the_rck

It's been a long month. I've written a few posts and then not gotten around to posting them. At this point, I'd have to edit so extensively that it doesn't seem worth my time to make an effort to get those to the point of being postable.

( The disability review/appeal stuff )

Earlier this month, evalerie came over and provided help and moral support while Scott and I got everything out of the bathroom cupboards and I decided what to keep and what went where. I think we got rid of more than half of what was in there, possibly as much as 75% of it.

I now know where everything is in there, and our cleaning lady is no longer putting things I need in places I can't reach.

( The eye related stuff )

( Experimenting with workarounds for physical issues )

( Scott's )

I'm a little frustrated because I have a very small window of time when I'm alone in the house and can work on things I find physically difficult or can easily watch DVDs or listen to CDs or audiobooks. (No, headphones, earbuds, etc. are not an option.) The watching and listening thing is not helped by the fact that the CD/DVD drive on my laptop has decided to die. Judging by how it sounds and what happens, I suspect a mechanical failure.

( Computer stuff )

The bloodwork before my doctor's appointment last week shows that my A1c is up, so I'm going to have to work on that. Being able to go outside would help considerably. At this point, I can handle the bright light, but ice underfoot is still potentially an issue. I usually fall due to ice at least once each winter, and I would really rather avoid it if I can.

I have one exchange assignment still to complete. Chocolate Box 2020 is due on the 7th of February, and I've barely started writing. I have an unrevealed story in the Past Imperfect collection. I've also got a list of a dozen one shot WIP that I think I might be able to finish if I just give them a hard push for a few days. My current plan is to work on those rather than signing up for any other exchanges. I may take pinch hits or write treats, but I'd very much like to get these things done and posted.

I've gotten a couple of 'it's so sad this will never be finished' comments on Rheotaxis this month. It's made me look at it and wonder if I ever will go back to it. I know how it ends (I have a draft of a final chapter so I know where I'm aiming). I know what happens after. It's just been years since I worked on it. My style has changed a good bit, and I still don't know how to make that next chapter work.

I spent yesterday rereading an rp that hopeofdawn and I did years and years ago. It was a post-Rheotaxis thing, and I think it was a good story. We never finished it because the things we were interested in playing out diverged too much (I like writing claustrophobic discussion scenes, and she likes writing action scenes).

I'm a little tempted to see if I could pummel those chapters into something postable on AO3 or if Hope would be interested in working on it with me. I'm not sure it would work well because rp relies on the head hopping being okay. The scenes would lose a lot from being put into a single limited 3rd person POV, and I'm not good at putting that sort of thing into an omniscient 3rd. There are also gaps in the story that we left because they would have involved one person writing solo due to which characters each of us wrote.

I don't know if anyone would want to read that even if I did write it up. I don't know if I could come up with an ending that was even remotely satisfying.

I feel like there are a lot of interesting stories out there that don't end up archived because they're written as an rp narrative.

( Cut for length. Some discussion of health/anxiety/depression/pain and disability )

Please assume I haven't seen anything posted here since early August. I haven't even been opening the DreamWidth tab.

I've just spent a couple of hours sorting through papers and shredding about half of them. Every time I have doctor's appointment in the UMHS, they print a 4-8 page document that lists all my future appointments, all of my current medications, and whatever instructions and diagnoses I've acquired from the appointment. I don't have much use for them long term but would rather not recycle them unshredded, so they pile up for months/years.

I'm searching for a couple of receipts that I need to send to Aetna for reimbursement. At this point, I need to check the mostly inaccessible bottom shelf of the bookshelf where I keep receipts that need to be submitted. The shelves don't quite meet the back of the case, so single sheets of paper can slip through. The one I'm searching for is, of course, the one for the biggest expenditure. I have to find it today, but I think I'll take time to fill out the forms for the other four receipts now.

Lunch yesterday was difficult because my body was being very uncooperative. My hands were shaking to the point that I couldn't pass dishes or pour water. It's a forearm tremor that makes the hands move at the wrist. I've had issues with it for years when either very, very anxious or very, very exhausted. I took an Ativan when I noticed that it was happening. Well, a bit after. It took forever to get water, and I can't dry swallow. The Ativan didn't help the tremor much.

