Archive of ‘personal’ category

09
Jan
2022

And prednisone is still out here in these streets.

categories: personal, television shows; word count: 438 words

I’ve finished up one of the antibiotics which was for fungal infections and only lasted a few days. Now I have to finish up the other antibiotic, which runs the gamut lasting about as long as these things tend to last, and I have to finish up the low dose of prednisone that both of my doctors want me to end up on (followed by me never touching prednisone again unless it is an imminent, and I mean imminent, matter of life and death… and even then, assuming that I have any choice in the matter by way of having it charted in my medical files, I’m going to want something else first if I can be given something else). There actually seems to be some improvement with the gum and jaw infection that prednisone caused, although I need a lower dose of prednisone to cause the swelling on that side of my mouth to go down and stay down. But for some reason I’ve been having worse migraines since all of this started, even (especially) for me. Par for the course, eh?

At some point I’m going to need to post something up here about “Thasmin going canon” since I’ve been a fan of Doctor Who for quite awhile. It’s actually kind of surprising that I haven’t so far. I got into Doctor Who with the 2012 Christmas special and haven’t looked back. The fandom is also a lot less vitriolic than the Supernatural fandom, and if all fandoms were even remotely like this — I’m aware that most generally are with minimal “fandom drama”, but some of them are not — I might consider going to a convention or two, or at least think about it, but I honestly think that with things the way they are in general right now my best bet is to continue to keep all fandom activities on the Internet (even the good people that I’ve met through them) and not allow them access to my real life. As it is, my real life is markedly different from my “fandom life” anyway to the tune of the fact that I maintain separate social media accounts for fandom-related activities and real ones, excluding Facebook where I run filters on everything so that people I know in real life very infrequently cross paths with those who I know on the Internet, and at that, those who like varying degrees of the favorite things that I do. I may talk about liking Supernatural on my Facebook page, but I scarcely mention anything related to the fandom… or fandoms in general, so no, it’s not “just Supernatural” here.

08
Jan
2022

Prednisone has claimed its 666th casualty here, y’all.

categories: personal; word count: 484 words

As most of you already know, I was put on prednisone because of breathing difficulties. We’ve tried to lower the dose and make it less frequent over the… months and years that it has become increasingly more problematic, but for me it seems like the side effects have drastically been outweighing the good things that it does for me to the tune of reconsidering whether or not prednisone is a viable medication for me to take.

Well, in spite of using mouthwash one to two times a day and brushing twice a day, I managed to get a sudden gum and jaw infection. As it became increasingly more uncomfortable, I began drinking soda and water from straws and sticking to softer foods like chicken noodle soup and ramen (that Bub doesn’t lovingly steal from me because now he loves ramen). Because it came on within a day and a half of starting prednisone once again for something that was very necessary, it was — as it should have been — attributed to prednisone. So now I am on two antibiotics meant to make it go away and fast so that I can resume eating more normally and so the infection doesn’t, well, spread. You know, since I’m immunosuppressed…

At any rate, I also learned something else: that people have read my blog well enough to know that Bub is on Mirtazapine at night to help him sleep (which it does a beautiful job of, by the way, since he was clinically diagnosed with insomnia at age two), and Risperdal during the day to help decrease the violence of meltdowns and to stabilize his mood (and that works really well given where he was at when all of this… escalated to the point that he needed medication, which quite likely could have been kick-started by adolescence). Apparently they have some opinions on this, claiming that I “drug my kid(s)”. And although it’s kind of adorable that they read through my blog well enough to figure out that he’s on two different necessary medications prescribed by his care team, what would they rather me have him do? Be miserable because he can’t sleep? Cry because he can’t sleep? Quickly, and wildly, oscillate between moods and have meltdowns that hurt people? It sure seems fun for people to point fingers about how I supposedly “drug my kid(s)” when these are both medications recommended and prescribed by his care team, consensually taken by him every morning and evening. Sadly, this goes right back to the fact that even in 2022 (which has just barely started and already, people are wilding out for no good reason), people continue to medication shame and pill shame, which does nothing to support those with mental health illnesses… least of all actual kids.

If you’re jealous that Bub is clearly living his best life over here, by all means, just admit to being jealous.

06
Jan
2022

That went a lot better than I thought it would.

categories: personal; word count: 582 words

I did the same song and dance that I’ve done with HHSC since 2014, whereupon for some reason the boys’ child support cases would be referred to the child support office for enforcement in spite of the fact that Monster’s child support order has had a good cause waiver on it since custody was finalized, barring the two weeks in which enforcement efforts were taken because of a screw-up that probably got someone fired, and the fact that I was literally never told that I could request one in Bub’s case until 2014, which would have completely bypassed a custody, support, and visitation order being drawn up to begin with. (More to the point with Bub’s child support case and everything else related to it: I was told that if I “didn’t comply”, we would lose some of the benefits that our household gets. I was never informed that I could have claimed good cause since the start, continue to get those benefits, and not have to cooperate once it was approved.)

However, when told that Bub’s good cause waiver “wasn’t approved” by the chief ombudsman (although I had originally been told by a representative that both waivers were approved and quickly got the impression that this was not something I was supposed to know, that HHSC and the child support office were merely choosing not to honor my youngest son’s good cause waiver in attempts to enforce the child support case of his that never should have been drawn up to begin with), I began leaving comments on their social media pages. I began talking about what was going on, which ultimately drew the attention of HHSC because I was frequently using phrases like “endangering my child” and “endangering my family”. I decided that it would be worth my while to lodge a daily complaint on the child support website against the chief ombudsman who insisted on leaving a potentially unsafe case open for active enforcement, then going so far as to send messages over the child support website stating that I was no longer comfortable with her involvement in my children’s cases. I sent a few more internal e-mails about… why this was even happening to individuals working for HHSC that had helped out when this had happened in the past. Along with filing a formal complaint with the HHSC Ombudsman every single day, I filed a complaint about Bub’s case on the Federal Child Support Agency’s website (or whatever the specific name of it is). The squeaky wheel was going to get the grease or a lot more people were going to know about this. And I contacted Legal Aid again.

I made it clear that if I was going to have to litigate over this, unless I couldn’t (I did STEM prior to the onset of disability, not law) that I wanted to be compensated in the form of all of the arrears on Bub’s child support case or the maximum that you can get from a civil case. Maybe assigning a dollar value to it helped out…

At any rate, imagine my surprise yesterday afternoon when I get a call from someone at the HHSC Ombudsman’s office stating that Bub’s good cause waiver was being upheld, that enforcement would immediately cease on the case, and that we had nothing more to worry about as it related to HHSC and the OAG potentially jeopardizing us. (Now all I have to do is actually get disability for myself someday, don’t I?)

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