Posts Tagged ‘disability’

06
Apr
2021

Should this really surprise anyone at this point?

categories: personal; word count: 189 words

I’ve had to abort two separate migraine headaches now with prednisone… the wrecking ball.

Surprisingly, this doesn’t work extremely well on my lungs any more, but it does work reasonably well on my migraines, helping me restore some semblance of normalcy to my life after I’ve literally tried everything else at my arsenal. Since my insurance rejected my pain management clinic’s request for me to start Botox treatments to the tune of us having to play around with them appealing that, I’m going to ask about starting prednisone “long-term”, either every day or every other day, in the interim as we fight insurance for Botox…

I’m well aware of the side effects of prednisone, having needed it for my asthma as much as I have in the past. But there are days when I don’t want to be confined to bed (or extremely close to that), not being able to do much of anything or what I really want to do that day, so if that means literally sucking it up and starting oral steroid treatment for my migraines, I am amenable, moon face and weight gain be damned.

11
Mar
2021

I need to come up with better subject lines.

categories: personal; word count: 293 words

I need my optometrist to… do whatever it is that they have to do to continue seeing me as a patient, because apparently the whole thing changed hands and they have to recertify with each of the major insurance providers that they had formerly certified with, or however you actually word that. I’ve been meaning to get my eyes tested for months, but this has been the one monkey wrench in the plan. I’m pretty sure that I am no longer seeing 20/20 with my glasses, finding it more difficult to see what’s on my computer screen and having to squint at it with glasses on some of the time. And I’m not even on prednisone right now, either!

I’m still waiting to hear back on whether or not my insurance has approved Botox treatments for my migraines, or even steroid shots since my new diagnosis will allow those. But since my last visit with my pain management clinic was a TeleHealth consult because of the severe winter storms that hit around here at this time last month, I… don’t exactly have the highest of hopes that this will come through before I’m actually the skeleton from the skeleton meme. I would have asked about it then, but it was the nurse practitioner who did the TeleHealth consult with me, and she has to consult with the doctor before she can make any changes to my treatment plan… or sometimes even answer a whole lot of in-depth questions that she may not initially, or originally, have the answers to. So I’m content, or as content as I can be, to wait until my next visit to inquire about that. Ideally, I am approved for both of them and we just go on from there…

20
Feb
2021

This is why I am not playing Cyberpunk 2077.

categories: personal, RPGs, survival horror; word count: 188 words

When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, I was initially excited to play the game.

However, that was short-lived when I found out that a certain part of it caused people to have seizures.

I am epileptic myself, although I retain awareness and consciousness during all of my seizures, and I have no involuntary motor movement. Even though I do not appear to be photosensitive, it wasn’t — and isn’t — a risk that I was (am) willing to take, especially if I had a seizure that… laid me out, so to speak. Even though that was almost immediately patched and friends of mine have told me that that section of the game is a lot “tamer”, I still haven’t played our copy of Cyberpunk 2077. I’m waiting for a lot more information to come out about it, especially that part of the game. My seizures feel like something is shocking my brain, like my brain is an egg thrown onto hot concrete, immediately cooking. If I can avoid them, that would just be awesome.

That also reminds me that I would like to write a post all about my epilepsy since why not?

11
Feb
2021

So apparently I have a new diagnosis now, fun.

categories: personal; word count: 184 words

In addition to having chronic, intractable migraines, I have occipital neuralgia now.

This was, as the kids like to say, “sussed out” by the location in which my migraines almost always start. Apparently it’s not a common diagnosis or even a common thing, although I am not surprised to have been diagnosed with… wait for it, something that isn’t common. This would explain why triptans do not really work on me, or they only work a little bit. The pain from occipital neuralgia can not be ameliorated by triptans because that pain is not actually migraine pain, even though I have both diagnoses at present. However, it can be lessened with targeted Botox shots as well as steroid shots along the location in which the nerve travels. I am open to both of these things if they can in any way meaningfully help. My pain management clinic is actually trying to get Botox injections approved for me, so I will see how that goes. It has taken awhile, but apparently these things predictably do. I will just bide my time here and wait, heh.

1 … 21 22 23 24 25 … 31