Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: medical

  • I’m Living

    Today in the car my daughter and I were discussing an assignment she needs to do, a series of photos based around poem or book, with a theme of “family”.

    I told her, “Oh, you could do that famous children’s book.”

    “I don’t know which book you mean,” she replied.

    I couldn’t respond because I had burst into tears.

    Okay… so THAT was stable.

    I pulled myself together and attempted to continue the conversation and immediately burst into tears again.

    WTF?  Back off emotional breakdown, I don’t have time for this.

    The book I was referring to is Love You Forever, by Robert Munsh.  Clearly the recent events with my father are shoving my parents’ mortality down my throat until I am choking on it.

    Things continue to be emotionally and mentally difficult in my life for a variety of reasons, and the health of my father is just one of those.  The recent heat wave has also been brutal on me, of course.  On the good news front, my frequency and severity of migraines is getting better under control.  Working hard on remembering and appreciating the bits that are going well.

    Deep breaths.

    But all day and into the night, a verse keeps echoing in my mind.

    “I’ll love you forever,
    I’ll like you for always,
    as long as I’m living
    my daddy you’ll be.”

  • The Post I Didn’t Want to Write

    When last we spoke I said, “Tomorrow I’ll try to explain what is prompting me to share this now.”  That was more than two weeks ago, and clearly I failed to explain on “tomorrow”, but I did try.

    I tried, and tried, and kept on failing.

    Yes, I have also been busy, but let’s be honest, I have some major avoidance issues.  I really didn’t want to write this, because I don’t want it to be true.  Strangely, no matter how long I procrastinate, and no matter how well I avoid, and no matter how little I speak of it, it is still true.

    Every day I wake up, and it is still true.

    Even now, I am sitting here staring at the computer screen and I don’t know whether or not today is the day I keep writing.  I don’t know if today is the day I share what is going on in my life.

    It isn’t even really what is going on in MY life, but like most humans I am selfish and I see the universe in terms of how it impacts me.  There are several people who are impacted far more by this, but it is my impact crater that I keep picking at like a festering wound.

    My father has been really… sick?  Is that what we call it?  I don’t know.  Injured?  My father can’t walk right now.  He is mostly stuck in bed, and he gets muscles cramps that sometimes have him crying out it pain.  Sound familiar?  Well, if you read my last post it does, and it is causing me some really severe stress and flashbacks, which is just annoying self-indulgent bullshit because he is the one with the big problem right now.

    My dad was the center of my universe when I was little.  Then I got older and realized he was a fucking idiot, and then I got older still, and realized he’d gotten a lot smarter as I matured.  I hope some day my daughter thinks I am smart again.  I don’t think he was a great dad. I think he was too lenient and too easily manipulated by people he loved, namely me, but he was pretty good.  I think he is a very good man.  He is more tolerant and more forgiving than I am.  He is extremely smart and has a quirky sense of humor that was the source of plenty of embarrassment when I was a teenager.

    He never for a minute believed I was inherently less intelligent, capable, or valuable because I was a girl.  His belief was strong enough that I was baffled when I started school and discovered that other people thought differently.  His belief was strong enough that I assumed he was correct and those people were missing out.  He bought me my first computer (and more after that), and taught me how to program in BASIC.  He gave me my first text adventure game.  He taught me how to drive. He taught me that I couldn’t catch AIDS by hugging his cousin Tommy.  He taught me how to mess with a new device and figure out how to use it.  He taught me how to RTFM, and then how to trust my instincts in the many cases where the manual was written by drunk orangutans.  If I’ve ever helped you to troubleshoot any kind of problem, then my father has touched your life.

    I’ve spent months crying daily, multiple times a day.  I’m exhausted.  There is so little that I can do to help, and that is frustrating.  I hate not being able to DO much of use.  I also feel guilty, of course, because I think that if I had been there at the beginning, I might have been able to be an advocate in a way nobody else could.  I wasn’t.  I may never get over that, but I need to stop dwelling on that, because that certainly isn’t useful either.

    What I can do right now is swallow my pride and discomfort and ask people for donations.  He is at the point where he needs to be able to do some of what he knows is right, whether the insurance company is on his side or not, and that takes money that we don’t have right now.  I hate that I don’t have it to give him..

    So, that’s what I am doing.   I have put up a page on YouCaring.  I’m asking for help, because I can’t do it alone, and because I won’t let him do it alone.

