Posts Tagged ‘disability’

17
Jul
2020

Why even bother ordering online if you, well, can’t?

categories: personal; word count: 200 words

Good news: You can add your EBT card to Amazon so that they can bill from it.
(Well, in my state, you now can, at least. So that’s exactly what I did.)
Bad news: Amazon is so picky about what can actually be billed to your EBT card.
In which case, why bother even using your EBT card to buy from Amazon? Seriously?

Case in point, I thought I would buy myself some chicken chow mein, which happens to be one of my favorite foods. Ironically, I could buy the rice noodles with it. That would bill my EBT card no problem. But the thing that would not bill my EBT card… was the chicken chow mein itself. No retailer that I could find on Amazon would actually bill my EBT card for the chicken chow mein. It almost seems to be an exercise in futility to find actual retailers that will bill your EBT card for the foods that you want to buy. I’m sure that is the whole point.

“Make it so difficult for them to use their card that they won’t actually want to use EBT.”
“This is how we will make them want to get jobs!”

14
Jul
2020

This doesn’t surprise me, but it saddens me.

categories: personal; word count: 331 words

As a direct result of this pandemic, my pulmonologist does not want me to take prednisone unless I really need it and there is no other alternative. This is because prednisone is a fairly potent immunosuppressant and we are seeing an uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases in this state (once again) because of our governor’s incompetence, and if I am on prednisone — or have been on prednisone really recently — and am actually exposed to it, this may incapacitate my ability to fight it off. This would obviously be bad for me for a number of reasons, the least of them being that I am definitely not a mild asthmatic. And I mean, I can see where my lung doctor is coming from making that recommendation. But it just sucks that he has to make it…

We could have ridden this out longer under a longer stay-at-home order, opened the economy up over a longer period of time, but no. The governor pandered to people literally whining over “the economy” and “going back to work”, and as a direct consequence of this, we have to pay the price of closing everything back up again because the largest hospital in the state and the country could not handle the ICU caseload.

I can’t help but know for a fact that if we had any other president this would have been handled better.

Although prednisone is not the wrecking ball for me that it can be for other people, it has helped in the past when I have had more severe, enduring exacerbations, so it does suck that I can not fall back on this right now, so I am hoping that Symbicort works well in the interim. And speaking of that, when I get a chance I’m thinking of replaying Final Fantasy XIII with New Game+ or maybe even Final Fantasy XIII-2 while I conveniently slow walk Lightning Returns — yes, I’ll get around to finishing it, someday. Really, I will here.

01
Jul
2020

Well, this may not have gone as it was intended.

categories: personal; word count: 301 words

My neurologist wanted me to try lisinopril to see if it changed the frequency and severity of my migraines in any positive way (lessening either). After working my way up from 2.5mg to the intended 5mg dose, maintaining that for a little while, and finding the side effects that I could feel tolerable, I then began to notice something that was not only possibly intolerable from a clinical standpoint but concerning. I was beginning to get a bit “puffy” in a manner not quite like prednisone (I know what prednisone “puffiness” feels like and when it occurs), having to urinate more, and I was beginning to gain weight in spite of that when my diet and exercise had not changed at all. After doing some research on the side effect profile of this medication, these are side effects that this medication can have, and the individual that generally has these side effects most likely discontinues taking the medication as a result of these for… well, whatever reason.

At first, I thought that things weren’t going too bad with this medication, and then… well, this. Heh.

“Well, this,” seems to be a staple of me describing this medication to varying individuals in my care team.

Well, this.

I don’t mind gaining some weight from taking certain medications if there is a net positive from me taking that medication — prednisone is perhaps the primary one here, and the primary reason for this — and I can put up with a lot of side effects from treatment if the end goal is me comparatively being healthier, feeling better, and being in less pain. But for lisinopril, gaining weight and “feeling puffy” are not desirable side effects from treatment. These are warier side effects that you have to alert your care team to, it seems like.

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