As someone who was woken up at 6:30am a couple of Saturdays ago by power tools applied on or very near the shared wall with my neighbors, who are staying with family in another state for the summer while their place is being renovated, I thank you on behalf of all of your neighbors (and those in your home too)!
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Not super helpful: having my schedule changed, 2 weeks before the beginning of the semester, and then NOT being told in an email, and having to see it on my schedule. Fortunately, I can still JUST make it to where I need to be on that day, but it would have been nice to be forewarned, in case I needed to change the rest of my scheduleā¦
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Thanks everybody! I really appreciate all the kind words and good wishes. And hugs to everyoneā¦
I only wish I could do more.
@Nytespryte-- I hope youāre doing better!
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Thanks,
The procedure seemed to go really well yesterday. Iām not feeling bad. It will be a couple weeks until the full results come in b/c they send some of the samples to Stanford.
The nephrologist might have some preliminary news when I see her next week though.
There was some comedy of errors b/c I wasnāt entered into the computer right and had to reanswer questions a few times. Then they had trouble with the IV, I have difficult veins. But the actual biopsy just felt like someone touching my back a few times and then saying āgot it, thatās it.ā
Then they want you to sleep but leave a blood pressure cuff on you that automatically inflates every hour. And my tablet decided I wasnāt allowed to watch any more media offline in the middle of the night.
After fasting, even hospital food tasted amazing. And the hospital staff was all cool for the most part.
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(ETA apologies for the late replyā¦ Iām catching up on threads here.)
So sorry to hear that.
Like others here (and the Other Place) Iāve followed your posts about him over the years. From what Iāve read from you, youāve been a great dog mom and did everything within your power to give him a good life and home. Rest assured youāre not the only one feeling his loss right now.
Your grief is far from childish - every day I feel deep sadness and sorrow over the pets Iāve lost over the years.
Take all the time you need - you have friends here if you need them.
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So.
In a world filled with coffee addicts, I wound up having an allergy to coffee. Histamine reaction for about 48 hours, every time. Itās not the caffeine because I can handle black tea, green tea, and cola just fine (although I donāt drink cola for other reasons).
Last night I had a chocolate mint mini cupcake after dinner. They must have āboostedā the chocolate with coffee, because I wound up both wired and breaking out in hives around 1am.
Finally figured out why I felt so weird at 2am. Took a Benadryl.
Woke up at the time I usually leave for work in a Benadryl fog. A cold shower and some running around, and I managed to get to work by my ālateā time (9am).
Co-worker brought in vegan brownies. No egg! No dairy!
And the peer pressure starts to try them. I am not a chocolate cake fan at the best of times, and right now I feel like death warmed over.
So I ask: does it have coffee in it?
Oh, yeah, but just a little bit!
I tell them what happened last night with ājust a little bitā.
Fuck vegan recipes that think brownies can be made magically āhealthyā and safe for everyone if theyāre vegan.
Fuck chocolate cake and the stoopid societal value North Americans put on it.
Fuck mystery ingredients.
And fuck today.
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Geez. How can so many people have the idea allergies are just a flavor preference or diet you can cheat on, rather than serious medical conditions you need to manage?
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As a person who loves baking, but hates coffee, mint tea is a perfectly acceptable substitute for coffee in chocolate mint recipes, people! Itās not that hardā¦
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Itās usually only the coffee allergy I get grief about. Itās just such a ubiquitous thing, and so essential to office culture. Iāve had clients and vendors get very offended when I turn down an offer of coffee during a site visit.
āWe have decaf. Itās no trouble to make you that.ā
And then I have to explain itās not the caffeine Iām allergic to, which somehow becomes talking too much about myself, even though I didnāt want to talk about it anyhow.
The only time I get grief about my other major food allergy ā artificial sweeteners ā is on the rare occasions I drink pop, because I have regular, not diet. That sometimes leads to some busybody trying to educate me about calories. It doesnāt happen very often because usually I just grab a bottle of water on such occasions.
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Iām not sure if itās happening in the US, but canned and plastic-bottle sodas are getting the fake sweetener treatment, whether people like it or not. They taste horrible to me.
Thank goodness Mexico still uses refined sugar in the glass bottles, and itās only 75 cents per liter!
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I hear you. I am lucky that I work in an office where coffee drinkers are outnumbered by the tea drinkers (so we have 2 large stay-hot kettles and only one small coffee maker), but my insistence on knowing whatās in things before eating baffles people ā people who should know better. Especially since I am selective in where I look for things, sometimes (I can eat custard, and baked goods with egg, but a tiny scrap of scrambled egg on my hash browns, and itās Benadryl time).
I am sorry you got ambushed. And people need to recognise that āno thank youā means no, and move on. Who cares that one person didnāt want to try your amazing concoction. Itās not about you, but the food. (You generic, not @gadgetgirl for those last two sentences). Itās just food.
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Last week at checkup -
PA - Oh, by the way some brands of your hypertension medicine are on recall, so if you need a refill it would probably be best if we change it due to shortages.
ME - Okay. Just not Drug X as Iāve had issue with it.
PA - Sure. This one is basically what youāve been taking.
