I am not sure where to start this story…

July 31:

I’ll just start it back when we got a US Postal Certified letter a couple of weeks ago.  We ignored it thinking it was a debt collector of some kind and I was not going to waste my time and fuel to drive down to the post office to pick it up.  Little did we know it was going to cost us a butt load of fucking money by not picking it up.

This morning after my wife left for work I was getting ready to leave when the door bell rang.  It was a Summit County Sheriff’s Officer.  He proceeds to tell me that he has warrants for my wife and mine’s arrest.  Apparently, that certified letter was to show up in court regarding our un-payed taxes.  Are you ready for this?  The unpaid amount was $10.12.  They sent the sheriff after us with warrants for ten fucking dollars!  Are you fucking kidding me?  Ten dollars!  It was really for the missed court date but only because of the ten dollars.  It’s not like my wife didn’t file for the city of Barberton taxes.  She filed but something got messed up on the form and was off by $10.

The sheriff told us that we could just make an appointment for later today.  We are apparently one of two hundred Barberton residents that they went after.  The officer told us that he spoke with the judge and that if anyone gave him a hard time that he was to just serve the warrant and take them in.  If they were nice, that they could just make an appointment to go downtown Barberton later that day.  Which is what we did.  This whole time, I am not believing my wife about the ten bucks.  In my mind (of reasoning and common sense) there’s no way in hell the City of Barbertucky is going to issue warrants for our arrest for a measly ten dollars. We looked up our names in the Barberton city courts and we are now listed as CRIMINALS.

Check it out:

http://24.123.45.19/cgi-bin/mcaseno.cgi?num=0801911&sub=&pre=CRB&type=CR

Here is our Warrant info:

http://24.123.45.19/cgi-bin/mwarrant.cgi?pre=CRB&num=0801911&sub=&type=CR

So around noon we head downtown Barberton (were taking off of work to do this by the way) and had to be escorted in by the Summit County Sheriff Officer who served us the warrant.  We did that and now were sitting in court waiting for the judge to return.  Once court started, he called a few names and those people went ahead of us and then called my name.  I approached the bench and he asked me if I knew what this was about.   I said “I think so.”.  He proceeded to tell me that we were only one of seventy people to take care of our taxes.  He said all charges will be dropped if we just go to the financial office and pay the taxes that we owe (all that the judge knew was that we owed money he didn’t have the amount and I still don’t believe this is all over ten dollars).

We head over to the financial building and had to wait one hour since the only person that could pull our information was out at lunch.  She finally comes back and pulls the information and says “Wow.  Ten Dollars.  Okay…” with a surprised expression on her face.  So we pay it.  $10.12 to be exact.  I take the receipt and have to show it to the judge in order to drop the charges.

We end up doing that and when it was all said and done, our $10 tax turned into a $420 dollars that we owe now.  $100 each for both my wife and I for court costs, $70 each for the issued warrants and some other minor court fee…  Altogether it adds up to $420.00.  Whats the moral of this story you ask?  Go and pick up any fucking certified letters you get in the mail.

There should be a story in the Akron Beacon Journal this week sometime.  They came out to our house and interviewed us and took pictures.  I am not sure what they are going to say but should be interesting.  When I find the article, I’ll post it as a reply here for all to read.  Should be more or less about the warrants for our arrests for ten dollars.

- Trying to stick it to “THE MAN”: $10.12

- Warrants for our arrest and court fee’s: $420.00

- Having the city of Barberton bend us over and fuck us in the ass: PRICELESS.

-Dan

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UPDATE: Thursday August 7Th:

Channel 5 news just came by and interviewed us regarding this rediculous situation.  They are in partnership with the Akron Beacon Journal and will be airing the segment tonight August 7Th at 11PM.  Tommorrow, the story runs in the Beacon Journal.

For the past three days, I have had a migraine that will not subside no matter what drugs I take for it. I missed work for two days straight now. Imitrex, pain killers, other migraine medicine just are not cutting it. I believe it has to do with my immune system going out of wack due to my AS (ankylosing spondylitis). The last two days, it started with a bad head ache, then my body became stiff and sore as if I were coming down with the Flu, I got a fever (low grade) but still ended up freezing to death in 68 degree room temperature. All I did was lay in bed with the lights off and the windows covered up the best I could to make it as dark as possible with covers over my head so I didn’t have to deal with the light.