    Please read the details and consider donating if you can afford to, or sharing the link with others if you cannot. I really appreciate it.  If you’d like to send a check so that no money is taken out in fees, contact me for an address (it will be mine since he can’t just run to a bank right now, but I can take care of depositing it for him).

    DavidRamstad640

    https://www.youcaring.com/DavidRamstad

    I guess today is the day.

  • just call me hostile

    Hi.

    I am cranky as all shit, and on drugs. If you say anything that even remotely has a whiff of advice about it, I will lose my shit. You might think that I appreciate your wisdom, but you would be very wrong. Seriously, I am not even slightly fit for human interaction and I used up all of my patience dealing with medical people today. What I want right now is a Vosges Mo’s Bacon Bar and to be left alone. Oh, and dinner at Porterhouse Bistro, except with a restaurant buy out so that nobody else is eating there.

    Friday night we were on our way to the kid’s show (she is on light board). We were making our way to the theater in rainy stop and go and crawl and rush and creep and go and stop traffic. The car in front of me stopped. I stopped. The driver of the Nissan Pathfinder behind me was looking away in hopes of changing lanes, and utterly missed the lack of continue to go.

    BANG

    Ugh.

    Cranky.

    The first thing I did after making sure that Z and I were OKAYish, and the other driver was okay and not a hit and run sort, was twitter “Car accident. Fuck.” which wasn’t really about being geeky. I didn’t have time to call A yet, and my tweets go to both his cell and computer, so it was the easiest way to try to quickly give him a heads-up. It had the rather strange added side effect of telling 50 other people about the accident almost as soon as it happened.

    The guy was polite, a bit overly chatty, licensed, and insured. To illustrate the overly chatty, I can tell you he has three daughters in their 20s, he recently was laid off, and he was on his way to an AA meeting. Police stopped by, FIRST stopped by. Actually, FIRST blocked traffic enough for us to make it off of the freeway and into a parking lot, so that we could more safely exchange info. That was also as far as Mr. Pathfinder could drive. His transmission was not behaving normally, and it looked as though his radiator was cracked, but they could not look inside to see because the hood wouldn’t open anymore. He also had several chunks off of his car that he gathered up off the freeway, like sad toys, and tossed into his backseat. He requested that FIRST call him a tow truck.

    We decided not to do the ambulance thing, for reasons that I am not going to to bother justifying, but there are reasons and I stand by them. As we were close to the theater, and I needed to figure a bunch of things out, I went ahead and drove there and let the kid do the light board thing.

    I sat in the parking lot and looked things up on my phone and made some phone calls. I put in a call to her orthopedic sports medicine specialist back in California, and was able to exchange messages and he wanted her to have x-rays done. I tried to look up urgent care information, but the phone is very limited. The show soon ended and we made our way home. She was hungry, so she had some dinner, while I found the closest urgent care that accepted our insurance and verified that they offered x-rays. Some do not. By this time I was definitely experiencing pain. I had not immediately following the impact. My intention was to go ahead and get us both checked out, although honestly, had she not been hurting, I would not have bothered to go just for myself.

    We decided to wait until A got home since I didn’t really feel like driving. He got home, we made our way to the urgent care place and had trouble finding it. We finally got there, and they had closed a few minutes earlier. I had misread their hours and they are only open from 6 PM until 9 PM. We went home so I could look up other places, but all of them were already closed. A few were open as late as 10 PM, but too far away for us to get to in time. At this point I was in a lot of pain myself, was tired and stressed and pissed and really just fucking hating being in Minnesota instead of California, where I would have been able to deal with this with so much less effort.

    It was a night of not going smoothly, from the new (no choice in the matter) health insurance website, to the car insurance website, to urgent care, to fucking everything. I just wanted to be HOME, and by that I did not mean the fucking rental house.

    Anyhow, we determined that it was definitely not an ER level situation and we did ice and some meds and some bed, with plans to do Urgent Care the next morning at the place that opened earliest.

    Which, is what we did.

    It took hours.

    A few parts stand out.

    The nurse handed me the thermometer and said “Just put it wherever it’s comfortable.” I kept my mouth shut, but Z and I traded looks.

    X-ray techs really rub me the wrong way. When Z was done with her set of films she came out and said, “So… radiology departments just universally suck.” I couldn’t argue.

