the_rck

I took a bad fall yesterday. I tripped over my laptop power cord as I was getting up to head for the kitchen to prepare food. I went down hard on both knees with a twist to both feet. It took me about five minutes to manage to get up (and, of course, it happened less than an hour after Scott left for work). My left leg took the brunt of it and is pretty badly bruised. My right ankle and foot are still cranky, but it's fading. There's no visible bruising, but I am getting swelling on my left leg an inch or so below the knee and down.

We got some new Ace bandages earlier this week, and I ended up using both of them at once. We're ordering more because I kind of needed at least one more. I can't wrap my knee or anything above my knee because even things that are meant for knees slide down rapidly; the best I've gotten is to have something stay in place for long enough to go down the basement stairs to deal with laundry but not for coming back upstairs.

Yesterday, I still managed to feed myself and to get dressed, and today is slightly better. If I have unexpected problems, I have someone to call. I'd rather wait until after 5 p.m. to call her, but that's less than two hours away right now, and I'm not expecting to need her (she knows about this; Scott let her know yesterday so I'd have help if I needed it. At that point, I had no idea how things were going to go).

( Cut for discussion of covid )

So it's been a while since I last posted. I don't have any good reasons for that. Mostly it's that my attention span is kind of shot. I've half-written a lot of posts and then forgotten to finish or to post.

I've done a fair amount of writing, mostly things either as yet unrevealed or still in the anonymous period. I've got one story to finish by the end of the month and another due in the first week of December. Yuletide will be due not long after that, and while I have a solid idea, I haven't started writing yet.

I would like to write and post more than that by the end of the year, but I don't know that it will happen.

I'm still trying to figure out the right sleep/wake schedule for me so that I don't interfere with Cordelia's classes and choir rehearsals and so that I actually eat more than dried fruit, cheese, and almonds. The only good place for Cordelia to work is the dining room table, and me being in the kitchen is sometimes a problem for her since they're effectively the same room.

My hands, particularly the right hand, have been worse. My left knee has some weird thing going on, too, but that's only an issue if I kneel or otherwise put pressure around the kneecap. Then it feels a lot like a really deep rug-burn on top of a not quite healed burn.

Two weeks ago, we spent a day in the ER because I had bad vertigo. The triage nurse I talked to wanted me checked for a stroke. Nine hours later, they sent me home with instructions to keep doing the Epley maneuver and a warning that that might make things seem worse for a while but was still necessary.

I'm still having issues any time I tilt my head forward or back or to either side. Rolling over in bed is an issue, but at least there's no risk that will make me drop anything or fall.

My sister spent a lot of time telling me that it must be POTS. I pointed out that inner ear issues make more sense for the current acute symptoms.

She also maintains that I don't have anxiety. I just have physiological issues with my body being hair-trigger about adrenaline and such. In her opinion, that's not anxiety because it's not disordered thinking or PTSD. I told her that I don't see a functional difference between my body triggering my brain to panic and my brain triggering my body to panic. The external symptoms are the same. The situations that cause issues are the same.

I can't get useful treatment on either side, and I rather think that anxiety is more like headache or gas or nausea. It's a symptom that can be caused by many things and that can cause other problems. My sister thinks that 'anxiety' is like the flu or a broken bone, a condition with definite boundaries and meaning. It's not.

My sister's trying to say that I'm not mentally ill in a way that comes across to me as a judgment about physical illness being more acceptable. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't even realize that she's doing it. Her physiological explanation fits my symptoms, but that doesn't mean that I don't have anxiety.

I don't think she understood why I was angry with her about it. Why I'm still angry about it.

I've taken a couple of long walks in the last couple of months and a couple of shorter ones. I don't know that I'll be going out much in the next few months because I'm feeling the cold much more this year than in the last few years. This is about how I always used to feel normally in the winter, so I'm assuming that my body's settling toward full menopause. It's a little annoying to have the perimenopause overheating stop in October/November rather than, say, March or April or any time in the summer.

Cordelia has been accepted at all three schools to which she applied. At this point, we're waiting to find out about financial aid offers and about what her best friend plans to do. Her best friend is waiting to hear from the University of Michigan; if she goes there, Cordelia may choose to go to Eastern (which will, I suspect, offer the best aid package). If the friend doesn't get into U of M, they may both go to Michigan State since they've both been accepted there.

From Cordelia's point of view, the three schools she's looking at are about equal. She's interested in teaching or possibly being a school counselor or other educational support type. She's not clear on what all of the options are, and she needs a chance to explore the different options for it. Eastern, Western, and State all have decent education programs.

UCon was last weekend and entirely online. Scott was busy throughout. He ran several games, played in others, and did some ops shifts. I ran a game on Saturday that went well. The game I'd offered on Friday got no players, so I'll offer it again next year. I didn't play anything because I was fairly sure that I'd find figuring it all out too stressful to be fun.

