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So far this morning, I'm feeling pretty good. I might still end up with a headache later, but right now, that bit of me doesn't hurt. (Though I'm wondering if I can give myself a headache from stressing about potentially getting a headache in the same way that people can have panic attacks out of fear of having a panic attack. The situations would seem analogous.)
Scott was running very late yesterday morning, so he got me to Domino Farms at 7:25. The building wasn't supposed to open until 7:30, but people were going inside, so I did, too. By the time I found the clinic, there were people at the reception desks.
The first complication was that I was scheduled for a fasting blood draw at 7:50. They had that in their system. What they didn't have was any sort of order for specific tests. They also didn't have anyone authorized to decide what tests I ought to have.
At about 8:20, they took me back for the second of my three appointments. I knew that it was some sort of test and that they wanted me to be fasting and not to have exercised between getting up and having it done, but I didn't know what it was for or what it was called. A conversation with the technician made it clear to both him and me that this wasn't a test I actually needed or that would serve any purpose at all because scheduling had sent me to the wrong cardiology sub-unit.
I was dealing with metabolic cardiology which is entirely focused on weight loss. I wanted general cardiology because what I need is someone to look at my family history and order baseline tests of my cardiac function and more general circulatory function. My father had a quadruple bypass at 50. His father had a massive coronary at 51-53 (I'm figuring the window based on my father's age when his father's heart attack occurred and estimating how old my grandfather probably was when my father was born).
I was scheduled for some sort of test to measure how many calories I burn while at rest. That might be something to look at someday, but it really, really wasn't a useful place to start because it didn't address any of my concerns. My third appointment for the day was with a nutritionist.
So they canceled all of those appointments and managed to find me an appointment on the 16th of October (a cancellation slot) with someone in general cardiology.
The mix-up comes from my primary care doctor's habit of coding all appointments with me as 'metabolic disorder' because the insurance company gets cranky when she lists seventeen different codes to cover the list of things we actually discussed. Having that attached to the referral instead of a diagnosis of 'family history' shunted me into metabolic cardiology.
So I sent my doctor a patient portal message yesterday with a request that she dot the i's and cross the t's by sending a referral that contains the words 'family history.' Two of my insurers (the primary and the secondary) don't require physician referrals for specialist visits, but the folks in cardiology will be more comfortable with it.
I hope the message was coherent. I was functioning at just my bare minimum of coherence, having used a lot of my ability to communicate on the appointment and on getting home from the appointment. I was also pissed as hell, and my ability to moderate that goes when my headaches get bad.
After I had rescheduled, I took my pre-breakfast meds. One of them has to be taken 30 minutes before food (I had leftover ginger chicken that Scott had made and some carrots and a Dr Pepper). I wanted to eat before I tried getting the bus. There's a ban on eating and drinking on the bus (not unreasonable), so eating during the trip wasn't going to work. So I set an alarm for 30 minutes and started walking around. I thought I'd circle the building.
What I failed to realize is that the place isn't set up for pedestrians. Each end of the building abuts pasture. The first of those had a clearly marked electrified fence. I didn't see such signs on the second, but I also wasn't nearly as close to the fence. I ended up taking an hour and a half to circle the building, and much of that was added on time because of having to go around the pastures, too. There also weren't any sort of paths or sidewalks along the roads around the pastures, so I worried a good bit about traffic in places.
The Ingress stat for distance walked ticked over from 910 km to 915 km. Some of that may have been either on the bus trip home or the drive there, but most of it was probably me walking. I hacked and/or captured a bunch of new-to-me portals. There were some I could see and considered pursuing, but I really needed a restroom, and those portals would have taken me at least another ten minutes and were in the opposite direction from where I was certain I could find a bathroom.
The university bus stops at Domino Farms have no signs to indicate where they are. You have to ask or to already know. I asked the driver if there was a way for me to switch to the city bus, and he told me that he could stop at the park and ride lot out by 23. The bus I wanted stops there before turning back and heading into town, so that worked. I only had to wait about ten minutes, and the park and ride lot has a shelter with a bench. At 10:30 in the morning, no one else was waiting there.
The driver of the university bus reacted as if my question was unusual which surprises me. I suppose that there aren't that many people who want to make the switch that early in the route. Or maybe people don't generally ask the drivers about that sort of thing?
At any rate, being able to get the university bus from the park and ride lot makes using it more feasible than I had thought it was (my first look at the university bus route website left me with the impression that it didn't stop between the hospital and East Ann Arbor. Apparently I misunderstood). I'm not sure how long getting to the park and ride lot by city bus will take, but it shouldn't matter whether I get the A or the B route because both end there and both run their routes in the same length of time.
I spent a lot of time yesterday with the lights off because they made me feel worse. I took Tylenol then naproxen about three hours later. I also took both Amerge and Ativan. I suspect that the Ativan helped most. I also had some unsweetened black tea, just in case it was a caffeine problem.
