Archive for January, 2011

Trying to do the right thing

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Because of my disability, I take pain medication. NARCOTIC pain medication. This means I have to go see my doctor every month for refills. Well, the last two months I’ve run out, and that hasn’t been fun. Two months ago, my doctor called in sick, and last month, I don’t remember what happened, but I couldn’t get an appointment, so I ran out.

I just called to see if I could get an earlier appointment and the nurse would not give me an appointment earlier than the 14th of February, as I had been seen on the 17th of January. She didn’t like my tale of running out of pain medication and would not give me an earlier appointment. I do not buy that she couldn’t find an opening before the 14th. When I told her Monday or Wednesday only, she then kept trying to get me on Friday the 11th. Who wasn’t listening then? So, now I have an appointment on the 14th, when I’d rather have one on the 7th or the 9th of February.

I have never abused my pain medications and only wanted a buffer in case something happened. Is that too much to ask? Especially since I ran out of medications 2 months running? I will be discussing this with my doctor and making my appointment for March when I leave the office on the 14th.

Posted in Disability, Disability Issues, Medical, Personal, Real Life | 104 Comments »

Done with older posts… for now.

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

I’ve got one or two that I’m still working on, but what I just posted is the bulk of what I had worked on during 2010. I’ve set myself as a personal New Years resolution to try to remember to post to the blog every 2 days – and I know it’ll be hard, as I don’t remember it’s here. Much faster to post on Facebook, and I use the blog for longer things. I’m not sure what to do… continue to post really frequently to Facebook, and then post at least every 2 days to the blog? I do have ideas and things I can talk about that won’t fit into Facebook’s 140 character Wall format.

Yes, Facebook has “Notes”, basically a blog function, but having my own blog here, frees me if people don’t read Facebook. I have one friend that absolutely REFUSES to get on Facebook. I know he reads my blog, as he’s asked me questions pertaining to stuff that’s appeared in it.

Posted in General | 81 Comments »

Sleep Study

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

I don’t sleep well, and I know I need to finish a sleep study (usually one night, but sometimes two), because I was put on C-PAP, and I may be placed on B-PAP instead, and they need to figure out WHICH to put me on. That will help a lot with my sleep patterns. I guess I stopped breathing often enough that I was put on C-Pap within the first 2 hours.

But, I started going to the one near the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, and I want to go to the one near my home. I have an appointment on the 16th, at 8:30am for an evaluation. I think I may have to change that appointment time due to Keith being in DC. Gotta check the calendar.

Posted in Disability, Disability Issues, Medical, Personal, Real Life | 52 Comments »

A new wrinkle…

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

If having Cerebral Palsy weren’t enough, I’ve got a condition with my veins in my legs that I’m having to deal with! My veins aren’t working, and the blood isn’t being pumped back up them to my heart, so it’s pooling in my feet and lower legs. It’s causing my skin the peel (especially in the feet and it looks disguesting. After having a consultation with a podiatrist, Keith spent two weeks putting cream on my feet at night and wrapping them with seran wrap and then in the morning, washing the gunk off and with it, dead skin. I know, really disgusting mental picture. Believe me, it wasn’t as bad as experiencing it. It didn’t hurt at all, but just thinking about it was disgusting enough…

Anyway, after 2 weeks, the therapy got most of the dead skin off so we move on to step 2, which is compression socks for the rest of my life. And after we picked them up, Keith brought them home and tried to put them on me, and couldn’t figure out how to get them over my toes, so we went back to my new podiatrist, and he showed Keith how to put them on me. So, now I’m wearing knee high compression stockings, to force the blood up past my knees. Thank goodness the stockings are only knee high. I don’t think I could deal with thigh high ones.

The ones that go below the knee are tight enough, and I have problems with anything against my ankles anyway, due to an operation that fused my ankles when I was 10. You touch my ankles, you cause me extreme pain. Right now, I’m only in pain from the stocking cutting into the front of the foot. And only the right foot. I’m sure it’s an adjustment.

