Well
I didn't mean to drop out off the edge of the world...
I have been around on tumblr and twitter (as well as mastodon now), but those are rather easy to use if you have zero executive focus. All of that was focused on work and so anything outside of work just fell apart. My apartment remains clean, but more through sheer force of being stubborn and not wanting to live in a mess; I wasn't really focused on it. Today I just haven't and I cannot be bothered because of everything right now.
For the most part, April was quiet. Luckily. I think it was late March or early April when I messaged my pcp saying hey I think we need to increase one of my meds. I was sleeping too much and taking too many naps and feeling wicked lethargic otherwise; I also noticed an uptick in my general nerve pain and migraines. We increased the med that covers all of that, but it turned out that that medication can actually fuck with blood sugar levels. Now I am not diabetic despite having similar symptoms of (I've always kept an eye on that bit of my labs given my family's history of it), but the medication was enough to fuck around with the levels enough that they struggled to remain up so I would go a few days of needing to eat every hour or so or end up with a food migraine. It took until about the beginning of May to level out finally, but it was an interesting trip.
May of course was my surgery. Preop went excellent because despite my weight and my family background, I don't have anything that would prevent me from having surgery nor anything that would indicate having an issue either during surgery or in recovery. I had taken the Friday before the surgery off to rest as much -- I didn't want to stress myself into a pain flare up in any way trying to get everything done in a little time as possible. So once the pre op was done, I spent the next few days just cleaning and getting groceries and getting some items that I knew I wouldn't be able to get once I was 1 week post surgery when my sister went home. And the day before the surgery other than getting a few items that we hadn't gotten, we spent just wandering getting through a few things I wanted to get my sister for her birthday -- a trip to a library basement book sale and then a candy shop for chocolate covered gummy bears. We also went for a hike because she doesn't get much time off for hiking and I knew she wanted to see where I usually go. (Hilariously she found a spot and said "what's there? Can we go there?" aka can we go climb those rocks -- which is the same instinct I had when I saw that section of things. Apparently my family has a strain of mountain goat in us.)
The surgery went alright all things considered. My back wasn't happy, but then I hadn't been able to wear a bra that day and then was on the op table for an hour or so; neither sister or I had been surprised. I slept most of the way home, but apparently I did wake up enough to say "oh fuck" when my sister took the wrong exit off the highway (I would say the exit to the road home is a few miles down an incline that 18 wheelers are recommended to not take.) It will take one back to mine fine, but it's not ideal in my opinion nor in my sister's now that she went down it.
The worst part of the recovery was the drains -- I would say about 12 inches of plastic tubing most of which was in my chest to drain off any liquid build up into bulbs. Both sides of my chest. It meant I had to sleep upright and couldn't really bend over. I also couldn't (and still shouldn't) lift more than 5 pounds. Once they were taken out one week after the surgery, I was good. The scars are healing well except for the grafts of my nipples. They were doing okay and then oop nope. Surgeon and his team are baffled and I'm like listen if you knew my entire medical history this would not surprise you; I am a medical weirdness. There is hope for the left one; they got me in this past Thursday to look at it and has switched me to wound care using silvidene. Left seems to be getting better, but the right eh not so much. We'll see; I think it was the sudden storm moving through that threw it off last night. I've noticed since the surgery that the surgical site does not like low pressure systems. They were healing up with the new treatment fine until the storms; I developed pain in both of them overnight, but they feel better now so I think tonight's dressing change will show a good change.
I'm back full time at work next Monday, but have to take Wednesday to do a follow up with the surgeon's office. I am hoping to get that cleared with the FMLA people, but we'll see. I haven't yet gotten any payment from them which is infuriating, but here we are. I had paid extra on both the internet and electric back in April so those were covered; I had paid all but $300 of the rent so I called them Wednesday to explain and they said ok. *shrug* Luckily June has three pay checks so I have two more this month to sort it all out and hopefully within this month I will have the payment from the FMLA so that will help to even out everything.
