(no subject)
Apr. 25th, 2021 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI'm going to try to update here more frequently and with something more than fic announcements and media logging (and I'm behind on the media logging). I think that part of me not posting has been me feeling like I have nothing to say that isn't depressing. Part of it is, also, very definitely, that writing about the things that stress me out makes me upset.
And not in the 'it will be better after I get it out' way.
Scott and I are fully vaccinated with the second dose having happened on the 7th of April. Cordelia has her second dose on the 1st of May.
Scott and I drove an hour each way, crossing state lines into Ohio, for our vaccine. The folks running the site said they were getting a lot of people doing that. The main drawback was that we had to photograph our vaccination cards and send the image to our doctors rather than having the vaccination site able to put it into our state's database.
We decided not to have Cordelia attempt to go back to in person classes. She'd have only 3-4 weeks of face to face classes, and the in-person stuff is logistically complicated. Horrifyingly so. Some of those logistical challenges will affect Cordelia anyway because the day to day schedules are getting changed for everyone in order to keep the same instructional duration (by minute count) while avoiding people eating lunch at school.
I'm not sure what percentage of high school students in the district will be doing the face to face stuff. The teachers are going to have an awful time because they'll have to simultaneously teach online and in classroom which will, I suspect, be harder than teaching in classroom and online at different times. At any rate, the students will be in three groups-- entirely online, A group, and B group. A group and B group will never be at school at the same time; each will be virtual when the other group is physically at school. Each class will have a morning session and an afternoon session. The afternoon session will be virtual for everyone.
Cordelia has decided to go to Michigan State. This will be harder financially speaking but should still be doable. The financial aid office is expecting us to borrow about $11K a year and Cordelia to borrow $2-3K a year. Eastern would have covered about 2/3 of Cordelia's tuition, room, and board, but Cordelia has decided that she wants the options State offers. Eastern would head her for a teacher certificate, and she doesn't want to teach. She wants to be a school counselor. Right now, she's hoping for psychology major, undergraduate, with education as a grad school option.
Cordelia and I are trying not to talk about college things when Scott's not around. This is difficult because she wants reassurance around 11 p.m., two hours after Scott goes to bed but well before I do. The thing is that the approachs that would help me make her more anxious, and the things that make her anxious are difficult for me to understand. I get the weight of the anxiety, just not anything that will let me help, so I tend to get more upset as she does.
Cordelia's next try at the driver's license test will happen two days after her 18th birthday. I pushed for earlier, but she and Scott resisted both practicing and scheduling. I think that the scheduling actually happened when I pointed out that it would be better to pay for a license rather than for a state I.D. when she turns 18 and then a license later. She has to have one or the other for several things that we need to do before she goes to college.
The A-Ride people approved my card renewal. They also told me that, next time, I won't need to get the medical half of the form filled out. My disabilities are now clearly things that will only get worse rather than having the potential to change for the better. This is... Getting the medical half of the forms dealt with is a PITA, but I'm also unhappy to have to look directly at my increasing disability.
I know that it's there, and I've talked (very briefly) to Scott about it. We can't do much about it right now because I adamantly don't want to include Cordelia in the discussions. I don't want her to think there's a reason for her not to go away for college or that she will need to come back here afterward.
My hands are bad. All of my joints hurt. The foods I can eat without getting sick within the next 24 hours have a smaller and smaller overlap with things that I can prepare and/or eat without help. I drop things and bump into things constantly. My pain levels are high, and my options for relief are near to non-existent.
The city is going to be doing work on Plymouth Rd this summer. This means that I won't have access to the bus that I'd normally take for all of my medical appointments. The construction will either add about an hour to my bus trip for such things or require me to walk a good bit further than I'm currently able to.
Scott and I talked briefly about what we do when the day arrives that I need a chair/scooter. There's no way to get such a thing in and out of the house without rebuilding one or more of the exterior walls in order to widen one of the doors. Scott thinks maybe he could build a shed in the backyard, but I pointed out that that wouldn't provide a way to charge the battery of a scooter.
I'm very worried about the costs of the help I'm going to need, going forward. I'm not even sure what that help would look like or who to talk to in order to find out. None of the medical people I've talked to have considered that part of their job, not even to the extent of suggesting agencies or support groups or, well, anything. My needs aren't simple; about the only solution I can come up with that would actually work is us suddenly having twice the income we currently do.
I want to try to get some sort of foldable, light weight, wheeled seat that I can take with me when I go out walking. Concern about needing to sit down and not having any place to do so stops me from going out for even short walks. Right now, I'm not even sure about being able to walk to the bus stops without the option of a place to sit, and the route that won't be inaccessible due to construction doesn't have a bench at any of the stops within even my best case walking distance.