Scott took Cordelia to choir registration. They were back much faster than I expected.
Scott was running very late yesterday morning, so he got me to Domino Farms at 7:25. The building wasn't supposed to open until 7:30, but people were going inside, so I did, too. By the time I found the clinic, there were people at the reception desks.
The first complication was that I was scheduled for a fasting blood draw at 7:50. They had that in their system. What they didn't have was any sort of order for specific tests. They also didn't have anyone authorized to decide what tests I ought to have.
At about 8:20, they took me back for the second of my three appointments. I knew that it was some sort of test and that they wanted me to be fasting and not to have exercised between getting up and having it done, but I didn't know what it was for or what it was called. A conversation with the technician made it clear to both him and me that this wasn't a test I actually needed or that would serve any purpose at all because scheduling had sent me to the wrong cardiology sub-unit.
I was dealing with metabolic cardiology which is entirely focused on weight loss. I wanted general cardiology because what I need is someone to look at my family history and order baseline tests of my cardiac function and more general circulatory function. My father had a quadruple bypass at 50. His father had a massive coronary at 51-53 (I'm figuring the window based on my father's age when his father's heart attack occurred and estimating how old my grandfather probably was when my father was born).
I was scheduled for some sort of test to measure how many calories I burn while at rest. That might be something to look at someday, but it really, really wasn't a useful place to start because it didn't address any of my concerns. My third appointment for the day was with a nutritionist.
So they canceled all of those appointments and managed to find me an appointment on the 16th of October (a cancellation slot) with someone in general cardiology.
The mix-up comes from my primary care doctor's habit of coding all appointments with me as 'metabolic disorder' because the insurance company gets cranky when she lists seventeen different codes to cover the list of things we actually discussed. Having that attached to the referral instead of a diagnosis of 'family history' shunted me into metabolic cardiology.
So I sent my doctor a patient portal message yesterday with a request that she dot the i's and cross the t's by sending a referral that contains the words 'family history.' Two of my insurers (the primary and the secondary) don't require physician referrals for specialist visits, but the folks in cardiology will be more comfortable with it.
I hope the message was coherent. I was functioning at just my bare minimum of coherence, having used a lot of my ability to communicate on the appointment and on getting home from the appointment. I was also pissed as hell, and my ability to moderate that goes when my headaches get bad.
After I had rescheduled, I took my pre-breakfast meds. One of them has to be taken 30 minutes before food (I had leftover ginger chicken that Scott had made and some carrots and a Dr Pepper). I wanted to eat before I tried getting the bus. There's a ban on eating and drinking on the bus (not unreasonable), so eating during the trip wasn't going to work. So I set an alarm for 30 minutes and started walking around. I thought I'd circle the building.
What I failed to realize is that the place isn't set up for pedestrians. Each end of the building abuts pasture. The first of those had a clearly marked electrified fence. I didn't see such signs on the second, but I also wasn't nearly as close to the fence. I ended up taking an hour and a half to circle the building, and much of that was added on time because of having to go around the pastures, too. There also weren't any sort of paths or sidewalks along the roads around the pastures, so I worried a good bit about traffic in places.
The Ingress stat for distance walked ticked over from 910 km to 915 km. Some of that may have been either on the bus trip home or the drive there, but most of it was probably me walking. I hacked and/or captured a bunch of new-to-me portals. There were some I could see and considered pursuing, but I really needed a restroom, and those portals would have taken me at least another ten minutes and were in the opposite direction from where I was certain I could find a bathroom.
The university bus stops at Domino Farms have no signs to indicate where they are. You have to ask or to already know. I asked the driver if there was a way for me to switch to the city bus, and he told me that he could stop at the park and ride lot out by 23. The bus I wanted stops there before turning back and heading into town, so that worked. I only had to wait about ten minutes, and the park and ride lot has a shelter with a bench. At 10:30 in the morning, no one else was waiting there.
The driver of the university bus reacted as if my question was unusual which surprises me. I suppose that there aren't that many people who want to make the switch that early in the route. Or maybe people don't generally ask the drivers about that sort of thing?
At any rate, being able to get the university bus from the park and ride lot makes using it more feasible than I had thought it was (my first look at the university bus route website left me with the impression that it didn't stop between the hospital and East Ann Arbor. Apparently I misunderstood). I'm not sure how long getting to the park and ride lot by city bus will take, but it shouldn't matter whether I get the A or the B route because both end there and both run their routes in the same length of time.
I spent a lot of time yesterday with the lights off because they made me feel worse. I took Tylenol then naproxen about three hours later. I also took both Amerge and Ativan. I suspect that the Ativan helped most. I also had some unsweetened black tea, just in case it was a caffeine problem.
Scott took Cordelia to choir registration. They were back much faster than I expected.