Posts Tagged ‘disability’

10
Nov
2022

I shouldn’t have been surprised at any of this.

categories: personal; word count: 263 words

In spite of both of my children’s cases having approved good cause waivers on them exempting them from enforcement so that we can safely receive state benefits, they have once again been referred by the HHSC (Health and Human Services Commission) to the child support office, which is not legal. I have filed a second complaint, will be conversing with the child support office tomorrow morning again over this — didn’t I do this at around the same time last year? — and will consider contacting Legal Aid over this for what might actually be the third time now if enforcement efforts on both cases are not promptly stopped. I also filed another complaint over ambiguous, confusing wording in the state manual as it relates to homeschooling and having that serve as a work exemption, because no such state certification exists in Texas as is now purportedly required by the state benefit handbook. And just like I mentioned when I wrote about this for the first time, everyone was as confused as I was when I sought clarification on it. Everyone seems to get as confused as I am about these child support cases illegally being re-opened for enforcement when they should not be, but it’s my job to make them do their jobs, safely and legally allow us to access benefits and to continue to access benefits, and to keep us safe. If that inconveniences some people, well then so be it.

As has been said with more and more frequency now, let the bridges that I burn light my way, as they will.

08
Nov
2022

This entire day has been one giant headache.

categories: personal; word count: 254 words

There was a change to the manual that has rules and regulations for several of the means-tested government benefits in this state, and no one working for the state has been able to give me any sort of clarification about that — almost all of them didn’t even know that this change had been made to the benefits manual, and all of them conceded that they had no idea how one would even go about doing what it requested (claiming that all home-schooling parents in Texas have to be “state-certified” when there is no law stating that one has to be, nor is there even a path to obtain whatever… certifications this is alluding to or referencing). All I know is that if I have to fight for benefits that we are eligible for, or if I am even so much as briefly denied those benefits, this gives me standing to sue, and I fully do intend on contacting Legal Aid when this happens. I’ve had to contact them before when the state has violated benefit law in the past, although those incidents only escalated so far as the child support office finding out that I had made contact with them with the intent to litigate before the corrupt “chief ombudsman” Stephanie Neely stood down and placed the good cause waiver back on my youngest son’s case. I do love continuing to make her searchable!

I hope that this gets fixed soon though because I really don’t want to have to contact Legal Aid again.

22
Oct
2022

This is what I got for my European heritage!

categories: personal; word count: 202 words

I wish I had the foresight to make the screenshots the same size when I took them, but one of the few pitfalls about the Genomelink site is the ease at which these were… not, to screenshot. However, at least my blog lets me shrink them down to size to make posting about them easier… I’m thankful for that. (And this gives me another chance to play the game of “laugh at the British heritage that I have little to none of, because I am primarily Scandinavian and that is very likely Scottish and Welsh heritage lumped into the British percentile. Multiple other tests that I have done have not picked up detectable British DNA, and of all things, GEDmatch did not pick up British DNA in my ancestry. I could write a completely separate post on “the British thing” that some ancestry apps and websites… do, but I have other posts that I want to write when my migraines consistently recede even just a bit, so I will get to that in due time. All in due time, my friends.)

These posts will be fun to come back to and make when my migraines are even a bit more under control!

20
Oct
2022

I mean, I should have expected this at some point.

categories: personal; word count: 393 words

I found out that the urgent care clinic that I had been going to for a decade… no longer takes my insurance.

So there’s that.

Strangely enough, I am feeling better, but I did make several calls in the interim to try and figure out where I would go if I needed to go to urgent care, or where I would take the kids. Right now, we have the same insurance, just… different kinds if that makes sense. The good thing is that more urgent care facilities in this area take the kids’ insurance than do mine. I’m glad for that. The bad thing, of course, probably doesn’t need to be spelled out here — not as many facilities take my insurance. I’m sure that I’ll find a facility that does, though, even if I have to commute to one of the smaller satellite cities around this city. I might just call my insurance themselves and explain this situation to them though, as they have generally been extremely helpful making sure that I have and retain access to services in the past. Right now all my pain management clinic has been having to do is to fight my insurance to get approval on an MRI (or, failing that, some kind of scan) on my neck and shoulders to ensure that I am not developing arthritis, osteopenia or osteoporosis — this is something that I am at risk for due to necessary oral steroid use and me simply being me. I’d rather know about it now if that actually is the case (even at the “ripe old age” of thirty-six) so that it can appropriately be medicated, especially as it relates to head and neck or shoulder pain. Just tell me now.

The light switch in my bedroom had to be replaced because it actually arced out of the blue, too. So I got to dodge that — literal arcing. That was fun, and by fun I mean not fun. I came into my bedroom one afternoon and went to turn the fan on, having turned the overhead light off choosing to rely on my lamp and ring light to reduce migraine pain, and that was when it arced at me. I immediately turned it off. Several hours later, it was fixed. That could have gone a completely different direction though and actually hurt me, or worse…

07
Oct
2022

I’m feeling better than I was at this time yesterday!

categories: personal; word count: 299 words

Although I’m continuing to have to take pain medication in addition to having the lidocaine and steroid shot to the back of my head that I did (whose name I will eventually, for the life of me, remember… I know it’s the one that begins with dex), I’m not quite as miserable as I was leading up to yesterday… or after I got the actual shot when it didn’t almost immediately take away the majority of the pain like it usually does right then. I think I’m going to stick with the lidocaine and steroid shots for as long as they are useful, conceding the fact that they have begun to grow… less useful over time, although the RFA (radiofrequency ablation, “the probes”) seems like it’s more of a miss than a hit to me, and especially not a direct hit unless you hilariously count one of my nerves being nicked by the needle in the process of numbing. That really hurt!

Fioricet is also beginning to work less than it was, or less than it had been, so I know that I’m starting to round the corner on that medication. And that’s a damn shame, because for awhile it worked phenomenally when needed. Now it just… doesn’t. So that’s one less useful medication for me. And I’m not even going to begin to think about the possibility of using opioids right now because we’re still in the War Against Pain Patients, even when the patient’s history of having tried everything under the sun is conveyed over the course of years of her medical records. I mean, what other options are there out there? Other than one of the most obvious ones if not the most obvious one, which is “this pain is never going to become well-managed”.

Sigh.

06
Oct
2022

Well, that didn’t work like it had been intended to.

categories: personal; word count: 217 words

So I got a lidocaine and steroid shot to the back of my head to try and relieve the pain from the fact that one of my nerves was accidentally punctured by the needle meant to numb it when I was having radiofrequency ablation done on that nerve. (And yes, it was exactly as painful as this blog post intends on making it sound.) Normally these injections block all pain on that side of my head for about a day, and they markedly relieve the pain for the next few days — they’re meant to get you over the hump of acute pain. But I was only pain-free for a few hours before I could actually begin to feel the pain coming back where I had the injections, which has never happened before. So I’m not sure if these nerve blocks are as effective for me as they used to be, or what other options I should explore to minimize or eliminate migraine pain. Or it might be that those nerve blocks were administered because of traditional migraine pain and this was my pain management clinic’s first attempt at administering a nerve block for actual, acute nerve injury. I wonder.

Either way though, I’m miserable at the moment and am waiting for other pain medications to kick in…

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