I want to talk to a physical therapist about options in that direction, but that needs to wait until I can safely do so.
I think the bursitis in my left knee has gone, but I've also been very careful to avoid all of the things that put pressure on the outside of that knee. The thing that started it was me getting into bed by putting that knee on the mattress and then rolling it sideways as part of levering myself in. At this point, I've trained myself to put my left foot on the mattress first. It's challenging due to the height of the bed (about hip level on me because I'm short).
I want to avoid sitting on the edge of the bed as a method of getting into bed because we desperately need to replace the foam block on my side (we have a bed with two air bladders, each surrounded by a rectangle of foam blocks). If that block gets too much more damaged, the risk that I'll fall out of bed will go up immensely. We've looked into replacement, but we can't get just the part we need; we'd have to go for the whole mattress.
I'm scheduled for a colonoscopy next month. The difficulty is that the preparation solution stuff isn't available. The manufacturer isn't producing the normal quantities. Right now, I'm thinking that I need to reschedule as I really don't want to stop taking naproxen and my multivitamin for two weeks for a procedure that might not happen. I asked the gastroenterologist about other options, but she was adamant that this was the way to go. I need to ask again because there's no chance at all that I can get the stuff between now and my appointment.
I've told Scott that we need to do some sort of couples counseling around how we deal with my disability because the ways we're currently handling it aren't emotionally sustainable for either of us. We just can't do it until either Cordelia moves out or we can go to appointments in person, leaving her at home. Some of the problem is communication styles (Scott was raised in ask communication whereas I was raised with offer), and some of the problem is how much of our life he's going to be carrying and how unfair it is to both of us. I don't think that any of that is stuff we can manage without help.
And not in the 'it will be better after I get it out' way.
Scott and I are fully vaccinated with the second dose having happened on the 7th of April. Cordelia has her second dose on the 1st of May.
Scott and I drove an hour each way, crossing state lines into Ohio, for our vaccine. The folks running the site said they were getting a lot of people doing that. The main drawback was that we had to photograph our vaccination cards and send the image to our doctors rather than having the vaccination site able to put it into our state's database.
We decided not to have Cordelia attempt to go back to in person classes. She'd have only 3-4 weeks of face to face classes, and the in-person stuff is logistically complicated. Horrifyingly so. Some of those logistical challenges will affect Cordelia anyway because the day to day schedules are getting changed for everyone in order to keep the same instructional duration (by minute count) while avoiding people eating lunch at school.
I'm not sure what percentage of high school students in the district will be doing the face to face stuff. The teachers are going to have an awful time because they'll have to simultaneously teach online and in classroom which will, I suspect, be harder than teaching in classroom and online at different times. At any rate, the students will be in three groups-- entirely online, A group, and B group. A group and B group will never be at school at the same time; each will be virtual when the other group is physically at school. Each class will have a morning session and an afternoon session. The afternoon session will be virtual for everyone.
Cordelia has decided to go to Michigan State. This will be harder financially speaking but should still be doable. The financial aid office is expecting us to borrow about $11K a year and Cordelia to borrow $2-3K a year. Eastern would have covered about 2/3 of Cordelia's tuition, room, and board, but Cordelia has decided that she wants the options State offers. Eastern would head her for a teacher certificate, and she doesn't want to teach. She wants to be a school counselor. Right now, she's hoping for psychology major, undergraduate, with education as a grad school option.
Cordelia and I are trying not to talk about college things when Scott's not around. This is difficult because she wants reassurance around 11 p.m., two hours after Scott goes to bed but well before I do. The thing is that the approachs that would help me make her more anxious, and the things that make her anxious are difficult for me to understand. I get the weight of the anxiety, just not anything that will let me help, so I tend to get more upset as she does.
Cordelia's next try at the driver's license test will happen two days after her 18th birthday. I pushed for earlier, but she and Scott resisted both practicing and scheduling. I think that the scheduling actually happened when I pointed out that it would be better to pay for a license rather than for a state I.D. when she turns 18 and then a license later. She has to have one or the other for several things that we need to do before she goes to college.
The A-Ride people approved my card renewal. They also told me that, next time, I won't need to get the medical half of the form filled out. My disabilities are now clearly things that will only get worse rather than having the potential to change for the better. This is... Getting the medical half of the forms dealt with is a PITA, but I'm also unhappy to have to look directly at my increasing disability.