    The doctor came in after looking at the x-rays and was concerned by something she saw on Z’s and wanted us to wait longer so the radiologist could review it before we left. The radiologist ended up clearing her, and all was well, but it wasn’t a very fun wait, especially for Z.

    Anyhow, x-rays showed no injury to the bones. It is all soft tissue stuff, and just needs time to heal. Ice. Muscle relaxants. Ibuprofen. Time.

    She has a lot of soreness in her neck and shoulders, as well as some in her lower back. I have some soreness in my neck, but it is really pretty good, as long as I don’t tilt it or turn it. I have more pain in my lower back, plus my arms, pectorals and hands hurt.

    When all meds are on board I feel pretty damn okay for about an hour, and then I want to sleep. Mostly we have been sleeping the day away, and drinking a lot of water because we feel very hot and parched.

    Unfortunately my husband goes out of town tomorrow. I’m really not looking forward to dealing with dog walks yet.

    So, yeah.

    How is your weekend?

  • Body Acceptance and Lack Thereof

    Part of the reason I wrote the fat post was because I really wanted to write this post, but needed those other thoughts out of the way first. Then my life got in the way and it took me a little bit to get back to this post.

    I don’t like my body. I do not have a warm relationship with it, and I am not very motivated to improve my feelings toward it.

    I get that YOU may believe that loving my body is a SHOULD so strong it is almost a requirement, but frankly, your shoulds hold more annoyance than interest to me. It is me, and my body. From my perspective our relationship should only concern you for the seconds you choose to expose yourself to my words. If it really hurts you to hear about my body hatred, or you feel that you must give me a pep talk. You might want to quit reading.

    The current source of our problem relationship has little to do with appearance. I won’t claim to have always been comfortable looking the way I happen to look. I won’t claim that I will age gracefully, and never even consider a visit to a plastic surgeon for some little bit of something. I certainly won’t claim that I do not have flashes of appearance insecurities, or worse. However, on the majority of days, I am fine with my appearance.

    I like the theory of body acceptance. Especially as the mother of a teenage girl, it is a big part of what I want to impart to her. It is made far more difficult by the fact that in all honesty I am so uncomfortable in my own skin.

    Literally uncomfortable.

    I have been in pain since I was 10 years old. Some days it is less, some days it is more, but I am always in pain. Chronic pain, they call it. Really fucking annoying, I call it.

    Yet, most days it isn’t really all that annoying, because I am so used to it. It is just a part of life for me. So, if it is just background noise, why do I hate my body? Most days I tend to ignore my body. I focus on the billion other things going on in my life and I don’t think much about the aches, except the brief instant it flares sharply as I change position. When the concept of body acceptance comes up though, I think about my body. Once I think about it, it all crashes over me in waves. The significance of our bodies is so much more than how they look to us, and it is sure as hell more than how it looks to others.

    Yes, I get it. I’ve heard it all. “At least you can walk.” “Look at all the things you can do.” “Look at your beautiful family.” “You should be grateful.”

    I can already detail out all the positive aspects of my body, and there are many. Certainly, I appreciate that things are not worse, and I know very well that they could be, but does it go so far as to wipe out the pain and frustration that is still there. No. Not for me. Have whatever opinion you have to have about my attitude, but it is mine, and I am not looking for your help or inspiration to change it.

    Then there are the surgical scars. Occasionally I happen to honestly and casually mention that one bothers me. This is invariable followed by somebody telling me how it doesn’t look bad, or is barely noticeable. The thing is, I do not mind the scars because I think they are ugly, or I am worried what other people see. They bother me because they remind ME of the physical, mental and emotional suffering that surrounded their creation. Also, they still physically bother me. My nerve regeneration is poor. I tend to end up with large patches of numb and tingly with occasional sharp pains. I can have those spots even when the scars are completely hidden from view.

    Now I am sure that many people reading this feel curious about the causes, background and nature of these pains and surgical scars. If you spend enough time with me over the years, you’ll hear about it here and there. The reason I am not detailing it out here, is that it just doesn’t matter where the subject at hand is concerned. What I am talking about is how I feel about my body, not the journey my body has taken to arrive at this status of under-appreciated anatomical structure.

    This week has been a marginal one. I’ve been able to get out of bed every day. I have not had to avoid any of the things I needed to get done. I was able to function physically. It was definitely not a pretty bad, bad, really bad, or seriously fucked up week. It was just one of those weeks where things were a step and a half above the I almost completely block it out I have so much practice level of pain.