I do have an extra bill starting this month. The last week of April -- my Toyota finally quit. I was toodling along home from work and my car stopping running like the battery died. I was able to luckily pull over and I managed to find a coworker to come out and charge up the battery. She offered to follow me home to make sure it didn't happen again (because ya know this car) and well the oil leak finally caught up because the piston's seized. ARGH. Roadside assistance on my insurance came through though so that was good except that they wanted more than I could pay at the time so I hitched a ride home with coworker and left it the side of the road. The next day I managed to work out something and either the tow company has it or the police do -- I am not sure which. Either way coworker who is near retirement age and knows lots of things and checked with her partner who knows lots of car related things says that if I don't claim it after so much time it'll be considered abandoned. If the tow company has it, they'll sell off what parts they can; if the police have it it'll stay in impound until there is an auction. Either way I don't care; before we left it on the side of the road I grabbed all the important and valuable items out of it so there's nothing left in it that I want and if someone else wants to have it to sell off then I don't have a car hanging around to try to sell -- I don't think I could even get a good trade in for it given all of its issues and now likely the engine is seized.
It took the better part of the following week to sort out a replacement. Luckily my bank was having a sale on car loans last month and were willing to work with me since it did look like I was improving my credit score. Now I wasn't ready yet to have a loan (I wanted more time to get my score improved and I wanted to wait until after my surgery since I didn't know when the FMLA pay would come through or how much) but we made it work. I had to look further afield than my local area - I knew I wanted an SUV because of the winter up here and my credit score meant that what I was approved for was well below anything here (which is likely due to the fact that it is the capital area). I did manage to find a dealer that was reputable and was willing to drive it out to me as well as handle registration. All of the fees together meant it was a little over the approved loan, but the bank said ok that's fine. I am really glad my bank is nice like this, but then I suspected they would be when I was doing my research for a new bank last year. It's a small-medium sized credit union with emphasis on union -- all decisions have to be run by the people who have accounts with them. And they bumped my loan application up when they heard I was in dire straights car wise. Woo.
Anyway I now have a 2016 Honda CR-V. Which isn't the Toyota I wanted, but Honda's aren't bad deals and it is roomy and drives nicely. It does need time to start up (my Toyota didn't care; start and go), and it does need time to transition between gears, but it handled the hour drive and back for the surgery and handled going out back to the dealer (45 minutes one way) when I thought something was off with it so it's good. It's good. I got in this week the permanent plates for it and I have to say it's nice to have a car registered in this sate. It makes living here feel more stable. I didn't get my last car registered because I knew it wouldn't pass inspection so I kept it registered in old state until I could work out getting a new car. And I couldn't keep the Toyota because no one was really willing to work on a car that old that I could find and even though I knew what was wrong with it, I couldn't fix it myself lacking the space or the mental brain space to say nothing of whether I could physically manage it. Now the other thing that worked out for me with the whole mess is that wonderfully the bank has a month's grace period until I make the first payment.
Work wise everything has been good; we finally hired someone because we kept loosing people over the pay offered and I hope someone at HR is keeping track. But we found someone just before I went on leave and she started this past week. She was shadowing by Friday so I started showing her most of our day to day and how we use the EMR for everything. She's picking it up pretty easily and she has the exact mind set the rest of my team has -- she's been fitting in well already. And I am so proud of the youngest two we have; much improvement and everyone fits together well. It's wonderful. I am also a bit proud for myself since I manage the team so I know it reflects well on me what they're doing and how they're doing. And it's a nice feeling, too.
Since March we have seen the loss of more primary care providers in the area which brings the total up to 12 to 14 (we've...lost count since it seems like every other week there's another one gone). We are still adding patients to our wait list, but are currently trying to figure out a better way to go ahead with managing the wait list and scheduling. There is a mixed bag of patients since yay new people moving to the area (which is a good thing since previously people were aging faster than people could be brought in to replace them on the work force) especially what I call internal refugees - people from other states where legislation is making their lives precarious. There really isn't another word for them I don't think. But there is also a good number of older people moving to the state because they want to be closer to their kids and grandkids in their retirement. And also the pcps who have retired had the bulk of the older population. So when do onboard a new patient, half of them need follow up care in the next 6 months or less and that cuts into time available for more new patients. And one of the two providers we have has a established patients from last year who are now having their second physical with us. And yeah there is a huge influx of formally healthy people experiencing new chronic illness -- some mild like new onset hyper tension and others more severe like new heart conditions -- in this post pandemic world which is straining the system especially because the worse the condition is, the more people are scared and need reassurance from their provider. It's...a bit of a strain. I wouldn't go back to retail or food service over this, but it's a strain. (I was joking with one of my coworkers that the least nicest benefit the company could add to our job is free xanex for all their employees.) I think one of the strangest comments or conversations with people right now is their confusion about the wait time for a provider because it isn't a secret that health care is under staffed; we are very confused how people can read articles of under staffing and not connect it to being unable to see a provider in less than 6 months as a new patient. Or how hard it is to get someone in for acute issues. Like. These two things are connected and no there isn't a solution because there is a shortage of staff. From admins who answer the phone to providers themselves. And because of the state of the economy and because of post covid complications, a lot of people are needing a higher level of care which means less time than pre-2020 for more patients.