This week -
New script comes in and I start taking it Tuesday or Wednesday.
Today starts off fine. Then my vision goes a little funky. Headache starts pounding. Just feel OFF.
After sleeping for 4 hours, Iām clear headed enough to look at the new script.
Old medicine was the lowest dose typically given. Replacement medicine was the HIGHEST dose recommended.
Not happy.
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Iām so sorry. I hope you get it sorted.
This spring, the pharmacy changed my fatherās blood pressure medicine. Heās 78, with a variety of health issues, so Iām not drawing a comparison. Anyway, within a couple of days, he had a small stroke. They adjusted the dose. Now, months later, it turns out that particular one has bad results for kidneys, which his have been going down for years. Now, heās in stage 4 kidney failure. Because someone changed his meds, without seeing his full medical history.
My mother is now a bulldog, questioning every little thing. But, heās back on the easy-on-the-kidneys version, at least. And, my mother is becoming an expert on how to feed him to keep his kidneys going as long as possible.
Modern medicine is better than the alternative, but it sucks when people donāt get the details right.
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Wow, if the two drugs have equal dosages, that just sounds like malpractice. I hope you get it sorted out soon.
Twenty years ago I was having problems, and so was prescribed a different antidepressant by a psychiatrist. It was a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, which, due to the latter, is contraindicated for someone with a seizure disorder (which I have). I had given her a list of meds which plainly stated āFor seizure disorder, dilantin (dosage . . . ).ā
I changed docs.
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Iāll be fine just really annoyed at losing a day I canāt afford to lose right now.
I think Iām finally up to changing healthcare systems.
Iāve gone through 3 doctors in five years. First never had appointmentd and honestly didnāt seem to care. 2d doctor was great, but obviously performed a CLM and is nowvout in the sticks. The third Doctor looks real nice on line, but the two appointments I made with him weāre both cancelled last minute.
I hate health care in America. I have decent insurance and I still dread going.
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I second that. I donāt have a āPCPā currently. I went to a doctor once a couple years ago, but she was useless. I need to find a good one, but they donāt get reviews on amazon. Is there something like that for health care? Filter by insurances accepted, customer rating, and time to appointment. If not, there should be.
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Iāve come to hate privatised medicine in general since I have been in Singapore.
To date, Iāve had two perforated eardrums caused by doctors (long story); a broken little finger that has healed into a permanent right angle after the plate they inserted into it snapped and I couldnāt get my fully comp insurance to pay for corrective surgery or physio; three lingering ear infections that were instantly remedied when I asked the quack GP (MD to those of you in the US) to refer me to ENT and stop prescribing whatever bullshit remedy they were trying this time (one of them gave me an antihistamine dropper for an ear that was permanently leaking pus); persistent lower back trouble that has led to well over a month in sick pay because the drugs that work on it are illegal in Singapore and office chairs here are made for people a foot shorter than me; and literally zero support to quit smoking despite the fact that Iāve gone to four separate GPs (they told me that smoking was bad but refused to prescribe me anything each time).
This is in four years. The health issues that I have
had have been either caused or perpetuated by elderly male GPs who qualified half a century ago and who donāt bother to keep up with anything apart from whatever bullshit the pretty pharma reps are selling them this month.
One of the weird side effects of this is that the pharma companies pay a kickback to the GPs when they issue prescriptions for their medicines, so every time I have gone to the doctor, I have come home with a trick-or-treat bag of entirely useless medication. I canāt get naproxen or diazepam but I have a drawer filled with enough amoxicillin to effectively make all bacteria on the planet immortal (none of which was prescribed when I had an actual infection) and, bizarrely, enough buscopan to deflate a hippo.
I broke my wrist without insurance in Japan and there was never any doubt that they would fix me. Had I had insurance, the $50 a time fee would have been covered by the insurance company but I ended up paying about $1,000 for everything, over the course of about half a year, and have a mostly functional wrist. Japan doesnāt even have NHS-style nationalised healthcare, itās just not stupidly corrupt.
By contrast, my permanently ruined little finger cost my insurance company $15,000 and it would have been more if I had gone to a āprivateā hospital rather than one that was government-subsidised (my āfully compā insurance only covered up to $20k per surgical procedure, which wouldnāt have been nearly enough to cover it). They refused to even give me a consultation with the surgeon until I either paid up-front or showed them a letter from my insurance company that said the procedure would be covered.
I realise that most of this wonāt be news to those of you in the US but Jesus fucking Christ how can anyone think this is a good thing?
/Rant
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Theyāre rolling this shit out on a generational timeline outside the U.S. Cut the budget of the NHS, get enough private contractors and other corruption into the system that it starts to break down, and full privatization becomes an inevitable narrative.
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The exact same thing happened to me earlier this year.
Needless to say, I also dropped my GP.
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Maybe this would fit better under Nazification of The World, or maybe not.
It sucks to reach out to old friends only to find out theyāre now openly racist. WTF? Is there, like, some machine that turns people racist?
(Hint: there is, itās called The System, and participants get rewarded for upholding systemic racism)
Ugh.
I know the past wasnāt perfect but it sucks seeing that even the kindest of people in my past are assholes.
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