I can't handle too many new things all at once, and I gave priority to being able to run events because I enjoy that more and have less opportunity to do it.

Scott's sister is putting heavy pressure on us to do an in person Thanksgiving. She says they'll do it 'however you need in order to be comfortable' but isn't accepting 'Zoom call' as our answer. We're not bending on this, though.

Scott's father helped him build a ramp off of the back porch. The steps that were back there had started crumbling from the inside and were prone to breaking under anyone who put weight in the wrong place. Scott thinks that a ramp will be easier for me, long term, and easier to keep ice-free once we have snow.

The library has closed again. I'm not sure how long it will be closed this time. Right now, they're saying at least until November 30th, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's longer. I have several books that I haven't touched, and having more time is a relief (especially in light of writing deadlines), but there are several holds waiting for me that I had been really looking forward to reading. Getting those via Overdrive will take at least two months and, in some cases, longer.

I keep thinking that I'll get my feet under me and manage to deal with life well enough to get back to posting here regularly. Then something else smacks me.

I've had four PT appointments for my knee so far. We're trying a lot of different exercises because it's really hard for me to be my hamstrings to do anything at all without making the knee worse or getting my quadriceps very sore. We also haven't found anything that works for stretching my calf muscles. We spent most of today's appointment on that.

While Scott was driving home from work on the 17th, the car spun out and went into a ditch. He was a long way from help, so we're lucky that the car could still be driven. (He called the insurance; they said that staying and calling the police wasn't necessary since no other vehicles were involved and since nothing but the car was damaged.)

The back end of the car was smashed in. The rear window shattered. The trunk crumpled and couldn't be closed. The repair estimate came to $9000, so the insurance declared the car totaled. They'll give us $13000 toward a replacement, and they've been covering a rental. We're currently planning to start looking at options tomorrow.

Scott's still on 2nd shift, so he was driving on unplowed roads. It was past midnight by the time he got home. We've had some nights with bad weather since then, and all three of us have been a bit edgy about him driving home that late.

I dealt with the annual LTD review, and they've decided to extend my benefits for another year. That was a huge weight off my mind.

I've scheduled three college visits for Cordelia and am trying to pin down the best time for two more. We'll do EMU and U of M the week of spring break. MSU will be the day before she and her father go to see Dear Evan Hansen up that way (so they can just stay overnight).

Kalamazoo College and WMU visits will happen some time this summer. They make sense as things to combine with a visit to my family on that side of the state. I'm not sure how interested Cordelia is in either of those schools apart from the realization that those visits will fill awkward time with grandparents.

We may drag her out to Washtenaw Community College, too, just so that she knows where it is and how it's laid out.

Scott's birthday was at the beginning of this week. I missed the extended family gathering for his birthday because Friday's PT left me unable to move much over the weekend. Cordelia and I gave him season 2 of The Expanse and a game called Spirit Island that he and I have both wanted to try.

We were supposed to play Betrayal Legacy last Saturday, but one of our players forgot and went out of town, so we played the expansion for Ghost Fightin' Treasure Hunters instead. This was our first try at it, and we had abysmal dice luck. We lost the first game pretty rapidly because we couldn't get rid of any ghosts. (The ghost fighting mechanic is dice based. The players roll 1 or 2 dice, depending on how may player tokens are in the room right then. 3 faces of each die have ghosts on them. If any of those come up, a ghost in the room vanishes.)

I saw a doctor at UHS on Tuesday. I have referrals for PT for my wrist and my knee. This doctor actually put the words 'generalized joint hypermobility' under the diagnoses and promised to talk to my pcp about the ways in which that problem requires a different approach than what everyone's been taking so far. He did say that it's kind of too late to help me much because my joints have 50+ years of damage.

He recommended trying to find someone outside of the UM system who does more generalized physical therapy and who has experience with hypermobility. He said that I'm not going to find anyone in the UM system who isn't specialized in some small portion of the human body because most PT is aimed at limited issues rather than full body ones.

I haven't tried to schedule PT or to track down other options yet. I couldn't deal with that while I was trying to deal with the LTD paperwork. I still haven't gotten that to my psychiatrist. I've done my part, so it's a matter of getting downtown to her office to pass it along.

There's been a good portion of the last week when I simply couldn't deal with anything but reading fic. I've got two library books that are due tomorrow and that I'd very much like to return. I've got Overdrive books that will expire soon, and I've done nothing with them this week.

At any rate, I'm not reading here reliably. I'm not reading Discord reliably. I'm not planning to sign up for any exchanges for a while. I don't think I'll be able to cope with that sort of commitment until I know what's happening with this year's LTD review. If I have to spend the next ten months fighting again, I'd rather be able to put my energy into that. I want very much to write, but my brain isn't cooperating.