Anyway.
In addition to sorting out *waves hand* I am looking for an apartment for two in my area. My sister has had enough with her current company dicking around when it comes to her pay and responsibilities. They keep pushing back her review which is necessary for them to authorize a raise for her, but it means that she is currently getting paid only 20 cents more than people who just start at the lowest level, but she is both a training manager and one who fills in to help out the managers of several stores. She is also having trouble with them not giving her accommodations and also getting blamed for things that aren't her fault. Now it isn't that my company will offer her less shit to deal with it, but it'll be at minimum $2 and change more than she gets paid now and offers better health insurance. She will also be able to share rent with someone finally. She bought her car back in February because she was in a rock and a hard place work wise and finally just got one; but then that payment meant she couldn't afford rent because the payment was high due to her credit score (which had plummeted because she wasn't getting paid enough so she had to make hard choices for things). There was only one person she vaguely knew at work who had space for her to move in, but since she's moved in with him, it's just been red flags left and right. Awfully, the people she knows are all "oh no that's normal" and it's like no. Not when he keeps track of what she spends, what she does, complains that she doesn't want to hang out with him (post work she is terribly overwhelmed and needs at minimum an hour to decompress at which point she just wants food and to go to sleep before work the next day), and complains that she eats separately (which she needs to because she has a ton of food allergies that he doesn't seem to respect). And then for some reason he refused her rent payment this month and then asked her to do some outside work -- in 90F+ temps. She didn't sign a rental agreement that said rent money could be exchanged for work so that's not okay but neither is it okay to ask someone to do outside work in that heat temp. But this rental situation was her last resort so it's either stick it out there or move out to my way.
We know she can get a job fairly quickly even if it's not immediately with my company; there are a ton of places hiring. If need be, she can work one of those until she gets a job with my company or something similar as there are several other medical places here that are hiring asap. And since I am starting to look now for a new place, we should have fairly good luck finding something when my lease is up for renewal. If nothing else, we'll see about splitting my current apartment which would be tight, but manageable. We learned during my surgery that the cats will eventually get along and the apartment is set up in a way that we can continue to manage to introduce them slowly. Definitely workable.
I would like to be able to move apartments though. I hadn't put too much thought into it since housing here is like everywhere -- what housing? -- but it'll be nice. It turns out that the second available apartment had not been rented back in March. It only looked like that so no one would think to steal in and squat in it. But it was filled in April and they are... It could just be that they are in their 20s but its weird. The place is rented by a guy who looks around 22 or so and he has a girlfriend that I haven't figured out if she is over 18 yet. They have a dog that isn't quite trained well -- barks at the slightest thing and for hours. And there was recently a car incident that has involved the police and the car has a winch holding the hood down and prior to the police showing up to ask about it, the girl came running up the stairs sounding not just panicked but like. It sounded almost like they knew that the police involved would be a Problem. Could be just kids learning the ins and outs of being an adult but I'm listening here in my apartment like it's a sitcom.
It does however make me feel uneasy so yeah I would like out. With my sister's situation it seems like a good time to make it all work. And it would be nice to have someone I know sharing the rent since now I have my car payment and the current inflation that doesn't seem to be going away. And then I can also start working toward a decent savings account and options for that.
So yeah that's the state of things right now. Much tired. Much overwhelmed. Much depressed. But I got a good support network and all that jazz. Just got to wait all this out. It'll sort out.
