August 2021 archive

21
Aug
2021

I know, I queue posts up in here, but still…

categories: personal; word count: 348 words

Not too long ago, my Twitter account got put under a “temporary restriction”.

When I tried to have Twitter call me with the verification code that their site insisted they had to call me with to deliver, the call continually dropped out no matter what I did. I could never get the complete code on each of the attempts that I made. It eventually got to the point where I could no longer request calls to be made to me with this verification code, so I put in a support ticket to Twitter that has, so far, gone unanswered. I’ve been hearing a lot of bad things about Twitter’s support system, though, so this might take awhile to fix… assuming, of course, that they answer the support ticket. I’ve heard a lot of things about support tickets with valid concerns going unanswered(, and that seems to have been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic).

If they could e-mail or text me the verification code, that would probably work a lot better, which I asked them to do when I made the support ticket to begin with. I don’t know why they chose the option to have to call me with it, especially when the calls continuously dropped out. Twitter is like Facebook in that successfully contacting support can be, and generally is, difficult. There is no direct way to contact either of them, even though Facebook appears to have its own page (“Facebook”) and Twitter has a support account on their site. These things don’t seem to be monitored to the extent that addressing specific concerns on them yields results, though. And they should be, because it’s a shame to let potential like that go to waste. Even if a lot of people comment on them or Tweet to them, which they already do, it would be a lot easier to solve problems on each of their sites if they could more easily be contacted, especially in these manners…

I digress. Maybe I expect more out of modern-day social networking sites than I really should. I don’t know.

20
Aug
2021

It gets worse… we have antis in our fandom, y’all.

categories: television shows; word count: 304 words

Every time I end a subject with “y’all” on here we appear to go on a wild ride, so buckle up.

There are some people who are, for lack of a better way to put it, “against” the Hellers (they ship w*ncest, or worse, which I will write a separate post about), and their interactions with Hellers make it extremely clear. Some of them seek Hellers out on social media to let them know how they feel about their preferred ship — Castiel and Dean Winchester — and some of them do not let up interacting with Hellers when Hellers continually state that they do not want to be interacted with in such a manner and that they would like the conversation to end. That, and these antis (which I’m going to call them until I find a better way to describe them) circulate block lists amongst themselves of Hellers, which sometimes hilariously results in people being blocked, finding out that they were blocked, and having never interacted with the person in question.

If someone states that they wish not to be interacted with, be a decent human being and respect it.

And although I can’t believe that I actually have to state this, gleaning someone’s social media profile does not mean that you intimately know them, so please stop behaving as though scrolling through their Twitter timeline means that you know them on a deeply personal level. (Also, an anti decided to lie to Twitter and state that I had posted self-harm or suicidal content on my Twitter timeline when I had done no such thing. Twitter went through my timeline and confirmed that no such content was there. So on top of not leaving you alone when you repeatedly ask them to, they lie. Given the nature of this fandom, this is unsurprising.)

19
Aug
2021

Consulting with my care team about my health.

categories: personal; word count: 865 words

This has been a conversation long in the making, and I’ve thought about it for a long time now.

For those of you who don’t know, I have nocturnal, non-convulsive epilepsy. I have been able to keep my driver’s license as long as I didn’t drive at night, because for the longest time with the exception of one seizure (considered a “one-off” by my care team), I only had seizures at night, so it was safe for me to drive during the day… even though I couldn’t bring myself to get behind the wheel of a car after the first seizure that I had in April of 2019. It was literally as I was preparing to get back into bed after using the restroom at around two in the morning. For a few years, almost until present day, this was something that I was comfortable with — well, not the actual driving part — because the timing of my seizures was fairly predictable, always at night. Sometimes I slept through them. Other times, I’d wake up during one. I could convey to someone else that I was having a seizure even though speaking was difficult, and I rode through feeling like my brain was being shocked and an egg that was being smashed against hot concrete as hard as it could be thrown by thinking of my children. They were my bright spots in the midst of all of this, and thoughts of them helped keep me grounded until the seizure finally ended minutes later (“forever”, heh).

Recently, I began to have seizures earlier in the day. I also became completely apraxic during them, unable to speak at all, and some seizures caused me to drop to the floor in the midst of them (they’re still non-convulsive, I would just literally drop to the floor if I was in a standing position). I still retain the ability to type and write, even though that is incredibly difficult. Auras have gotten much shorter, which means that if I were to drive I would not have enough time to pull off of the road and ride through one as it began. A lot of them cause me to “blank out” in the middle of them, and if you’re speaking to me I will not get the full gist of what you are saying because words will blank out… either one or several. I kept, and am keeping, my care team abreast of all of these developments. I was, and am, at the border of having to relinquish my driver’s license, which I’ve had since I was a teenager. But I decided to make that decision for myself because getting behind the wheel of a car causes me significant anxiety (I start recalling previous seizures and worrying that if I do drive, even if it is this one time, I will have a seizure behind the wheel… as I put it to a well-meaning relative, “I don’t want to put this into a light pole”). I made the decision to relinquish my driver’s license because I have a physical condition that makes operating a motor vehicle unsafe, and I do not see this ever being something that will simply… go away and stop. In the interim, I have been using Lyft — I am amenable to using Uber if it is better though, but my experiences with Lyft have been good — to transport myself places. I did this when it was still a thought to relinquish my driver’s license, something not committed to.

To me, this feels like the “end of an era”, and in that regard it does feel a bit sad. I did have a few well-meaning relatives who wanted me to hang onto my license for six months to a year “to see if things got better”, but as I continued to write about my seizures online, they realized that things would not get better. (And for the record, I was not epileptic at all when I got my driver’s license.) It’s a bit sad to realize that driving is something that I will never do again, but I also feel content with the decision to voluntarily relinquish my driver’s license because I realize that it is no longer safe for me to drive, the idea of it causes me significant anxiety, I have other ways to get where I need to go, and I am doing what is best for me and those who I love. I am at peace with this aspect of my health, as I continue to take medication for it (originally the maximal dose of Trokendi, now nearly the maximal dose of Gabapentin). I intend on switching my neurologist to one in this city for an easier commute to get on some quick-acting medication that will help stop a seizure in its tracks… and no, not even then will I feel comfortable or safe behind the wheel.

It is truly the end of an era, and I am going to continue to do what is best for me and those who I love.

I do not intend to drive again, even if in two years’ time I could theoretically retest depending on my health.

17
Aug
2021

Nerve blocks and me: a thing that is not working.

categories: personal; word count: 293 words

I got my first nerve block on the left side of my head at the occipital nerve for migraines.

One day I will be able to spell that. Getting back to what I wanted to write about, though…

It seems that these hit and they miss. For some people they work amazingly well and they only need them every four to six months or so. Other people need them like… every two weeks if their insurance approves it, but they help. And for other people, they do not work for a myriad of reasons. Sometimes the nerve gets nicked and that causes problems. Other times, the nerve block intermittently does not work. And then sometimes the nerve block just plain does not work at all. On the worst side of my head, I feel like I am between it intermittently not working and it completely not working. I put myself back on prednisone since that has a history of helping with migraines, particularly migraine clusters, even though that was the last thing I wanted to do… and it made things bearable. I seem to be someone for whom these do not work, although I am going to give them the requisite week to see if things turn around and my migraines become more bearable. If that does not work on either side, I will discuss giving them more often with my pain management clinic to see if that makes them “stick”, and if that does not work, I will ask about excising the nerves. X-rays that I have had done have confirmed that they are the problem, especially the right one.

There are still some things that can be done to help ease my migraines. I am willing to explore all of them.

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