November 2020 archive

20
Nov
2020

That didn’t go that bad… I hope it didn’t.

categories: personal; word count: 359 words

I feel like my disability hearing went alright. It could have been a lot worse than it actually was, but I’m bracing myself for the potential impact of being denied and having to continue to fight for disability benefits by putting in a new application after the sixty days that I can appeal the judge’s ruling have elapsed. Just as with the presidential election, I brace for the worst possibility and hope for the best. I’ve begun to see the local pain management clinic, and they put me on Gabapentin since I had been on Topamax for years and… well, it didn’t seem to be working that well if I was having migraines at this frequency and severity. I was also put back on Fioricet, which has worked better for me than any triptan ever has, although I’m to take less of them a month. I guess that’s because we don’t want this to stop working like the triptans obviously have.

We’re also in the midst of another COVID-19 (coronavirus) spike, presumably because people still took their kids out for Halloween in spite of the consequences and risk. Bub and Monster stayed home with a bag of candy that I had intentionally bought for them to give to them on Halloween, and I had to explain to Monster a few times that we weren’t going out for Halloween this year and why in a manner that he could more easily understand. I don’t think we’re going to have any problems come the Thanksgiving that we… don’t celebrate for ethical reasons, simply because we’re not inviting anyone over or really even going anywhere.

I need to fix my treadmill, too. The track that you walk on (do you call it a track? I’m not going to look this up right now)… moves from left to right as you walk, if that makes any sense, rather than staying firm on the treadmill and only moving backwards when you walk. This has contributed to me being clumsy on the treadmill. I’m going to get a lot less out of it if I have to walk slower and constantly watch myself using it…

19
Nov
2020

Only one of these things surprises me.

categories: personal; word count: 379 words

So Twitter actually suspended my account for criticizing new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which surprised me… because of all of the things to crack down on, let alone suspend me over, it was that criticism that broke the camel’s back. I appealed the suspension as soon as I became aware that it had happened and began e-mailing Twitter support after they initially e-mailed me, once per day when it became apparent that they could expedite my “permanent” suspension but not bother to have someone take a look at it to see whether or not it was justified (it wasn’t). But it honestly figures that they can expedite a “permanent” account suspension (and not allowing me to create new accounts in spite of the fact that sorting this out has taken forever), but slow-walk an appeal. We really need better social networking sites.

I am also sitting on a Facebook post block that expires at the beginning of next month for telling someone who is extremely religious not to evangelize to me. They also criticized the fact that I am a leftist, so I criticized them for blindly following their religion of choice, and look where that got me. Both Facebook and Twitter seem to “crack down” harder on users that they can, with reasonable suspicion, ascertain to be AFAB (assigned female at birth) or female, going to almost herculean lengths to protect straight white men… and religious, straight white men at that. I am honestly not sure which of them, between the two, is worse.

I’ve begun to be seen at the local pain management clinic for my migraines with the goal being to start Botox at… some point. We’ll have to find out which point that is. In the interim, I’ve been put on Gabapentin to see if it would be a better preventive medication than Topamax and Trokendi… weren’t, and what I’m pretty sure the rest of my preventive medications have been. I’m not sure how well it’s working because I literally can not feel most of my left hand, the back of my left foot, and random, smaller areas on my left side.

So now I have to sit here and think about what I am willing to “trade” for less migraine pain. Wonderful.

17
Nov
2020

Soon, I have another disability hearing. Go me.

categories: personal; word count: 352 words

In my spare time, I’ve been stylizing our YouTube channel in the hope that at some point I can get it off of the ground. I’ve been uploading most of the videos that I posted on Facebook to it in the event that, for whatever reason (and trust me, there are several) I do decide to leave Facebook, that way the videos that I’ve taken of my kids are stored elsewhere… and I’m also backing up all of the pictures that aren’t on Instagram and posting them on MeWe for that same reason, now that I know that enough of my friends use it that it’s not a waste of time to have an account. One thing that the site has going for it is that it looks nice and is easy to navigate. Now more people need to move off of Facebook and onto it, or off of Facebook and onto just about any site that isn’t owned by Facebook. The entire point of the process here is to get away from Facebook…

In the interim, I’m continuing to fight for disability benefits with chronic, intractable migraine disorder as my primary diagnosis and my asthma as… something that exists and is there. I have literally heard “you’re smart, you can adapt (to other work)” so many times that if that alone could induce vomiting, it would. My gaming backlog has only increased by leaps and bounds because I have to be careful about using electronics, those being a huge trigger for… wait for it, migraines. There are things that I want to do that I can’t do when I want to, or even at all, because of my migraines, so this “adaptability” is bullshit on the part of the people that want to insist that I am capable of adapting, let alone to work. I expect that I will have to continue to fight for disability benefits and I will be pleasantly surprised if I do not at just about any point.

But honestly, I can see why some people give up. They’re forced to do so through a dehumanizing process.

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