If I wake up tomorrow with a head ache, I am going to the docs office and getting a pain killer shot because I can not take this much more. I can deal with not being able to move and in pain due to my joints but this pain in my head has to go. I originally thought I was coming down with something but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

This weather I think is the culprit. It can’t just be warm out. It has to be cold, warm cold warm… etc… This is fucking with my body really bad. You know, I know pain. I live with it. When I get a migraine, most of the time I just want to die versus my AS pain which I just can’t move due to the physical pain and thats fine with me but this migraine bullshit has to go. I can function even at my worst with AS, but even the littlest migraine puts me down for the entire day or until it subsides. The medicines I have taken to relieve my migraine may have done more harm to my body these last three days then the migraine itself.

I am praying that this episode of pain is over…

-Ruger

I called this roughly 6 months after I was diagnosed. It’s only common sense. The human body can only take so much of your immune system attacking itself, and in short, it does one hell of a job destroying itself. Not to mention the drugs and the stress of the pain that you have to deal with. It all adds up (see below). I have been saying all along, my life span has been shortened. People have been telling me “oh no, I know people who take all kinds of drugs and are still alive in their 80′ or 90’s”. Well, I am not going to be one of the lottery winners that make it that long. Although this is some fucked up depressing news, it only confirms what I already knew.

Older medical literature suggests that people with rheumatoid arthritis may live 10-15 years less than their healthy counterparts. Life expectancy is influenced by many factors though, including family history, overall health, and lifestyle choices. The newest class of arthritis drugs, referred to as biologics, hopefully will offer a better prognosis.

# Rheumatoid Arthritis Shortens Life Expectancy
# The Correlation of Life Expectancy and Arthritis
# The Effect of Rheumatoid Arthritis on Mortality

Pulled from:
http://arthritis.about.com/od/rheumatoidarthritis/a/rheumatoid_fact.htm

-Ruger

I am hoping that its just the time of the year - end of January and the month of February. If you would have asked me yesterday, I would have answered that last night and yesterday was the worst I have felt all year (since last Jan & Feb) and even then I don’t think I was this bad. Its 1 AM right now and I am unable to sleep. So far, my right hand at the main knuckle joints are flaring up to the point that I can’t make a fist and or put any pressure on the palm of my hand to do simple tasks like using my hand to push myself up when standing or even sitting down. Next my jaw joint on the right side of my face is making it hard to even eat. I am trying to restrict my diet to soups and soft foods. The sharp pain from turning my head and or opening my mouth to yawn sends sharp stinging waves of pain up the side of my face into my head triggering migraine headaches. Every time I move, a joint pops/cracks somewhere on my body with needle sticking pain in the joint. My lower back, both hips, knees, and ankles are all flaring to the point that I can only take baby steps when walking and forget about standing up from a sitting position. I am on some very powerful narcotics, NSaids and corticosteroids. Not to mention the Prozac I take for depression and or what ever it helps for in dealing with this situation. I have been taking more then the recommended dosage and I still feel like this. I can only imagine what it would be like with out those medicines. Anyone with an autoimmune disease will know exactly what I am talking about. I can say one thing, if I didn’t have the mind altering medicines (Prozac, Welbutrin…) I would be in a world of hurt. No one can appreciate the way pain makes one feel from being in pain the majority of the day, every day. Pain makes you think and do some crazy things that would make a normal person think you are mentally ill. Maybe I am? If so, its only due to the pain and the failure (which is almost impossible) to manage it.

-Ruger

I have no idea how to even explain how the last week has been. Well, I have AS and or RA so I take a lot of drugs. One of them being OxyContin. I get a month at a time and since it is a controlled substance, I have to have a prescription each month. This time round, I had my wife call my doctor to get my OxyContin Script. I normally request the script 7 days in advance since I won’t have to be with out. Well I ran out and had to wait 4 days with out any OxyContin. Now, the last 4 days I have been detoxing. Detoxing from 40 Milligrams of OxyContin a day!

I finally got my scripts so the aching, painful movements are gone now.  The edge has been dulled to a almost nothing now.  This was one of the worst weeks this year for me.  The only thing I have a hard time with is knowing that something as small as a pill has such power of me.  But then again, I need this pill to live a half way normal life.  I am on a double edge sword.  At least I am still alive…

-Ruger