    This week I was reminded at every move and twitch about the pain, but I wasn’t reminded with a chainsaw.

    Also, for anyone who would like to believe that any pain is caused by my being overweight, and would be solved if I dropped 50 lbs. You are wrong. No, I don’t need to detail out why. You just are.

  • Jaw Breaker

    Two nights ago, my friend’s dog tried to kill me.

    Okay, not really, but that is what I keep telling my friend because it is more fun that way. The dog in question is still very much a puppy, and was simply doing a puppy face nip and lick attack, only she did it by frantically (and impressively) launching herself from the ground – 5 feet into the air. I was caught very off guard and did nothing to protect myself, or correct her.

    She hit the underside of my jaw with her jaw wide open while I was mid sentence. It slammed my jaw shut, scrambled my brain and luckily the word she caught me on was such that I only bit a very small side portion of my tongue. She got me with a tooth on each side of the underside of my jaw, which is why I keep telling him that his dog was trying to rip my throat out. One side left a little pointed bruise and the other side had a pinpoint scratch surrounded by a welt. At first there was actually a visible pinch mark in the center too, where her teeth had come together in her nip. I had a headache for about 12 hours.

    I am not even a tiny bit mad at the dog. She was not attacking, she was just doing what comes natural and it hasn’t been trained out of her yet. I am not even a tiny bit upset with my friend. He only got her recently and legitimately has not had enough time to train this behavior out of her yet. He is aware, and is working on it. He also has every reason to expect me to be puppy savvy enough that he not have to be on his absolute top guard with her, it isn’t like he had her around a toddler (and he did correct her as I stood there too brain stunned to do anything but hold my aching jaw).

    The welt is gone, but that spot still hurts a lot, which was really starting to bug me. It is nothing. There is no significant bruising or sign of damage. Just a little red mark that looks like the end of very pathetic attempt at a zit. I am not one of those people that is usually oversensitive to pain. Because of various health conditions I’ve actually lived with pain every day of my life for over two decades, so why the fuck was I being such a baby?

    Today as I was washing my face I finally figured out what the problem was. She actually nailed me with that tooth precisely at the bad point in my jaw on that side of my face. That is where it had been sawed apart and screwed back together almost 15 years ago, and has always remained bone sore to pressure (have a matching spot on the opposite side, but luckily she didn’t tag it). So, it is still sore, but now that I realize there is a physical reason why it still hurts so much, I feel less like a whiny wimp.

  • My Grandfather

    He is more coherent and has better motor control, so they are keeping him at home for now. This is good news. Unfortunately my grandmother has come down with the flu, which is always a risk for somebody at her age and health level. Plus my aunt also has it, and is the primary care provider for both of them. Definitely a rough week in that house.

    I am still so pissed about the lack of what I consider decent medical care. Unfortunately, like the major airports, the nearest major hospital (and any significant second opinion) is also a 4-5 hour drive away.

    For the moment things are not dire, but it is clear that I really need to move up a visit on my priority list, if I want to make a real attempt to get in another visit where he knows who I am, and I do.

    I must concentrate on getting my taxes done. I need that off the table so I have some flexibility.

  • feeling sad

    My father called today.

    My grandfather is not doing well.  Yesterday he complained of having no strength. He had to be in a wheelchair all day because he could not get around with his walker. He was too tired to take a shower (he usually sits on a chair and my aunt helps him) last night, so they waited until morning. This morning he was completely unable to help my aunt with the shower, she had to do everything. After she got him out, he passed out for 2 minutes. Afterward he couldn’t move his legs. They took him to the hospital and the hospital drew blood (saw nothing) and did a CT scan. The CT showed swelling of his brain. For some fucking reason which has my grandmother and aunt extremely upset, they sent him home instead of admitting him to the hospital.

    When getting him ready for bed, he couldn’t even move his arms enough to get them into his pajama top, my aunt had to do everything for him. He could not tell her who the president was. When she asked if he knew who she was, he said “My girlfriend.” She doesn’t know if he knew who she was and was completely joking, he didn’t know who she was and made a conscious joke to cover for it, or if he was really that confused. I am guessing the second, personally.