I know that it's there, and I've talked (very briefly) to Scott about it. We can't do much about it right now because I adamantly don't want to include Cordelia in the discussions. I don't want her to think there's a reason for her not to go away for college or that she will need to come back here afterward.
My hands are bad. All of my joints hurt. The foods I can eat without getting sick within the next 24 hours have a smaller and smaller overlap with things that I can prepare and/or eat without help. I drop things and bump into things constantly. My pain levels are high, and my options for relief are near to non-existent.
The city is going to be doing work on Plymouth Rd this summer. This means that I won't have access to the bus that I'd normally take for all of my medical appointments. The construction will either add about an hour to my bus trip for such things or require me to walk a good bit further than I'm currently able to.
Scott and I talked briefly about what we do when the day arrives that I need a chair/scooter. There's no way to get such a thing in and out of the house without rebuilding one or more of the exterior walls in order to widen one of the doors. Scott thinks maybe he could build a shed in the backyard, but I pointed out that that wouldn't provide a way to charge the battery of a scooter.
I'm very worried about the costs of the help I'm going to need, going forward. I'm not even sure what that help would look like or who to talk to in order to find out. None of the medical people I've talked to have considered that part of their job, not even to the extent of suggesting agencies or support groups or, well, anything. My needs aren't simple; about the only solution I can come up with that would actually work is us suddenly having twice the income we currently do.
I want to try to get some sort of foldable, light weight, wheeled seat that I can take with me when I go out walking. Concern about needing to sit down and not having any place to do so stops me from going out for even short walks. Right now, I'm not even sure about being able to walk to the bus stops without the option of a place to sit, and the route that won't be inaccessible due to construction doesn't have a bench at any of the stops within even my best case walking distance.
I want to talk to a physical therapist about options in that direction, but that needs to wait until I can safely do so.
I think the bursitis in my left knee has gone, but I've also been very careful to avoid all of the things that put pressure on the outside of that knee. The thing that started it was me getting into bed by putting that knee on the mattress and then rolling it sideways as part of levering myself in. At this point, I've trained myself to put my left foot on the mattress first. It's challenging due to the height of the bed (about hip level on me because I'm short).
I want to avoid sitting on the edge of the bed as a method of getting into bed because we desperately need to replace the foam block on my side (we have a bed with two air bladders, each surrounded by a rectangle of foam blocks). If that block gets too much more damaged, the risk that I'll fall out of bed will go up immensely. We've looked into replacement, but we can't get just the part we need; we'd have to go for the whole mattress.
I'm scheduled for a colonoscopy next month. The difficulty is that the preparation solution stuff isn't available. The manufacturer isn't producing the normal quantities. Right now, I'm thinking that I need to reschedule as I really don't want to stop taking naproxen and my multivitamin for two weeks for a procedure that might not happen. I asked the gastroenterologist about other options, but she was adamant that this was the way to go. I need to ask again because there's no chance at all that I can get the stuff between now and my appointment.
I've told Scott that we need to do some sort of couples counseling around how we deal with my disability because the ways we're currently handling it aren't emotionally sustainable for either of us. We just can't do it until either Cordelia moves out or we can go to appointments in person, leaving her at home. Some of the problem is communication styles (Scott was raised in ask communication whereas I was raised with offer), and some of the problem is how much of our life he's going to be carrying and how unfair it is to both of us. I don't think that any of that is stuff we can manage without help.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-15 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-15 07:51 am (UTC)I have finally, 3 months after I needed it, managed to fill the prescription for the Golytely prep. I figured I could stick it on the shelf and have it.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 04:36 pm (UTC)https://www.annarborcil.org/
I'm now fully vaccinated and my two weeks for immunity to build ends on Friday, so I can help run errands or help drive after that. Also Corbin is temporarily away, so I have some free time if needed.
Big hugs!!
no subject
Date: 2021-07-15 07:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-15 01:57 pm (UTC)I live near there and could pop in and see if they are open if you'd like. Just let me know.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 09:17 pm (UTC)I am going through a lot of the same things with Emma going off to college in the fall, too, and also dealing with deteriorating health without a diagnosis (and, thus, no avenue for treatment or accommodations at work).
I am here to commiserate with you.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-15 07:54 am (UTC)Part of me really doesn't want Cordelia to go, and part of me wants to push her out the door faster. I don't want her in the house when I really talk to Scott about the long term health probabilities.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-15 10:43 am (UTC)I am just so grateful to have found a doc who is willing to treat symptoms in the absence of a diagnosis. It's a game changer.
I am anxious about how Emma leaving is going to be a hard adjustment for Fiona, but I'm hoping it will be a quick one.