Scott's sister was adamant that we should order a group meal. She got kind of upset when Scott and I refused. She was sure that the food would be safe. Given how it was served, Scott and I could have eaten the hummus, the baba ghanooj, the bread, and the rice. Scott could have eaten the tabbouleh and the fatoush salad, as well, but I couldn't. Nothing on the large meat platter was safe for either of us.

I ended up getting a cup of lentil soup and a sandwich. Scott got a chicken saute that the manager said would be safe for his allergies. Anything grilled would have been risky because they grill everything on that same grill and use the same utensils. My main concern was not having any idea what herbs and spices would be on the meat.

The lentil soup was a bit of a gamble. I was hopeful that I was early enough in the day that anything unfortunate in terms of pepper or oregano wouldn't make me lose sleep. I ended up with too much raw garlic from the sandwich, even though I only ate half of it. I was still having minor problems from that nine hours later, so I had some vanilla ice cream right before bed, and that let me lie down.

On the plus side, I wasn't in much pain yesterday. Apparently, there's a level of exhaustion at which my body can't keep the muscles contracting. Sadly, at that point, I start having trouble moving without dropping, spilling, tripping, turning my ankle, wobbling, etc. I can still type when I'm like that, though, so there's that.

I finished writing the LTD stuff last night. I need to do some formatting and to add some phone numbers before I print it. I had Scott take a look at it, but he gave me zero comments on it, so that was less than helpful. My current plan is to try to get the whole packet to my psychiatrist either tomorrow or Friday.

Doing this paperwork has reminded me again that my calibration for pain and for things being wrong with my body is utterly and completely off by most standards. I don't consider pain to be anything but normal until it hits the level of impeding my ability to function. I don't tend to see anything as a real problem before that point. When I look at the 0-10 scale for pain, I look at the bottom and say, "But those aren't actually pain," and at the middle and top and say, "That's way, way too compressed."

I called my stepfather yesterday and left a voicemail. He called me back tonight. I was actually surprised that he returned the call. Then again, I get the impression that he's starting to realize that he's cut off from everybody but Mom. I don't know that he quite gets that Cordelia is too old now for him to really build a relationship with her. Maybe in another ten years, but high school age is a terrible time to try to start connecting across generations. Cordelia has certainly registered the fact that he didn't try before the last two to three years.

I really loathe dealing with Aetna member services. A call that should have been a five minute, yes or no thing took more than half an hour and left me without an answer. The person I talked to seems to have completely misunderstood what I was asking.

So I get to ask Cordelia's pediatrician to give us a referral for the blood tests the out of plan specialist ordered today. It's nothing very complicated. We're just trying to rule out underlying causes for ongoing fatigue before we write it off as a medication side effect. (Even though it probably is because it started when she started the medication several months ago.) None of the tests are things that ought to be controversial, just thyroid checks, vitamin levels (D, B12, and Ca2+), a comprehensive metabolic panel, and a CBCPD.

I was hoping that we could go to Taubman tomorrow for the blood draw because my parents could drop us off there on their way to Kellogg after lunch. Going on Friday will mean a bus trip. Going next week... Well, Cordelia won't be home until 4:15, so our options will be very limited. I think East Ann Arbor (not on the buses) does blood draws that late, but getting there would be nasty given construction and the time of day. Taubman's likely open until 5:00, but it's also awful to get to at that time of day. And I don't want to take Cordelia for a blood draw when she's dehydrated after more than 8 hours outside.

I don't think I'm going to manage the other urgent call today. I've got 40 minutes until that office closes, and I'm utterly fried. My head's hurting, and I want a hug and someone telling me that I did a good job to just get the Aetna call out of the way.

My sleep was only middling last night. I was stressed out at bedtime and didn't end up turning out the light until much later than usual because I wanted to unwind a bit. I used the c-PAP for part of the night. It had been my intention to use it all night, but I took it off in the middle of the night. I don't know why. I remember doing it and that it seemed important to do so, but I can't remember why.