    In the morning they will see how he is doing, if he is significantly worse they will go to the hospital again. If he is the same they will take him to the nursing home. If he cannot move around at all on his own, they need him where there are more people to care for him and where there are nurses around. Luckily it is close to their house and an easy visit.

    I am not sure yet whether or not I am going. My father hasn’t figured out yet whether he is going. They live inconveniently far. It is a 4-5 hour drive from a major airport. It is a long drive for either of us from our homes. I am frustrated that they sent him home, that smacks of giving up.

    My biggest fear is they will put him in the home and two years later his body will still be technically alive, but he won’t have control of it, and his mind will be completely gone.

    I am probably not going to be very available the next few days, I need to get a bunch of work done so that I can leave if I need to. Or I might be around a lot to distract myself. I am not sure. Hopefully I will be working.

    I was the first grandchild by far. The first grandchild to the oldest child on both sides. I was 13 before I had a cousin. I had completely different grandparents than my cousins did. My grandparents were young and active and did a lot of stuff with me. My paternal grandfather took me fishing. He took me shooting. He took me camping. I have a lot of good memories of him. I am not as close to him as I am to my paternal grandmother, but to an extent their relationship with each other is what makes me the saddest. Watching both of them watch as their partner over all these many decades slowly succumbs to old age and poor health is sad.

  • More On How I Feel About the Medical Industry

    First I will start with the general.

    I do not like the medical profession laying their personal, or societal opinions on an individuals medical care unless they are specifically asked, “Well, what would you do?”

    Then I will move onto a story about somebody I knew.

    There was a woman who used to clean my house. She was nice enough, but unfortunately was entirely too chatty. As the result I know a lot more about her than is reasonable. Now you will know it too.

    When I first met her she was barely 22 years old and had just given birth to her third baby. Her first one she had when she was 16. The first two were with one guy, this third one was with a different guy, but she still considered the father of the first two “The love of her life, that she knows she is meant to be with again someday.” She swore that they were using birth control for all three pregnancies. She told me that during pregnancy number two she kept telling her doctor she wanted her tubes tied when the baby was born. Her doctor insisted she was too young to make such a decision.

    Prior to baby number three being born, one of the other girls suffered a severe head injury and became disabled. The woman was 20, no reasonable education, unmarried with two children and one of whom had extra educational and medical needs. During pregnancy number three she again repeatedly told her doctor that she wanted to have her tubes tied. Again she was told that she was too young to make such a decision. When baby number three was less than a year old she became pregnant for the fourth time, again swearing that they were using birth control (who knows if they’d ever been given decent instructions on HOW to use it).

    A doctor finally agreed to sterilize her at that point, two kids after she started requesting it.

    Finally we will get on to the personal.

    I have one kid. I am pro choice. I meant to have that kid. I was not absolutely positively certain that we would stop with one kid.

    We waited. We thought about it. We talked about it. We were pretty damn sure. We waited some more. We talked about it more. We decided. This took place over the span of years, not days.

    I went and saw a doctor and told them that I was done. She laughed and told me that I would change my mind. She did not want to refer me to anyone. Nothing. She just said I was too young (which I think “they” term as under 30 with 0 or 1 kid) to make that choice, and that (I kid you fucking not, she said this to me) “It isn’t right to have your daughter grow up so lonely.”

    I did not kill her on the spot. I hope somebody is as amazed by this as I am. As far as I know, she is still alive and practicing medicine. I never saw her again. If anything happened to her, it was not me.

    Now all I was going to do was talk and get pamphlets. We were still strongly leaning toward him having a procedure rather than me having something done, but I was not done researching. At that point we knew one person who had a vasectomy that they were not happy with. We knew several who had them who were happy and felt it had been no problem at all.

    After a bit of time (as I have mentioned before we tend to avoid doctors whenever possible) we finally got to a point where we set foot into a medical setting again. This time we let him try. We got a little bit further. They were willing to give him a referral, after he attended a class. This pissed me off to no end. I was furious. We are supposed to have medical privacy and being forced by insurance to go to a group class on any sort of medical condition or procedure as a condition to getting the care that you are requesting was completely beyond acceptable to me. I began throwing fits left and right and before we got very far with that our insurance coverage changed. Yes, I am choosing publicly to talk about this NOW, but that is my choice. They were holding the procedure hostage in order to force public discussion on it.

