to get the bill covered, but they refused saying that the codes that they and their third party are using is correct which the insurance company says they are wrong. This actively hurts patients and sticks patients with bills they should not have. We are working with Anthem on a formal complaint and Anthem has to cut contracts with providers that do this underhanded type of billing and breaking of their contract with the insurance company. If you have ever been charged by this doctor anything past your copay on a copay only primary plan make a formal complaint to your insurance company. It is the only way to fight corruption of this kind. We were not told of the additional charges past a primary care visit when we set up going to this doctor and the office staff even verified that on my mothers plan that we had a $40 copay. That is all they are supposed to be able to charge the patient based on their contract with Anthem. Do not use this doctors services and if you have been a patient with them make the complaint to your insurance company about their billing. Once again we have verified with Anthem that what they did was wrong and we are working with Anthem to be witnesses about contract violations.   

It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health

It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health By Karen Tang

This book was amazing and what every medical book for general audiences should be. The book was well organized and made me feel not so out of sorts. Even as a full fledged adult woman it had information I was not familiar with and helped to normalize my experiences. I wish I would have had this book as a young adult fresh out of high school. It would have been a big help. I think that this is also an important book for any male that has women as a loved one. I think that anytime I have friends getting married forward I will give the groom a copy of this book. I think women throughout history have been living with partners that don't understand their bodily experience and this book could really help. If nothing else it may open up lines of dialog. This is one book that I would highly recommend. 5 stars out of 5 or a A+. 

Picture From: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195790756-it-s-not-hysteria

VA Continues to Fail Veterans and Employees

The article "VA Reinstates Mandatory Overtime To Address 200,000-Claim Backlog" just came out (link at bottom). This is just one part of the VA that doesn't have the needed staff to serve our veterans. Mandatory overtime has been going on for awhile in different departments, like community care. Not only are veterans actively being hurt by the current understaffed, but employees are suffering burn out with their work life balance being massively disrupted. 

Here's a specific example of how these staffing issues are negatively impacting veterans. I personally know a veteran who 2 days ago was told that they couldn't get a needed sleep study down until October...6 months away. This veteran has already been diagnosed with sleep apnea, has other major health issues along with symptoms that are being impacted by the sleep issues, and they still can't get help faster. Sleep issues can have massive impacts on a person's overall health and can lead to death untreated. So yes, this means that the VA could even be killing veterans due to lack of service. Something massive needs to be done asap and our current government does not have the knowledge or caring to fix it.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/05/va-reinstates-mandatory-overtime-to-tackle-backlog-of-200000-benefits-claims/p

2025 March News

 

Local

3/5: "El Paso County veterans & non-profit react to reports of 70,000 V.A. employees facing layoffs"- Right now the VA is massively understaffed and employees are already doing mandatory overtime to make up for the shortfall. These concerns are real and the government is showing that it does not care about those who fought for our country. https://krdo.com/news/2025/03/05/el-paso-county-veterans-non-profit-react-to-reports-of-70000-v-a-employees-facing-layoffs/

National

3/7: "Battered by Cuts and Firings, VA Employees Describe Serving Veterans Under 'Invisible Cloud of Dread'"- The ground level employees fully know how the VA is failing serving the veterans, but the VA leadership and Federal Government is not listening, pretending that they know what is best. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/03/07/battered-cuts-and-firings-va-employees-describe-serving-veterans-under-invisible-cloud-of-dread.html?amp

VA Hurting Veterans

The VA is going to lay off a vast amount of workers even though they are under staffed. Right now many workers in the VA are having to work mandatory overtime because they do not have enough staff. Veterans are being hurt because there is not enough staff as is to serve them. They have to wait months to years for services and this is impacting their health. Help protect veterans by reaching out to your government representatives and tell them to stop the VA reductions.

From: Humbles, Bernard <Bernard.Humbles@va.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, March 5, 2025 1:01 PM
To: VHAECH AFGE Union Members Local 2241 <VHAECHAFGEUnionMembersLocal2241@va.gov>; VBA AFGE Union Members Local 2241 <VBAAFGEUnionMembersLocal2241@va.gov>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL]

 

https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/03/va-plans-lay-many-83000-employees-year/403477/

VA plans to lay off as many as 83,000 employees this year.

A leaked memo released Tuesday called for VA to slash its workforce to 2019 levels that were in place before millions of veterans became newly eligible for care.