I decided to make use of being up early to do a chore that I've been putting off for months. I pulled all of the books I've already read off the shelves in bedroom (two shopping bags filled to the top) and consolidated the other books as much as I could. I've dusted some of the shelves. I don't know that the dust quite made it to the dust bunny stage, but I at least had dust mice.

I want to clear enough space that I can have one shelf for library books. Having them in six different places isn't conducive to remembering to read them. I also want space for my thumb splints and some place level to land my laptop over night when I've been using it in there before bed.

I need to figure out what to do with the jigsaw puzzles. I like puzzles, but we don't really have a place for me to do them. Setting up a card table isn't really feasible for space reasons, not unless I'm going to finish the puzzle in a single afternoon while I'm home alone.

Scott scheduled today as a vacation day so that he could deal with two medical appointments. The way work schedules things, that means he has tonight off. Their book keeping considers third shift to be on the day that it starts rather than on the day it ends. This is partly so they can say that third shift works M-F instead of Tu-Sa. At any rate, his first appointment is at 11 and the second at either 2 or 3. Right now, the plan is for him to shower and then try to nap for an hour before the first appointment.

We need to wash Scott's work clothes today, and I'd like to change the sheets and run a load of laundry for us and maybe for Cordelia. I need to shower, too, and I'd like to nap if I can. Oh, and it's trash day. Great fun.

Tomorrow, my parents will be in town briefly because my step-father has an appointment about that growth in his eye. They suggested that we go to lunch. I'm pretty sure that they were hoping to see Cordelia, but they never did much to build a relationship with her, so she's got zero interest. She'd go along if she had nothing else going on, but she's not going to skip part of her volunteering in order to see them.

Scott gave me a ride to and from my appointment yesterday. I wouldn't have asked, but I was feeling really miserable due to cramping. He took the opportunity to pick up an interlibrary loan book that had come in for Cordelia.

My psychiatrist suggested that I try to find some sort of online, at home work to earn money to help while we're financially strapped. I'm looking at that as a huge can of worms. There's not a lot I'm able to do because of not being able to commit to regular hours or even to a set number in a week. Also, most of the online work options aren't things I'd be good at or aren't things that my anxiety would permit.

I'm also concerned about the possibility that earning money, even sporadically, might affect my disability status with either Social Security or my long term disability insurance through my former employer. The LTD insurer is always looking for any hint that I might not be disabled. I might be able to work for a while before I wrecked myself, and that might well be long enough to lose the LTD insurance payments and the medical insurance that goes along with the money.

My writing might be marketable, but I think that would wreck me, too, because there'd need to be a lot of it, and I'd need to figure out how to sell it and work at making sure that people saw it and... I'd stay awake all night worrying that I had or hadn't done something that would just wreck everything. Also, the sort of writing that might bring in money within any sort of helpful time frame would likely be some sort of ebook porn short stories. I can write porn. Sometimes. I can even write it quickly. Sometimes. I just... I write dark and complicated, and sometimes, I can't write at all for days or even weeks.

My psychiatrist also said that, if I'm still exhausted the next time I see her, we can talk about stimulants because insurers will cover them for people with sleep apnea who have been using a c-PAP for at least two months. I'm not entirely optimistic. Provigil (modafinil) didn't help me at all, and I suspect that caffeine has more of a psychological effect for me than a physiological one. Well, if I've recently had caffeine, sleeping is harder because I have to get up to pee every twenty minutes, but I'm not sure that counts.

It's frustrating that she's the only medical professional I'm dealing with who understands that the things that the other doctors are worried about all derive at least in part from fatigue/exhaustion and from anxiety and pain making sleep difficult. And each of those things makes all of the others worse.

I did some edits on my second Pod Together fic yesterday, all things that my partner requested. I'm hoping that the changed text will be easier to read. I still need to do one check on the pronunciation of the name of a minor character. I think I remember how it was pronounced, but I don't want to rely on that.

I also wrote about four hundred words on chapter 7 of Auguries of Innocence. I need to go back to the early part of the chapter to lay some groundwork for the things that just occurred to me as necessary. It's all about a character who hasn't been in any of the previous chapters, so I don't need to tweak anything earlier in the story. (This is an advantage of using point of view characters who don't think the way that most people do, Draco because he's unmoored in time, and Luna because she never did.)

