u/Rekeaki

I’m an Aussie living in California, currently visiting Australia for two months.

My 7yo LOVES microwave popcorn (he doesn’t get it that often, but he really freaking loves it). In the USA it is buttery, golden and the kernels are huge and puffy. About as close to good Cinema popcorn as it is possible to get via a microwave.

In Australia, and I’ve tried several brands, it’s dry, with hardly any butter (despite claiming to be “triple” or “extra” butter on the pack) and the kernels look anemic. They are mostly shells and way less of the “puffy” part of the popcorn. My gums hurt just looking at them.

Plenty of other good food to eat but WTF Australia? What gives with your popcorn?!? 😂

EDIT: to those who say the “butter” flavoring is banned in Australia, that only explains the butter part, not the anemic shitty kernels with no puff and tons of shell.

I’m visiting Australia right now. I did get travel insurance including medical coverage for pre-existing conditions. Kind of.

One of the requirements of pre-existing condition coverage was being “stable” for at least 90 days prior to departure. That means no changes to medication or treatment and no medical intervention required (surgeries or procedures or hospital stays).

It was going great until I got chest pains 3 days before leaving (I had a heart attack last year). It was all fine, my doctor adjusted meds and gave me a clean bill of health, as well as her blessing to continue with my Australia trip. But now I have violated the 90 day rule for my pre-existing condition travel insurance health care coverage. So I’m probably no longer covered for the one thing I really wanted coverage for.

I have lived in the USA 11 years now, but I have been getting new Australian medicare cards when they expire (mailed to my mum). So I have a current Medicare card. I know that “officially” I lost medicare coverage 6 years ago, but medicare dont seem to be aware of it. They keep updating my cards and I can still login to medicare via mygov and it all looks current.

The million dollar question: could I get away with using medicare in case of an emergency? What are my chances that the valid card I currently hold will just work?

No health issues right now. Just asking in case of emergency. I’ll be going to the doctor no matter what either way if something comes up. I’m not messing around with that. Its just a matter of how much it would cost me.

I’m in Australia another 6 weeks

My title pretty much says it all. I had no idea that state farm home owners policies don’t cover you if the home is unoccupied for more than 30 days. Even for vacations. Apparently getting a friend to visit occasionally isn’t enough and I leave in 2 days so it’s too late to get a house sitter (plus they give me the ick anyway). I just found out this policy quirk was a thing. I live in CA.

Is there anything I can do in the two days before I leave to ensure my home is covered? Is it too late to do anything this time?

I make trips like this approximately every 3 years.

************

UPDATE: Turns out that the 30 day rule does in fact exist. We now have confirmation from State Farm and yes vacations over 30 days DO count (and no, having furniture in your house and making friends visit does not change anything). So I guess a whole buttload of people in the comments are just wrong.

On the upside, you only lose part of your coverage, namely: Vandalism, “malicious mischief”, window breakage and water damage. You also get slightly reduced coverage for a few other items.

And to all those saying “just don’t tell them”, its gonna be a bit tough to explain how a water heater continued to pour out into our home for 25 days (or whatever) and nobody detected it or attempted to stop it the entire time that we were _supposedly at home_

It WILL be obvious to any assessor that we were out for an extended duration.

Ultimately we ran out of time to add the vacancy endorsement to our policy, so we are just going to risk it this time. We are comforted by the fact that at least most of the big stuff is still covered

My title pretty much says it all. I had no idea that home owners policies don’t cover you if the home is unoccupied for more than 30 days. I just found out this was a thing. I’ll be out for 59. I’m with state farm and live in CA.

Is there anything I can do in the two days before I leave to ensure my home is covered? Is it too late to do anything this time?

I make trips like this approximately every 3 years.

Genuinely curious. If you can afford to use uber black every time, are you just better off using a car service? Do you get reliability and a genuinely better experience with uber black? Or is uber black just as problematic as uber x (as in, how badly drivers are treated) but with nicer cars? If you care about how drivers are treated and want someone who is decently paid and who isn’t at the end of a 14 hour shift, is Black the answer? Or is it better for everyone to just give up on any kind of uber (it’s all garbage, nobody is treated decently) and just go with car services all the time?

Ok so this is not a perfect solution, and it’s not cheap. If you are budget conscious, this isn’t for you. It involves maintaining two phones and two phone numbers, just to be able to manage your parent’s affairs.