I have been around on tumblr and twitter (as well as mastodon now), but those are rather easy to use if you have zero executive focus. All of that was focused on work and so anything outside of work just fell apart. My apartment remains clean, but more through sheer force of being stubborn and not wanting to live in a mess; I wasn't really focused on it. Today I just haven't and I cannot be bothered because of everything right now.
For the most part, April was quiet. Luckily. I think it was late March or early April when I messaged my pcp saying hey I think we need to increase one of my meds. I was sleeping too much and taking too many naps and feeling wicked lethargic otherwise; I also noticed an uptick in my general nerve pain and migraines. We increased the med that covers all of that, but it turned out that that medication can actually fuck with blood sugar levels. Now I am not diabetic despite having similar symptoms of (I've always kept an eye on that bit of my labs given my family's history of it), but the medication was enough to fuck around with the levels enough that they struggled to remain up so I would go a few days of needing to eat every hour or so or end up with a food migraine. It took until about the beginning of May to level out finally, but it was an interesting trip.
May of course was my surgery. Preop went excellent because despite my weight and my family background, I don't have anything that would prevent me from having surgery nor anything that would indicate having an issue either during surgery or in recovery. I had taken the Friday before the surgery off to rest as much -- I didn't want to stress myself into a pain flare up in any way trying to get everything done in a little time as possible. So once the pre op was done, I spent the next few days just cleaning and getting groceries and getting some items that I knew I wouldn't be able to get once I was 1 week post surgery when my sister went home. And the day before the surgery other than getting a few items that we hadn't gotten, we spent just wandering getting through a few things I wanted to get my sister for her birthday -- a trip to a library basement book sale and then a candy shop for chocolate covered gummy bears. We also went for a hike because she doesn't get much time off for hiking and I knew she wanted to see where I usually go. (Hilariously she found a spot and said "what's there? Can we go there?" aka can we go climb those rocks -- which is the same instinct I had when I saw that section of things. Apparently my family has a strain of mountain goat in us.)
The surgery went alright all things considered. My back wasn't happy, but then I hadn't been able to wear a bra that day and then was on the op table for an hour or so; neither sister or I had been surprised. I slept most of the way home, but apparently I did wake up enough to say "oh fuck" when my sister took the wrong exit off the highway (I would say the exit to the road home is a few miles down an incline that 18 wheelers are recommended to not take.) It will take one back to mine fine, but it's not ideal in my opinion nor in my sister's now that she went down it.
The worst part of the recovery was the drains -- I would say about 12 inches of plastic tubing most of which was in my chest to drain off any liquid build up into bulbs. Both sides of my chest. It meant I had to sleep upright and couldn't really bend over. I also couldn't (and still shouldn't) lift more than 5 pounds. Once they were taken out one week after the surgery, I was good. The scars are healing well except for the grafts of my nipples. They were doing okay and then oop nope. Surgeon and his team are baffled and I'm like listen if you knew my entire medical history this would not surprise you; I am a medical weirdness. There is hope for the left one; they got me in this past Thursday to look at it and has switched me to wound care using silvidene. Left seems to be getting better, but the right eh not so much. We'll see; I think it was the sudden storm moving through that threw it off last night. I've noticed since the surgery that the surgical site does not like low pressure systems. They were healing up with the new treatment fine until the storms; I developed pain in both of them overnight, but they feel better now so I think tonight's dressing change will show a good change.
I'm back full time at work next Monday, but have to take Wednesday to do a follow up with the surgeon's office. I am hoping to get that cleared with the FMLA people, but we'll see. I haven't yet gotten any payment from them which is infuriating, but here we are. I had paid extra on both the internet and electric back in April so those were covered; I had paid all but $300 of the rent so I called them Wednesday to explain and they said ok. *shrug* Luckily June has three pay checks so I have two more this month to sort it all out and hopefully within this month I will have the payment from the FMLA so that will help to even out everything.
