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Apr. 14th, 2017 08:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckYesterday was a good news/bad news deal.
The very good news is that the uterine biopsy results came back early and are clean. This means going ahead with the HSG which sounds moderately unpleasant, but I prefer that (and the chance that that might be clean, too) to the alternative.
The bad news is that the OT referral proved utterly worthless. The place I went only provides 'better' splints, catalogs of adaptive devices, and handout on what not to do. So I now have five sets of splints, all of them terrible in different ways, and no more ideas about how to manage personal grooming and household tasks than I had before. The woman I dealt with kept saying, "We don't do that."
I'm pretty sure she thought I was awful and uncooperative and probably lying. She thinks it's impossible that wearing braces can cause worse pain than not. She also tried to convince me that, if I don't wear braces 24/7, the osteoarthritis will destroy my hands. Which is not how osteoarthritis works. She thinks that, by not wearing the braces at night, I'm guaranteeing myself more pain and damage. She didn't believe me that my hands don't hurt at night or first thing in the morning. She also didn't believe me that wearing braces at night does bad things to my body. (It always has. No matter what the injury, I cannot sleep in a splint/brace, not on any part of my body, without that part going numb at best.)
At any rate, this OT wants me to go to a different and much harder to get to clinic where they actually do adaptive stuff. That clinic doesn't have any openings until May, isn't sure they've got anyone who does hands, and is going to schedule me without me having any input. Sure recipe for success, right?
I'm kind of appalled that the University of Michigan Health System, which is huge and deals with a lot of complicated cases, doesn't have OT staff capable of dealing with a patient with multiple conflicting issues. I may not be completely typical, but I'm not a unicorn by any means.
And it's not just me thinking that it's weird that they have a clinic entirely staffed by people who make and fit hand/thumb/wrist splints but no one who helps patients with hand problems figure out strategies for daily life issues?
On the plus side, that's two fewer appointments this month...
I've got PT at 10 this morning. I'm taking the bus to get there, but I might take a cab back. I would like to be able to do something after the appointment beyond collapsing and staring at the walls. Especially since there's still a chance that Cordelia's friends might come over for movie watching tonight.
I'm putting another thing on my to do list-- I need to write down the things I have trouble with, due to hand pain, so that I know exactly what things I want to address. The two catalogs I have only contain two useful looking adaptive devices, and we already own both. (Seriously, handle weighted silverware would be a terrible idea. I already have trouble with what we have weight-wise because chunky handles were in the year we got married. We got the lightest handles available, but they're heavy and unpleasantly thick. Oh, and apparently there's something terribly wrong with me that I find big things harder to grasp than thin things.) Most of the ones that might apply to my situation are aimed at food preparation and eating and look like they would make both infinitely harder than the pain does.
Yesterday also contained some school related WTF? in terms of PTO emails. At 8:00 a.m., they sent out a message announcing that they want to do a middle school fun night next week on Friday and need volunteers. At 2:30 that afternoon, they sent out a second message saying that they would have to cancel the fun night if they didn't get more volunteers immediately. School runs from 8:00 until 3:00. No parent would have had the opportunity to ask their child or children if they wanted to go. Almost all parents would have been at work during that window, too, and might not have access to personal email or personal calendars or time to consult with partners about plans or to set up babysitting for younger kids or... Well, it's seriously WTF? They couldn't wait twenty four hours for the second email? Or send out the initial announcement with more than 6.5 hours before their panic point?
Cordelia doesn't want to go. I rather expected that. I probably wouldn't have volunteered anyway because there's a chance I'm going to be wrecked by the time we get to evening that day. Also, I can't stand for long, can't do much with my hands, and generally can't do things right now. The jobs they were talking about needing to fill pretty much all involved two or three hours of standing.
Scott considered signing up because they want someone to run boardgames, but with Cordelia not going and with us not knowing what sort of state I'll be in, he decided it wasn't a good idea.
The very good news is that the uterine biopsy results came back early and are clean. This means going ahead with the HSG which sounds moderately unpleasant, but I prefer that (and the chance that that might be clean, too) to the alternative.