My mother still wants to manage her own life as much as possible, but also needs a lot of help making appointments, talking to banks etc. To be clear, I have power of attorney and my mother asked for this help.

Lets call the phone the parent has “Phone A”

1: Buy a second iphone (Phone B) which you keep in your home. This phone must be logged into parent’s iCloud/apple account. You will need their permission to access and manage their icloud/ apple account for them.

2: Tell parent to start giving everyone the phone number for Phone B. Tell them to use Phone B phone number for EVERYTHING including 2 factor authentication.

3: set up automatic call forwarding for all calls for Phone B, through to Phone A which your parent keeps in their home. This needs to be done via the phone carrier (not via iphone settings)

4: Forward all messages sent to Phone B on to Phone A using iphone message sharing

5: Parent uses Phone A normally as if it has the phone number for Phone B (when they call people the caller ID will be for Phone A, but honestly, you can notify relevant parties like friends and family that this other phone number is still parent, Banks and Authorities don’t care and will simply use the official Phone B number in callbacks)

*********

Using this system, you can receive all of parents texts (and manage any of their accounts that need 2fa) without needing to get parent involved. You can also turn off the call forwarding at any time and take over receiving their calls in the event that they are unable or unwilling. At all other times, they can continue to receive all their calls and texts normally!

Meanwhile you keep your own personal phone completely separate from this entire setup. If you call or text your parent while call forwarding is on, use the phone number for Phone B

*********

Anyway, I am not saying this is the perfect solution. And I am sure many of you came up with this yourselves already, but it has been a game changer for us. My mother desperately wants to be independent, but true independence (especially with technology) is no longer realistic. This way she can still choose to do things herself, but I can step in and assist with full access to her accounts and 2fa at any time.

TLDR: Women in perimenopause are the main victims of heart attacks caused by SCAD (spontaneous coronary artery dissection) which make up 5% of all heart attacks. You can have no heart disease risk factors and still get SCAD. Tell us if you had one! We need to talk about it more! I had one last year and you can read below if you want to hear what my experience was like.

***********

I had a Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) last year in August, which then triggered a heart attack (technically two, one day apart, but hey, who’s counting? Lol). It was traumatic to say the least.

I was shocked to discover that 90% SCAD patients are women and most of those are in perimenopause (the rest are pregnant women). SCAD is believed to be at least partly caused by significant hormone fluctuations. NOT poor diet, high cholesterol or a lack of exercise, these have nothing to do with SCAD. Most SCAD victims are otherwise healthy.

I genuinely expected to discover a ton of posts about SCAD in this group but when I tried the search function, I found just ONE post. There isn’t even a SCAD subreddit even though around 5% of all heart attacks are SCAD caused heart attacks.

Why are we not talking about SCAD more?!??!

Have you had SCAD? Are you recovering from a heart attack like I am? What were your symptoms and how did you know? How are you coping and how has it affected how you are dealing with perimenopause (or just your future in general)?

For what its worth, and to raise awareness, here is a brief version of my story:

Age 45, healthy weight, non smoking, non drinking, regular exercise.

What was I doing at the time:
Sitting on my sofa eating breakfast (cereal) and watching TV after having just dropped my 7yo at school

Symptoms:
tingling, electric arms (both), severe dizziness, sweating and a feeling like someone had shoved a tennis ball under my ribs (it hurt, but actually not that much, maybe a 6 out of 10)

Tests done in the ER:
EKG was normal, all tests came back normal, except one, troponin, which was elevated and indicated damage. Blood pressure was elevated compared to normal but still very modest, topping out at 145/83

END RESULT:
Had a full 100% SCAD blockage of the LAD coronary artery, resulting in heart attack and a heart ejection fraction of 40%

We are traveling to Australia for 2 months in the summer (we live in the USA, whole family is dual for what it’s worth).

We have an Autistic kiddo that needs his melatonin and he will only take one specific brand of melatonin gummy. We have had no luck getting him to take anything else (it’s a sensory autism thing).

Has anyone had any luck getting a doctor’s prescription for a specific brand of melatonin gummy?

Our doctor would be happy to provide the prescription, but I am worried that we will end up with whatever brand the pharmacy stocks behind the counter (or worse, not even a gummy)

We just want to be able to use the specific gummy our son tolerates, without having to stress over getting caught by customs and having them confiscated. We all need our son to sleep well lol

Any tips?