I do have an extra bill starting this month. The last week of April -- my Toyota finally quit. I was toodling along home from work and my car stopping running like the battery died. I was able to luckily pull over and I managed to find a coworker to come out and charge up the battery. She offered to follow me home to make sure it didn't happen again (because ya know this car) and well the oil leak finally caught up because the piston's seized. ARGH. Roadside assistance on my insurance came through though so that was good except that they wanted more than I could pay at the time so I hitched a ride home with coworker and left it the side of the road. The next day I managed to work out something and either the tow company has it or the police do -- I am not sure which. Either way coworker who is near retirement age and knows lots of things and checked with her partner who knows lots of car related things says that if I don't claim it after so much time it'll be considered abandoned. If the tow company has it, they'll sell off what parts they can; if the police have it it'll stay in impound until there is an auction. Either way I don't care; before we left it on the side of the road I grabbed all the important and valuable items out of it so there's nothing left in it that I want and if someone else wants to have it to sell off then I don't have a car hanging around to try to sell -- I don't think I could even get a good trade in for it given all of its issues and now likely the engine is seized.
It took the better part of the following week to sort out a replacement. Luckily my bank was having a sale on car loans last month and were willing to work with me since it did look like I was improving my credit score. Now I wasn't ready yet to have a loan (I wanted more time to get my score improved and I wanted to wait until after my surgery since I didn't know when the FMLA pay would come through or how much) but we made it work. I had to look further afield than my local area - I knew I wanted an SUV because of the winter up here and my credit score meant that what I was approved for was well below anything here (which is likely due to the fact that it is the capital area). I did manage to find a dealer that was reputable and was willing to drive it out to me as well as handle registration. All of the fees together meant it was a little over the approved loan, but the bank said ok that's fine. I am really glad my bank is nice like this, but then I suspected they would be when I was doing my research for a new bank last year. It's a small-medium sized credit union with emphasis on union -- all decisions have to be run by the people who have accounts with them. And they bumped my loan application up when they heard I was in dire straights car wise. Woo.
Anyway I now have a 2016 Honda CR-V. Which isn't the Toyota I wanted, but Honda's aren't bad deals and it is roomy and drives nicely. It does need time to start up (my Toyota didn't care; start and go), and it does need time to transition between gears, but it handled the hour drive and back for the surgery and handled going out back to the dealer (45 minutes one way) when I thought something was off with it so it's good. It's good. I got in this week the permanent plates for it and I have to say it's nice to have a car registered in this sate. It makes living here feel more stable. I didn't get my last car registered because I knew it wouldn't pass inspection so I kept it registered in old state until I could work out getting a new car. And I couldn't keep the Toyota because no one was really willing to work on a car that old that I could find and even though I knew what was wrong with it, I couldn't fix it myself lacking the space or the mental brain space to say nothing of whether I could physically manage it. Now the other thing that worked out for me with the whole mess is that wonderfully the bank has a month's grace period until I make the first payment.
Work wise everything has been good; we finally hired someone because we kept loosing people over the pay offered and I hope someone at HR is keeping track. But we found someone just before I went on leave and she started this past week. She was shadowing by Friday so I started showing her most of our day to day and how we use the EMR for everything. She's picking it up pretty easily and she has the exact mind set the rest of my team has -- she's been fitting in well already. And I am so proud of the youngest two we have; much improvement and everyone fits together well. It's wonderful. I am also a bit proud for myself since I manage the team so I know it reflects well on me what they're doing and how they're doing. And it's a nice feeling, too.
Since March we have seen the loss of more primary care providers in the area which brings the total up to 12 to 14 (we've...lost count since it seems like every other week there's another one gone). We are still adding patients to our wait list, but are currently trying to figure out a better way to go ahead with managing the wait list and scheduling. There is a mixed bag of patients since yay new people moving to the area (which is a good thing since previously people were aging faster than people could be brought in to replace them on the work force) especially what I call internal refugees - people from other states where legislation is making their lives precarious. There really isn't another word for them I don't think. But there is also a good number of older people moving to the state because they want to be closer to their kids and grandkids in their retirement. And also the pcps who have retired had the bulk of the older population. So when do onboard a new patient, half of them need follow up care in the next 6 months or less and that cuts into time available for more new patients. And one of the two providers we have has a established patients from last year who are now having their second physical with us. And yeah there is a huge influx of formally healthy people experiencing new chronic illness -- some mild like new onset hyper tension and others more severe like new heart conditions -- in this post pandemic world which is straining the system especially because the worse the condition is, the more people are scared and need reassurance from their provider. It's...a bit of a strain. I wouldn't go back to retail or food service over this, but it's a strain. (I was joking with one of my coworkers that the least nicest benefit the company could add to our job is free xanex for all their employees.) I think one of the strangest comments or conversations with people right now is their confusion about the wait time for a provider because it isn't a secret that health care is under staffed; we are very confused how people can read articles of under staffing and not connect it to being unable to see a provider in less than 6 months as a new patient. Or how hard it is to get someone in for acute issues. Like. These two things are connected and no there isn't a solution because there is a shortage of staff. From admins who answer the phone to providers themselves. And because of the state of the economy and because of post covid complications, a lot of people are needing a higher level of care which means less time than pre-2020 for more patients.