Cordelia's officially done with physical therapy for now. She admitted to us yesterday that she hasn't been doing her exercises because she's been utterly exhausted, so I'm a bit worried about things going forward.

She made it to the GSA bowling party only about forty five minutes after it started. She said it was a lot of fun but that only four out of the six members of her school's group made it. It was a multi-school event, so there were still a lot of people there.

The eighth graders are at Greenfield Village today. That's an outdoor historical recreation(ish) space an hour or so away from here. There's a large museum there, too, but people tend to go to one or the other. My sixth grade class, back in the late 1970s, spent a day at Greenfield Village. We were all supposed to dress up in nineteenth century clothing (or as close as we could get) for a short stint in a one room schoolhouse. I had a granny dress, so I was set. Mrs Pattinson, who was a very tall, thin woman in her fifties (or possibly sixties), looked very impressive as I recall. I have no recollection of what anyone else wore. I'm pretty sure that we used slates and facsimile primers.

I have no idea what activities Cordelia and her classmates will be undertaking. I look forward to her telling me about it.

I'm going to be spending a lot of time on laundry for the next few days. I'm not at all enthusiastic about it, especially when it comes to tomorrow, but I haven't got a choice. Cordelia can help on Saturday and Sunday. Scott's ability to help depends on whether or not he has to work the weekend. It'll be five loads today (one done, one in the dryer, one in the wash, two waiting). I'm hoping that subsequent days will only require three loads as that's a lot less exhausting.

My hands are hurting a lot, so I'm wearing my heaviest splints. Those will make putting the fitted sheet on the bed a challenge, but I don't think I can do it at all without some sort of splint. Things haven't been this bad since I stopped the Tamoxifen at the beginning of April.

I'm trying to figure out which of my library books I can finish quickly. I'm done with the one book due this week that can't be renewed, and there aren't any due next week that can't be renewed. I would like to get through some of these books or, at least, to read enough of some of them to know I don't want to go further.

I have three phone calls I should make today. Sadly, the easy one is also the least urgent.

Aetna says they can’t give me any sort of idea about coverage for potential knee surgery without specific procedure codes. Scott and Cordelia weren’t out long enough for me to try to track down procedure codes because it would mean at least two more phone calls. As it was, they came in the door while I was still talking to Aetna.

I didn’t do any writing yesterday. I’m hoping today will be better, but I don’t know if it will be. I’ve got a headache and have since I woke around 8:30. How bad it is varies from moment to moment, so maybe I will be able to write later. I really want to because I hardly wrote anything at all on Monday, maybe 100 words if that.

Cordelia’s PT went okay. Scott and I are both now clear on what exercises she should be doing and how often, so she won’t be able to tell us that she doesn’t have any exercises that she’s supposed to do. I’m not sure why she’s so set against doing exercises. None of them take more than five minutes at a time, and most of them are only once a day.

I’m worried that my laptop isn’t going to last the two plus years until we can even start thinking about replacing it. A lot of things simply aren’t working right, and it’s heating up more and faster than it used to. I’m having problems with programs that are integral to the OS— Mail, Messages, Calendar— and things are freezing (temporarily) more often. I can’t, for example, load a webpage while Time Capsule is running a backup. I also have problems if I start trying to load a web page at the moment when iTunes is switching from one song to the next.

I’ve already hit the edge of the OS updates that my hardware will support. This laptop was made in late 2008 and so is almost ten years old (we bought it refurbished somewhere between two and five years ago).

We’re still paying off this laptop and the nearly identical one that Scott bought for Cordelia at the same time. Given that Scott is taking financial comfort right now in the idea that he could raid his 401K if things get worse… Well, yeah. We’re not buying new-to-us Mac laptops any time soon.

But maybe I could get something else if I ask everyone to give me money for my birthday and Christmas this year?

It’s been years since I used a computer that wasn’t from Apple. Would it be hard to move to using a cheaper, non-Apple laptop? Mostly, what I need is a calendar, word processing, email, chat/IRC, and a couple of web browsers. Being able to transfer my music would be nice but not a deal breaker if I couldn’t. (My old laptop still works, after all, and it would probably be fine just for playing music.) It would be a deal breaker if I couldn’t open my old files, though, or if I lost my email archives. Oh, and I’d want to be able to network with our printer, but I assume most (all?) laptops should be able to do that.

I don’t generally play games or stream video or muck around with photographs, so I’m not worried about anything required for those that isn’t also required for the things I listed above. I’m not wedded to any particular word processor; mostly, what I want is plain text. Page/word counts are nice, but I can do without both.

Scott and Cordelia use Mac laptops and both have iPhones and iPads. I don’t have either an iPad or an iPhone and don’t expect to, so cross compatibility isn’t really an issue.