    By the time we got back to the subject yet again we knew two more men who had vasectomies who were very unhappy with the procedure and the outcome. (chronic pain, decreased sensation from orgasms, etc) I know that the vast majority of people have no problem, and a lot of the medical community discount the complaints out there, but these were people who I did not think were likely to be having psychosomatic complaints. I needed more time to research.

    Then I got sick. I’ve talked about that before.

    Finally I was ready to look into everything again and this time I found Essure. That looked very interesting to me. First I contacted a retired gynecologist who happens to be a friend’s father to ask him what he knew about it. It had come about after he gave up his practice, so he contacted colleagues to get opinions and got back to me. He also helped me formulate some questions that he felt any decent doctor should answer.

    I took his questions, did some additional research and added questions of my own. Pulling a list of doctors listed on the Essure website that happened to be covered by my insurance, I contacted fifteen of them. Fourteen by letters and one by email. The one who responded by email responded quickly and was great, but I was not thrilled with his answers to my questions. I liked very much that he communicated effectively by email, and I also liked that he was giving up the OB portion of his practice because that would make him a more effective doctor for me. However, he just had not performed the procedure enough times and with enough success that I was comfortable seeing him in this case.

    Thirteen doctors ignored me completely.

    One other had his nurse call me to give me the answers to my questions. I wasn’t thrilled with having the nurse call, but the answers to the questions were decent. I booked an appointment to meet him in person.

    I arrived on time to a fairly empty waiting room. I had to wait for 40 minutes before they took me to a room and another 20 minutes for him to appear. We spoke and were okay with the responses to each others questions. He remembered the letter and we talked a about his history with the procedure. He actually wanted to know if, should I go ahead and use him and do the procedure, whether I would be willing to be filmed for the local evening news. We also decided I should get a shot of Depo because that gives the best chance for the procedure to go well (condition of the cervix and endometrial lining) and we worked out when the right time for the procedure would be. Sounds good, right? Then it turns out the do not have the Depo in their office and I have to go downstairs to the pharmacy to get it. They write a prescription and send me down. This eats up more of my day as I have to wait.

    In the meantime I called my husband to discuss this television news idea. On the one hand I despised the idea of having a camera anywhere near me. On the other hand it seemed like the doctor would work extra hard not to fuck it up if a camera was there. Also I very strongly believe in getting any and all reproductive choice options out there for people to be aware of. We decided it was creepy and we were not comfortable with it, but that assuming all the details, as ironed out, worked for us, we should go ahead and do it.

    When they finally had the prescription filled for me they tell me insurance will not cover it. It is ridiculously expensive. Insurance won’t cover it because they will only pay for a 30 day supply from a local pharmacy and it lasts for 90 days. They will only cover it if the doctor has it in their office and it is used as part of the office appointment.

    *sigh*

    So I paid the exorbitant fee for the liquid and returned back upstairs because, of course, they only give me a little bottle, no syringe. I give the pets vaccinations, surely I could give myself a damn shot. Diabetics do it all the time. Instead I went back upstairs to the doctor’s office and was forced to wait again in the waiting room. Finally they stuck me back into an exam room where I waited some more. Eventually a nurse showed up and gave me a shot.

    I asked her when the procedure will be scheduled for. She told me that the scheduling person wasn’t in, but that she would call me within the next 10 days. She said that if I didn’t hear from the woman within two weeks, I should call.

    Now, here is the thing. They are running a business. They get real money to do this procedure on me. They actually have a woman who gets paid specifically to schedule procedures and book the operating rooms. That is her job. I am the customer. I already reached out to get the process rolling. I do not want to be having to chase people down to convince them to do their damn job.

    I explained to the nurse that it is very important that the scheduling person call me, because I will not call back. I point out how many years it had been since my last pap. They needed to call me. She said that she usually calls and she’d be sure to mark my folder correctly and put it in the right pile.

    I told her that I had spoken to my husband and we were willing to do the TV show, so she said the doctor would speak to the PR person from Essure and they would get back to me on that with the details and paperwork.

    I left. I had been there for four hours. 4. Not, 3 hours – 4 hours. I had to go home and load the car and drive to Seattle. Really, no problem I don’t mind it taking four damn hours to spend 20 minutes interacting with the actual medical people.

    They never called.

    I’ve now switched insurance, so I can’t go to him anyway unless I want to pay it completely out of pocket, and why would I want to when their office staff can’t fucking get it together enough to call and schedule me an appointment. They had months in which they could have. This is when I was willing to do them the favor of being their promotional poster girl on the evening news!