Cordelia’s PT yesterday involved a lot of exercise rather than just stretching and loosening the muscles in her thigh. Her PT homework is also aimed more at strengthening this time than at stretching. The therapist asked her where she stands on surgery. She says she hasn’t decided yet but that she very much doesn’t want this to happen again. She is pretty adamant that she doesn’t want the more extreme surgery, but I think that, if her aunt says it’s a good idea, we might talk Cordelia into it.

The insurance company tells us that our out of pocket for the basic surgery will be $1000. If we do the more extreme version, it will be $2000. We’re not telling Cordelia that because she will panic. Right now, we’re thinking to draw the money out of an investment account that Scott’s parents set up for Cordelia when she was born. I don’t know how much is in there or what the penalties will be for pulling money out before she’s of age, but… This really needs doing.

I’m still waiting to hear back from the choir teacher at Skyline about potential accommodations at Interlochen camp if Cordelia’s on zero weight bearing or even just using crutches when camp time arrives. Not being able to bend her leg will likely be a transportation issue as it’s unlikely that the buses they’ll be using have seats that will allow for that without her either sticking her leg into the aisle or taking up multiple seats. It’s a four hour-ish drive up to camp, so I’m not willing to ask Scott’s parents to drive her up and back (and they are often out of state during August anyway).

One nice thing— The forms for camp specifically say that cabins will be assigned by a child’s ‘consistently asserted gender identity,’ and there’s an option to request a gender neutral cabin. I’m more than a bit off put by the other cabin options because ‘all biologically’ male or female sounds exclusionary. Does that mean that trans and agender and so on kids are only allowed in gender neutral cabins? But the form asks about gender identity with a fill in the blank and doesn’t ask if the child is trans. Cordelia checked no preference on the cabin options. She says she won’t be fussed unless she’s stuck with only boys.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t check off all of my dailies on Habitica yesterday. I haven’t opened the site to look yet. I think, if I did miss, it would be two dailies and not more than that.

I’m making slow progress on deleting my LJ entries (I’ve promised not to delete entirely until mid-May). I’ve just got 2016 and 2017 left, but that’s more than nine hundred posts.

I’m now scheduled for OT again, starting tomorrow morning. The location isn’t particularly convenient, but I should be able to get the A-Ride for it because it’s definitely not on the #22 or #23 route. It’s on the other side of town entirely. I’m not sure what that particular bus route is called now; it used to be the #6. My current plan for tomorrow is the A-Ride to OT then walking two blocks to the stop for the AAATA shuttle that runs from Wolverine Tower to central campus. My appointment at UHS is two hours after my OT appointment is scheduled to end, so even if I have to deal with bureaucratic nonsense afterward, I should have more than enough time. I’ll pack a lunch to carry with me so that I can eat while I wait for the bus.

Okay. Time to call and schedule the A-Ride. They should be open for business now.

Yesterday, the forms for my annual long-term disability review came in. This is the LTD I have through my former employer, and they’ve always been more difficult to deal with than Social Security. I’m going to have to get the medical form to my psychiatrist so that she can fill it out. My next scheduled appointment with her is after the deadline.

There’s a longish form that I was supposed to fill out by hand and really couldn’t, not with the osteoarthritis, so I typed the questions into a document and then typed my answers. Typing is infinitely less painful than trying to use a pen/pencil. I thought about waiting until Monday to call and ask if they have the forms online so that I could type my answers that way, but I knew that waiting would mean worsening anxiety, so I wrote a draft of my answers last night. I’m letting it sit right now so that I can go back and add things that slipped my mind.

I considered having Scott write answers I dictated, but there was so very little space on the paper for my answers. For example, "Please provide us with a detailed description of your present illness or injury. Please list all physical and/or psychiatric/psychological symptoms, complaints, limitations." has three lines on the form, and I have twelve different things I need to list and detail. Each of those would take at least two lines and likely more.