I don’t have any idea how to do the basic research I’d need to do to look into this. I’m not sure if Scott will be willing to help me because I’m pretty sure he sees it as a failure on his part rather than as a result of me spending more than half my time on my laptop.

The sleep disorders clinic just called to reschedule the appointment Scott had the day after tomorrow. He had scheduled a vacation day for it, and I’m not sure he can cancel that so that he can actually go to an appointment on a different day, not this late in the game anyway. They want him to come in in July instead which is a terrible time of year for him to try to get time off of work. I know he’s stretched kind of thin in terms of vacation time (sick time isn’t an option. He get two days every six months).

The PT appointment left Cordelia kind of freaked out because the guy we saw was very concerned— He thinks her kneecap is in the wrong place and told us that the x-rays show a fundamental problem with how the bones in her leg fit together. There isn’t a proper slot for her patella, so it’s likely to keep dislocating. I didn’t ask him if that is something that surgery could address because I didn’t want to scare Cordelia any more than she already was.

He wants her to use the big brace as little as possible and to try to do without the crutches when she’s at home. He gave her two exercises which are aimed at working on being able to bend that leg again, but he mentioned that, given where the patella currently is, full motion may not be possible. He did say that a big part of the problem is muscle tension pulling things out of place and holding them there, that it’s her body trying to protect things and making them worse.

Scott ordered carry out from Gourmet Garden as a treat for Cordelia. Sadly, the entrees that we got were either terrible or things I can’t eat (due to egg mixed in). Scott and Cordelia tried moo shu chicken and got chicken fried rice as a fallback for if Cordelia hated the moo shu. We also got ginger chicken with string beans and eggplant with garlic sauce. I tasted neither ginger nor garlic in any bit of either. I’ll eat the leftovers, but I’m never ordering either dish there again.

They’ve cut their menu to the bone and don’t provide any sort of description of the dishes/ingredients in the carry out menu or online menu (I don’t know about the in restaurant menu). They don’t even mark the spicy dishes. I need to avoid peanuts, walnuts, eggs, and peppers of all sorts. I know that they put scrambled egg in all of their noodle dishes and, of course, their fried rice. They’ve never been good about leaving things out when we ask.

We got terrible food from them the last time we ordered there, so I didn’t want to get food there last night. The problem is that we don’t actually have any other places we’re comfortable with for Chinese carry out (Scott does not want to experiment on these occasions). I would prefer Lucky Kitchen, but Cordelia has decided that they’re beyond terrible.

At any rate, I guess next time we get food for dinner there, I’m going entirely with appetizers. Those tasted okay. None of them were even remotely healthy, but they were moderately decent tasting representatives of their types. I’d have liked them better if they hadn’t all been sort of sweet. A sweet spring roll or pork dumpling is just… not quite right.

We watched The Flash last night to see the musical crossover. It was okay but really not, IMO, more than that. A couple of the songs were fun (I started laughing when the fathers started singing that song from Guys and Dolls).

Drat. It’s official. Zenni Optical can’t provide me with glasses because my sizing is weird. I talked to their online help last night, and they confirmed that they have no frames whatsoever in my size. I’m boggled because I think of myself as having a normal sized head. My past experience has been going to a store, trying things on and having everything more or less fit (but most things look terrible).

So I guess I have to try to get out to Briarwood at some point to shop for glasses. Bleh.

Cordelia’s appointment this morning went well. I have not made her go back to school for the hour and a half that remains of the day. I’m sure I should have, but… She’s very, very tired.

The doctor we saw was the same we saw last year. He says that she needs to be looked at by the sports medicine surgery people to see if they think she needs surgery. He didn’t actually use the word 'surgery.' He said, 'Go in and fix things.' I’m not sure if Cordelia registered that that meant surgery. He also referred her for physical therapy. I think I need to make the call to set up PT but that the sports medicine people will call us. Cordelia is barred from gym until the sports medicine people see her, and even then, only goes back if they say it’s okay to.

We talked to the clinic social worker about maybe finding lower cost transportation. I’m going to talk to friends and family first, but it would be nice to have a less expensive but still reliable option to fall back on.

We ordered delivery for lunch, Chinese food from a place we hadn’t tried before (It was 11:00; my choices were limited). The food was okay, but I sliced three of my fingers on the lid of one of the plastic containers as I tried to pry the lid off. Two of the fingers bled, and all three still hurt nine hours later.

I’m using the new bedside lamp that Scott bought me, but I’m not entirely happy with it. It turns on and off by touch and is easy to bump into. Even on the brightest setting, there’s not enough light to read except if I hold the book just so. Scott thinks that, if we can get the lamp a little higher up, the light will be better. I’m dubious. He had it on top of my alarm clock for a while, but that just meant I kept knocking it off. Scott has managed to retrieve my power strip and move it up on top of my table, so I can actually use it now, but I haven’t yet managed to plug in or unplug something without bumping the lamp.