Found that I’ve ‘CUT’ into my foot at the point where the ankle bends (front of the foot). Nice scabbed over slice all across the foot. Definitely caused from the compression stockings. Grr…

Posted in Disability, Medical, Personal, Real Life | 55 Comments »

Good-bye 2010, Hello 2011!

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

[Something that I meant to post on New Years Eve and it never got posted]

It’s December 31st and as I sit here and contemplate the last year (or my navel), depending on your point of view, I find that I have some thoughts to put down from what happened over the last year.

First of all, I decided to go back to school and get my degree. I was pretty excited about the whole thing as it was going to be totally online and would give me some validity in the disabled and business community as I tried to get businesses to comply with the ADA as I’d have my Associates Degree. I gathered my paperwork and was set to start school on January 2nd. New year, new project, as I haven’t been in school for nearly 30 years. Then the brakes got applied. Keith, my husband of nearly 20 years, did NOT want me to go back to school. I could not talk him out of it. There was no reason for it he said, and so I’m not going back to school, for now. I fully plan to try again for next year, but with the budgets being cut, I doubt the financial aid will be there next year. We shall see. I tried to get Keith to see that after I got my degree I could make some serious money getting businesses to be ADA compliant, but he wouldn’t listen. He doesn’t think I’ll be able to recoup the costs of school, which would be a student loan to cover what Federal grants did not cover in my Financial Aid package. About $19,000.

Got me thinking that maybe he doesn’t want me independent, that he wants me as helpless as possible. Even though he complains every day when he helps me get dressed (pants and shoes only) and has to help me with other daily living things.

Our house is a mess (think the TV show Hoarders), and he won’t help clean it up. I do have a plan to clean it up this next year. Check back here for more on that.

I have sleep apnea, and I went through one night of a sleep study and within the first 2 hours I was put on C-PAP, and I need to do the 2nd night and see if I need to go on B-PAP, which is for Bi-Level. We’ll see how it goes. I hope to get it done soon, as I do not sleep well at all, since I do stop breathing. While on CPAP during that test, I guess I basically passed out, since I could BREATHE. The machine is noisy, tho. And expensive, and we waited too long, and my insurance isn’t as good next year as it was this year. Instead of 100%, it’s 20% co-insurance… nothing I can do about that… stupid insurance companies.

I’m not sure how this is going to work, but we’ll have to pay for it… or *I* will have to pay for it I’m sure it’s pretty expensive. I haven’t done that much research on it… I plan to correct that oversight in the next few days.

Posted in Disability, Family, General, Personal, Real Life, Service Dogs | 1 Comment »

Okay, some things…

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

That I’m finally getting around to publishing things that I’ve been working on over the year. Trying to clean up my clutter of blog posts that I have sitting around so I can start the new year with a clean “desk” so to speak. Throughout today and tomorrow you’ll be seeing a lot from me – little bits here and there, of things that I’ve been working on that I’ll be posting. Comments are more than welcome.

Posted in General | 55 Comments »

My glasses are MIA

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

I really hate it when I do things like this… I put my glasses down, forget where I put them and then I can’t find them… well, last night, I put them on my headboard, and now, they are MIA (missing in action). I KNOW I put them there, but the bad thing is, I didn’t put them in the case that they came in. Stupid of me, I know. I just put them on the power station/nicknack stand I have on my headboard. So now, I have to go digging under my headboard for them, and ‘digging’ is the right word as there is a lot of stuff under my headboard.. crap, like paper, empty bottles (my husband has a habit of throwing stuff under the headboard) I drop stuff under the headboard, and if I can’t reach it, it doesn’t get picked up), and other garbage under there. I hope I can find them… I should be able to, it just may take me a few hours. *sigh*

Posted in General, Medical, Personal, Real Life | 1 Comment »