 

Bernard L Humbles JR. BS,BA, LAC,CSOC, PhD, US Army Retired
District NVAC District 13, Council 219 Representative, CO,  WY, UT, AZ & NM

President, AFGE Local 2241 & Local Legislative Political Coordinator

President, Colorado AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council

AFGE Affiliate Vice President, Colorado AFL-CIO Board/Council Member

VISN 19, Liaison to the AFGE National VA Council  

Denver Area Labor Federation Delegate/Board Member

Colorado Alliance Of Retired Americans/Board Member

Personal Email: afgehwa2241@outlook.com

AFGE National VA Council, Drug Testing Committee Chair

Colorado Notary Public

Office 720-723-6577 Cell 720-891-5084 or 720-937-4602   

Accessible/Adaptive Halloween Costumes 2024

Spooky season 2024 is in full swing and trying to find the perfect costume can be hard. It's even harder if you need an adaptive one for special needs/disability/mobility issues. I've been doing an adaptive costume post for a few years now, and this year I feel like there was a little bit of a stall. I say this because I didn't see hardly any new styles. It looked like mostly the hold overs from previous years.

Disney

https://www.disneystore.com/halloween-shop/costumes/adaptive-costumes/

It looked like Disney cut their offerings in half this year if not more. I hate to say it, but this does fall in line with how Disney also changed their ADA access rules at their parks to be more restrictive. Gone are the days where Disney supported children and their families let alone adults with disabilities that enjoy dressing up as their characters.

Target

This was the first year I noticed places (Target) using visuals of adaptive costumes on social media (this was a screen shot from TikTok). This specific post was a slide show of different costumes, but this picture was of the first slide. Target has been the best at visually showing and giving voices to disability. Last year I noticed in store signage that showed adaptive marketing. I have also found products at Target that shows holiday goods with characters using adaptive medical equipment. For example there is the vampire in a wheel chair that you can see in some of my videos from this Halloween season and last Christmas I found a Santa in a wheelchair. Target has been the leader in showing these types of images and just making it a part of what they do.

At the same time this year access to these costumes were more limited (just for internet shopping). Last year I was able to find some wheelchair covers and wagon covers (that could be adapted to wheelchairs), but this year even the big Targets didn't have these products on shelves. Their online supply also seemed smaller with no new styles that stood out to me. Everything seemed to be last year's holdovers.

Rolling Buddies

This was a new site I found this year (https://www.rollingbuddies.com/). This company sells different accessible products, but has a section for Halloween costumes. Some of the costumes looked really questionable in their quality, but the at least had a spread of options. They focused on wheelchair accessible costumes.

Example 1:

Lots of different emotions on this one. First, why would you make this costume? It does fall into cultural appropriation and the only possible thing I can think of why you would have this is if you were doing a costume of the Monkey King or Mulan. At the same time it dose show people from different cultural backgrounds within the picture while supporting accessibility. This is just an example of how complicated things can get when looking at things from a DEI lens. This is also one of the ones where I was questioning the quality of the product. Picture from: https://www.rollingbuddies.com/collections/halloween-costumes/products/asian-palace-wheelchair-costume-childs 

Everything on this site looks just cutouts for wheelchairs that have been printed on some type of poster board like thing. Nothing is licensed goods and the prices seem high when compared to licensed products or other products from other stores. I wouldn't recommend this place directly for the above reasons, but they do have some variety if you just want something different. 

halloweenexpress.com

https://www.halloweenexpress.com/costumes/adaptive-a1-560518+3435-1.fltr

This is one of the few sites where there seemed to be any new styles this year.

Picture From: https://www.halloweenexpress.com/costumes/adaptive-a1-560518+3435-1.fltr

Their selection also felt smaller when compared to past years.

Walmart
https://www.walmart.com/browse/adaptive-and-diy-halloween-costumes/c2hlbGZfaWQ6MjMwMzMzOQieie

They had many of the same costumes as the places listed above.

This was one of the more interesting costumes they had this year that I didn't see on the other sites. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Disguise-Boys-Minecraft-Pig-Wheelchair-Cover-Adaptive-Costume-One-Size-Fits-Most/3882141793?classType=VARIANT&selectedSellerId=737

Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DisguiseCostumes/AdaptiveCostumes_Themes/page/5421B702-BA97-484B-8708-4C39F3B82895

Even with a big company like Amazon that has the most random and diverse products, they had a super small selection of adaptive costumes. They actually had even less then some of the other stores when I expected them to have more.

Party City

https://www.partycity.ca/en/cat/halloween-costumes-decor/halloween-costumes-accessories/adaptive-costumes-DC1000367.html

For a place considered a party headquarters their selection this year was also super small, only having 8 options.

Spirit Halloween

Spirit was the most disappointing. On their website when I searched for adaptive costumes only 1 costume popped up.

Additional Places to Look:

https://www.etsy.com/market/adaptive_halloween_costumes

Overall, this year was mostly disappointing in what adaptive costumes that were out there. Since I started to do these posts each year there had been slow increases in what could be found and some stores were actually starting to get competitive with each other on who could offer the most. This year there was a decrease in what could be found and many of the stores just had the same products. Shopping around may not bring you variety like it has in the past, but you may find the same costume for cheaper. I'm hoping that this is just a slump and that next year store will start offering more again. We'll just have to wait and see.