Anyway.
In addition to sorting out *waves hand* I am looking for an apartment for two in my area. My sister has had enough with her current company dicking around when it comes to her pay and responsibilities. They keep pushing back her review which is necessary for them to authorize a raise for her, but it means that she is currently getting paid only 20 cents more than people who just start at the lowest level, but she is both a training manager and one who fills in to help out the managers of several stores. She is also having trouble with them not giving her accommodations and also getting blamed for things that aren't her fault. Now it isn't that my company will offer her less shit to deal with it, but it'll be at minimum $2 and change more than she gets paid now and offers better health insurance. She will also be able to share rent with someone finally. She bought her car back in February because she was in a rock and a hard place work wise and finally just got one; but then that payment meant she couldn't afford rent because the payment was high due to her credit score (which had plummeted because she wasn't getting paid enough so she had to make hard choices for things). There was only one person she vaguely knew at work who had space for her to move in, but since she's moved in with him, it's just been red flags left and right. Awfully, the people she knows are all "oh no that's normal" and it's like no. Not when he keeps track of what she spends, what she does, complains that she doesn't want to hang out with him (post work she is terribly overwhelmed and needs at minimum an hour to decompress at which point she just wants food and to go to sleep before work the next day), and complains that she eats separately (which she needs to because she has a ton of food allergies that he doesn't seem to respect). And then for some reason he refused her rent payment this month and then asked her to do some outside work -- in 90F+ temps. She didn't sign a rental agreement that said rent money could be exchanged for work so that's not okay but neither is it okay to ask someone to do outside work in that heat temp. But this rental situation was her last resort so it's either stick it out there or move out to my way.
We know she can get a job fairly quickly even if it's not immediately with my company; there are a ton of places hiring. If need be, she can work one of those until she gets a job with my company or something similar as there are several other medical places here that are hiring asap. And since I am starting to look now for a new place, we should have fairly good luck finding something when my lease is up for renewal. If nothing else, we'll see about splitting my current apartment which would be tight, but manageable. We learned during my surgery that the cats will eventually get along and the apartment is set up in a way that we can continue to manage to introduce them slowly. Definitely workable.
I would like to be able to move apartments though. I hadn't put too much thought into it since housing here is like everywhere -- what housing? -- but it'll be nice. It turns out that the second available apartment had not been rented back in March. It only looked like that so no one would think to steal in and squat in it. But it was filled in April and they are... It could just be that they are in their 20s but its weird. The place is rented by a guy who looks around 22 or so and he has a girlfriend that I haven't figured out if she is over 18 yet. They have a dog that isn't quite trained well -- barks at the slightest thing and for hours. And there was recently a car incident that has involved the police and the car has a winch holding the hood down and prior to the police showing up to ask about it, the girl came running up the stairs sounding not just panicked but like. It sounded almost like they knew that the police involved would be a Problem. Could be just kids learning the ins and outs of being an adult but I'm listening here in my apartment like it's a sitcom.
It does however make me feel uneasy so yeah I would like out. With my sister's situation it seems like a good time to make it all work. And it would be nice to have someone I know sharing the rent since now I have my car payment and the current inflation that doesn't seem to be going away. And then I can also start working toward a decent savings account and options for that.
So yeah that's the state of things right now. Much tired. Much overwhelmed. Much depressed. But I got a good support network and all that jazz. Just got to wait all this out. It'll sort out.