    But wait, the reason I am writing this is that I was reminded once again when I got a past due bill from them. They need $80 from me for giving me the injection (which I only got because I was supposed to have the procedure) which my insurance would not cover because they were injecting something that was not supplied by their office. They want 80 fucking dollars to have some fucktwit put on latex gloves, tear a package with a syringe in it, stick the syringe into the vial, draw the liquid into the syringe, and then stick a needle in my ass and depress the plunger. It took her less than a fucking minute.

    So there you have it, yet another example of why I am always so aggravated whenever I even think I might need to deal with anything remotely medical.

  • This is from an official sign that I saw at the doctor’s office today:

    Family Medicine Department
    Service Standards

    Flexibility to member needs the best way we can
    Accountability for patient care
    Maintain quality for ourselves and others
    Integrity and professionalism in everything we do
    Live with partnership by involving people in decision making
    Yield to best service

    Member satisfaction is our first priority
    Encourage innovation
    Diversity in individual care

    I fear that somebody was paid to write that.

  • IT

    There is a certain art to feeling sorry for oneself, and I definitely have an aptitude for it.

    There is a simple test to determine if you have an aptitude for this art too. Consider the following two statements.

    If things are going badly and something else bad happens, it goes to show that the universe is committed to kicking your ass and pissing on you while you are down.

    If things are going well and something bad happens, it just proves that you can’t even get enough time to enjoy the good before you are slammed with more problems.

    Do these statements both sound true to you? If so, you may already be an artist. Please draw Tippy or Cubby and send it to me for a full assessment.

    “Woe is me.” It isn’t pretty, but it sure does come easily to me.

    On Saturday we had two cute little zebra finches. On Sunday one fell suddenly ill. I made an attempt to save him, but while we did manage some improvement, in the end it was not enough. I failed. By afternoon, we only had one cute little zebra finch.

    This morning that sense of failure was still hanging on pretty strongly. As good as I am at feeling sorry for myself, I am much much better at feeling guilty. The Sunday guilt made way for the Monday guilt. I didn’t sleep well Monday night, probably the result of an over consumption of caffeine during the day. This morning I woke up “LATE”. I wasn’t actually late. It was 7am and I didn’t have anyplace I needed to be. I just woke up in the midst of that “oh crap I am so late” panic and started my day with the accompanying big dose of adrenaline. By around 9:45 I was seriously crashing and having an adrenaline hangover.

    However, I was determined to pretend to stay focused and get a little more caught up on one or two of the many things I am very far behind on. Then Indy started barking her fool head off, and the echo started London howling. Soon it became apparent that the cacophony was in need of some intervention. I went to the top of the stairs to call Indy up and let her know that while it was great she was protecting us from some horrible nasty, that the threat had passed and she could settle down.

    She came upstairs wondering if she might score a treat. I grabbed her around her middle and gave her some rough bouncy squeezes that cause her to make funny little grunting sounds. London is all about belly rubs, he will stay on his back for long stretches at a time as long as somebody will pay attention to his belly. Indy, she is a bit ticklish and prefers rougher treatment. She especially likes feet. She’ll lie down near where you are sitting and push her way under your feet to encourage you to step on her. She likes that. Apparently, the smellier the feet, the more she likes it. We’ve never had an in depth conversation about why, so don’t ask me. The point is, that she does not ask for, or often get, a lot of hands on attention to her belly.

    So here I am, making her squirm, and I find it. It. Not the Stephen King sewer clown. It. The thing I feel incapable of dealing with today. It. A lump on her abdomen. Now I am smart enough to know that I wouldn’t actually be any more enthusiastic about the discovery on any other day, but I have sufficient self-pity skills, so that I am able feel like it is happening at precisely the wrong instant.

    My immediate inclination is to go hide in a closet and just stay there, maybe until 2007. Instead I allowed myself a contained nervous breakdown and then pulled my shit a little bit together. I made a choice about which vet to take her to (I picked the one I have the least overall confidence in because a) she has the closest and least busy office b) all I need today are some basics, and that she should be able to do c) closest, quietest and least busy=the least trauma to myself and Indy d) I can always go see a preferred vet after I have the test results). I scheduled an appointment for this evening and then took some time to let my daughter know what was up.

    ETA: Biopsy says it is not cancer. This is good.