Not counting the form and DW/LJ posts and emails, I did no writing yesterday. I just couldn’t focus enough to manage even a single sentence on We Are Where We Began, and opening something else seemed too hard.

We intended to go to the bank yesterday morning to move some money from Cordelia’s account to ours to cover some of the medical stuff for her, but we completely forgot. Scott thinks next weekend will be soon enough.

Cordelia’s got an orchestra concert this week, one with orchestras from all the local middle schools. She’s getting together with some friends for a couple of hours this afternoon to practice. Because her school is small, they’ll be performing with the other tiny middle school rather than on their own. Cordelia’s class went to the other school once, and the kids from the other school came here once. Cordelia says they sound really good together. The teacher for the other school’s orchestra is the woman who taught Cordelia in sixth and seventh grades.

Scott ended up getting home 35 minutes before we needed to be at the dentist. He called to say he was on his way about two minutes before I had intended to call a cab. Both Scott and Cordelia are cavity free, but the hygienist thinks Cordelia’s not doing a good job flossing.

We stopped at the downtown library long enough to return a few things and to pick up my holds.

I slept badly last night. I was simply too warm and kept waking up. I didn’t get back to sleep after Scott got up. By the time I could have, it was too close to when I had to get up. I’ve had a sore throat all day, too. It’s the type where it hurts to swallow rather than a true sore throat, but it worries me a bit.

Scott’s father came at 10:00 to put some shelves in under Cordelia’s window. That took about an hour and a half. He and Cordelia have now headed north for cookie decorating.

I’m trying to figure out what to do for lunch. We’re pretty low on easy to prepare food, and there’s a limit to how much cheese I’m willing to eat. I’d order something delivered, but I think Scott and I will be eating out tonight, so that seems unwise. I want to be cautious about what I eat for lunch so that I can lie down after.

Our pharmacy called yesterday to say that we don’t currently have valid prescription coverage. Scott is making inquiries at HR about that because we ought to have coverage. Maybe there’s new information we need or something. I will need to call the pharmacy to see if they still have my secondary prescription insurance on file. I’m pretty sure that that would cover the medication as it’s a commonly prescribed generic.

Yesterday’s appointment was with the gynecologist to see how I’m doing without the IUD. We concluded that we really can’t tell yet, so she wants me back in six months. The nurse tried three times to get my blood pressure and couldn’t manage it. I pointed out that I had my blood pressure taken last week when I saw the genetics counseling people. That number was in the shared records, and it having radically changed in the last nine days seemed pretty unlikely. The doctor decided that that was good enough. I suspect that the fact that I have never once in forty nine years had a higher reading than mid-range normal was also a factor. They have records on me going back to 1985.

Oh, and apparently 0-1 drinks of an alcoholic nature per year is considered the same as not drinking at all.

I had to go down into the basement of UHS to find the business office because they were insisting that I pay a $50 copay. That $50 is what Aetna requires, but Medicare and Blue Care generally pick up enough that I don’t need to pay anything at all. And, right at the moment, UHS owes me eighty some dollars that they’ve collected from me and shouldn’t have.

It was rainy enough when I got done with the appointment that I didn’t mind going straight home quite as much as I would have. Most of the portals near UHS were already held by our team, so I reinforced the ones I had time to get to before the cab came.

I got home before Cordelia did but only by about two minutes. She only had one friend over rather than the two I expected. The girls watched Once Upon a Time while I stayed in my bedroom with my laptop. I was feeling moderately awful most of the afternoon with gas and other intestinal issues. I got a little bit done on my UCon game anyway.

My thumb is still giving me trouble. Picking up my laptop or a basket of laundry hurts like hell, so I’m trying to find work-arounds. Both heat and cold make the ache decrease, so I’m alternating.

( To do list )

Should I sign up for NaNo? I’m 95% sure that I can’t write 50000 words during November, but trying might be worthwhile. I don’t know. I also like the idea of social support for writing, but I’m not sure I’d do anything with it.

I’m also wondering if there would actually be interest in a community for writers of darkfic (and if I’d actually be together enough to be able to moderate such a group given how fraught it could be.). It would need mandatory cut tags, I suspect, and fairly robust tagging.