(no subject)

[the_rck]

I’m horrified by the election results and pretty scared. Our continuing to live where and how we do depends on adding my disability payments and Cordelia’s Social Security money (which is based on my disability) to Scott’s salary, and we’re kind of on a shoestring with that. There’s a little give, but it’s not nearly as much as we’d like. I really do need Medicare, too, to keep our budget afloat. There’s a lot of stuff that our primary insurance won’t pay for at an affordable level (not my medications, thank goodness, but still). I don’t think that leaving the country is an option for us. I’m psychiatrically and physically disabled, and Scott’s effectively a low skills worker in a field that will likely last just long enough to see him to retirement.

And, you know, we’re less at risk than a lot of other people. We’re white, cis, het (married!), and culturally Christian. I’m still more scared of this than I was after the biopsy came back last year.

At least I managed to sleep. I stayed up past midnight but couldn’t bear to watch any election coverage. My hope was to get stuff done on my game, but I failed on that. I mostly searched AO3 for fic that would distract me and failed to find anything much I wanted to read. I knew I'd have to take an Ativan, and I rather suspect that's the only reason I slept.

The medical appointment yesterday turned out to be with a physician’s assistant who didn’t want to talk about the tendonitis at all but who set me up to see my primary care doctor next week and ordered a blood draw and a stool sample. I’ll have to go back down there today to take that last in. His suspicion is that I’ve had an infection of some sort for a while and gave it to Scott who got over it quickly. I’m not entirely convinced because, up until the beginning of this month, there was always a reason I could point to for my symptoms.

The blood test was all normal except for a high sed rate which is consistent with inflammation/tendonitis in multiple locations. I don’t want to take naproxen regularly for this because I’m worried that will make the intestinal problems worse, and every single other NSAID I’ve tried has had worse side effects than that.

Yesterday’s blood draw wasn’t quite as traumatic as the previous two, but it wasn’t fun. The first vein refused to give any blood at all. It didn’t even bleed when she pulled the needle out. The second vein gave us just barely enough. I asked what would happen if that had failed given that we can’t use my other arm and my hand on that side is still painful from the blood draw ten days ago. She said they’d send me to Taubman or the Cancer Center for the blood draw. I pointed out that Taubman was where it took three pokes and that the Cancer Center had taken two. I really have no idea. I’m well hydrated, and I make sure to drink extra in the twenty minutes before a blood draw (I did an extra 32 oz yesterday).

The technician said that the problem with the first vein was scar tissue. I’m at a loss as to how that could be because I spent thirty years having all my blood draws from my other arm. It’s only the last year that I’ve needed the right arm for it, and I haven’t had that many pokes in the last fifteen months. Slightly more than in an average year but that amounts to one or two more.

So, for game preparation today, I need to write a bit on all six characters, make some notes about what certain powers can do, just in case I get players who don’t know, and assign spells to the two characters who have them. The spells created by the game writers are scattered. I found them in five different places across two books, and the book indexes are lousy and tend not to index the things that someone would actually be likely to need. For example, there are a few index entries under the term 'Shadow,' but not a single one of those links to the rules for a player character to spend points on purchasing a Shadow which is actually what I would expect people to need to find most often.

My current plan is to write as much on the game as I can today and then print some time tomorrow.

I’ve made my packing list for the convention. I’ll actually pack tomorrow evening.

I need to make a shopping list for Scott of food to take to the convention. He wanted me to shop with him, but that’s currently out of the question. I can’t walk that far/long until the tendonitis goes away.

I have to look online to make sure a specific local restaurant will be open the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I have to find out how much it will cost for me and Cordelia to stay at a hotel near Lawton for a few nights between Christmas and New Year and how much it will cost for us to get there and/or back by train if Scott’s not available (he has two vacation days left). I need to call my sister and find out the exact dates she and her family will be in Michigan, so that Scott knows which days to ask for so that he can spend time with them, too.

I also need/want to come up with something useful I can do politically that doesn’t require making phone calls, driving, leaving the house, or spending money. My representative to the state house, my state senator, my federal senators, and my representative in the federal house all pretty much vote the way I’d like them to, and I don’t see that me writing to other people’s elected officials is actually likely to do anything but waste paper. I vote in every election that I’m able, including primaries and things that are just ballot proposals. (I missed an election last year while I was doing radiation, but the only thing on the ballot was the person I’d voted for in the primary for city council running unopposed. I think that’s a case where my vote really wouldn’t have mattered. If it had, I’d have jumped through the bureaucratic hoops to vote absentee.)

Comments

[maramcreates]

<3

[retsuko]

*hugs*

[wendelah1]

((hugs))

Amnesty International has letter-writing campaigns for political prisoners. Other than that, given your level of disability and stamina, just voting regularly is a lot.

[syderia]

*hugs*

[the_rck]

Thanks.

[nucleosides.livejournal.com]

The election results horrify me too.

[the_rck]

::hugs:: all around.