The bad news is that the OT referral proved utterly worthless. The place I went only provides 'better' splints, catalogs of adaptive devices, and handout on what not to do. So I now have five sets of splints, all of them terrible in different ways, and no more ideas about how to manage personal grooming and household tasks than I had before. The woman I dealt with kept saying, "We don't do that."
I'm pretty sure she thought I was awful and uncooperative and probably lying. She thinks it's impossible that wearing braces can cause worse pain than not. She also tried to convince me that, if I don't wear braces 24/7, the osteoarthritis will destroy my hands. Which is not how osteoarthritis works. She thinks that, by not wearing the braces at night, I'm guaranteeing myself more pain and damage. She didn't believe me that my hands don't hurt at night or first thing in the morning. She also didn't believe me that wearing braces at night does bad things to my body. (It always has. No matter what the injury, I cannot sleep in a splint/brace, not on any part of my body, without that part going numb at best.)
At any rate, this OT wants me to go to a different and much harder to get to clinic where they actually do adaptive stuff. That clinic doesn't have any openings until May, isn't sure they've got anyone who does hands, and is going to schedule me without me having any input. Sure recipe for success, right?
I'm kind of appalled that the University of Michigan Health System, which is huge and deals with a lot of complicated cases, doesn't have OT staff capable of dealing with a patient with multiple conflicting issues. I may not be completely typical, but I'm not a unicorn by any means.
And it's not just me thinking that it's weird that they have a clinic entirely staffed by people who make and fit hand/thumb/wrist splints but no one who helps patients with hand problems figure out strategies for daily life issues?
On the plus side, that's two fewer appointments this month...
I've got PT at 10 this morning. I'm taking the bus to get there, but I might take a cab back. I would like to be able to do something after the appointment beyond collapsing and staring at the walls. Especially since there's still a chance that Cordelia's friends might come over for movie watching tonight.
I'm putting another thing on my to do list-- I need to write down the things I have trouble with, due to hand pain, so that I know exactly what things I want to address. The two catalogs I have only contain two useful looking adaptive devices, and we already own both. (Seriously, handle weighted silverware would be a terrible idea. I already have trouble with what we have weight-wise because chunky handles were in the year we got married. We got the lightest handles available, but they're heavy and unpleasantly thick. Oh, and apparently there's something terribly wrong with me that I find big things harder to grasp than thin things.) Most of the ones that might apply to my situation are aimed at food preparation and eating and look like they would make both infinitely harder than the pain does.
Yesterday also contained some school related WTF? in terms of PTO emails. At 8:00 a.m., they sent out a message announcing that they want to do a middle school fun night next week on Friday and need volunteers. At 2:30 that afternoon, they sent out a second message saying that they would have to cancel the fun night if they didn't get more volunteers immediately. School runs from 8:00 until 3:00. No parent would have had the opportunity to ask their child or children if they wanted to go. Almost all parents would have been at work during that window, too, and might not have access to personal email or personal calendars or time to consult with partners about plans or to set up babysitting for younger kids or... Well, it's seriously WTF? They couldn't wait twenty four hours for the second email? Or send out the initial announcement with more than 6.5 hours before their panic point?
Cordelia doesn't want to go. I rather expected that. I probably wouldn't have volunteered anyway because there's a chance I'm going to be wrecked by the time we get to evening that day. Also, I can't stand for long, can't do much with my hands, and generally can't do things right now. The jobs they were talking about needing to fill pretty much all involved two or three hours of standing.
Scott considered signing up because they want someone to run boardgames, but with Cordelia not going and with us not knowing what sort of state I'll be in, he decided it wasn't a good idea.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-14 04:18 pm (UTC)I don't need eating utensils. I don't need food preparation utensils. I know from experience that thicker pens/pencils hurt my hands in other ways and that anything that moves more easily than a ballpoint pen gets ink all over my fingers because of the grip I need to us to control the dratted thing. Once we got beyond those topics, she said there wasn't anything at all she could help with.