Posts Tagged ‘health’

12
Mar
2020

Our PS4’s external hard drive has finally arrived!

categories: consoles, personal; word count: 431 words

Now all I have to do is download the games that we had put into storage due to lack of space onto it, which will probably take… the better portion of a day, and we’ll have everything downloaded that we actually own. With where our PlayStation 4 is at in the house, it’s not particularly close to the router, even though we do have an extender now which has made download times better than they used to be in the past. So I am thankful for that, even though they have almost never been “lightning fast” or even extremely fast. Sigh…

I also found out that my optometrist does not currently take the Medicaid HMO that I had to switch over to, which means that for the sake of convenience and ensuring that I am able to see properly I had to find an optometrist around here that does, so I will be seeing them this week. Apparently they had been bought out by… someone else, something else, I don’t know, so they have to renew contracts with everyone, and I didn’t want to have to wait an extra several months to see if they would renew the contract that they had with my current Medicaid HMO, so a new optometrist it is, I suppose. At least I like my current glasses enough to keep those frames. In case Bub ever inadvertently headbutts me, we’ve already confirmed that they are durable!

Meanwhile, I continue to do poorly on the inhaled powder steroid that I am on for my asthma.

I suspect that “given enough time”, I will officially “fail” this, and be able to switch back to Pulmicort.

Being on powdered mometasone seems to be taking my lungs back to the days of… several years ago, almost seriously, when I was flaring a lot more frequently and severely and could literally walk through my house at a brisk pace (or to the mailbox and get the mail at that same brisk pace) and seriously get winded. Now I’m doing that as a result of having been on mometasone for nearly a month, adherent to the schedule of inhaling one powdered inhalation from the container twice daily. I don’t want to be back to this, but here we are. With any luck I can get placed back on Pulmicort. Seriously. It’s really ironic that the Wikipedia article for it states, “Specifically it is used to prevent rather than treat asthma attacks.”, because in me, it has actually been causing more of them lately, and this has coincided with me beginning this med regimen…

06
Mar
2020

Look what I bought Bub! Look at it! Look!

categories: personal, RPGs; word count: 312 words

I ordered Bub the ten-in-one Kingdom Hearts game that is coming out later this month because I found out that they were having a 70% off sale on… wait for it… a bundle that normally sells for $99, and with tax, I got it for just over $30. Friends, I call that one hell of a deal. I didn’t even have to think about that one. In my cart it went, and on our PlayStation 4 it went. Now, that drew attention to the almost chronic problem of us running out of hard drive space on our PlayStation 4, which I am attempting to rectify by way of having ordered an external hard drive to begin to store things on so that we do not have to play the “hard drive shuffle” that we have begun to play. I didn’t get an extremely large one, but I got one that suits our needs.

Meanwhile, switching my Medicaid HMO as a result of needing to keep all of my doctors in network (since one of them changed the hospital that he was affiliated to, which meant that one of the three Medicaid HMOs in my area was one that was… no longer in network with them) has caused me to need to switch the inhaled steroid that I have been on for maintenance to control my asthma to a new one, and this has not been fun. As the saying goes, “this has been widely regarded by the cosmos as a bad move,” or something to that effect. If I “fail” this medication, which I strongly suspect that I will, insurance will cover the medication that I was formerly on. It’s just a matter of getting to the point where my insurance will have seen me as “being on it long enough to have failed it”, will be satisfied with that, and will then let me switch back.

20
Feb
2020

Neurological medications that I am currently on.

categories: personal; word count: 273 words

Since I mentioned this in a previous post, I thought that I would get around to making that whole list.

Right now, I do not feel like triptans help out a whole lot, and would like to switch to low-dose narcotics at some point. Due to the severity of my asthma, I can not safely take any NSAIDs without risking prednisone.

I also require prior authorization for Trokendi and for some of my triptans (it seems Zomig requires it now).

Maintenance medications
Trokendi, 300mg: Anything with topiramate as the active ingredient is almost never without side effects, as I have learned. I take these (200mg + 100mg) at night, which lessens the side effects, and that helps… a bit.

Abortive medications
Fioricet: I find that this one works the best, although one dose is never enough.
Imitrex injections: These are rife with side effects, so I only use these when necessary.
Olanzapine, single dose: These help with really severe migraines, but they make me really tired.
Promethazine/tizanidine: These are for nausea and muscle spasm, respectively, and they are to be taken with whatever abortive medication that I give myself as necessary for each of those symptoms (and they generally are with severe migraines). Although I am growing more tolerant of them, I’m still hit out of the blue with the occasional side effect of tiredness. However, they do help ameliorate those specific symptoms, so…
Zomig dissolvable melt/nasal spray: I have to fight insurance due to prior authorizations on these, and they do help when I can’t give myself Fioricet, but they are not particularly good at ameliorating a lot of the pain.

19
Feb
2020

I have finally maxed this thing out with RAM!

categories: personal; word count: 507 words

Although both of the sticks of RAM that are in here are 8GB, maxing it out in terms of that being the most that the processor can… take (and that simplifying the entire explanation down, I know), they aren’t of the same “speed”, but this is a net increase in the computer’s overall speed, so I am satisfied with that and will gladly “take that”, as the Generation Z kids say. Now all I have to do is fix the peculiar problems that have emerged whenever I put my camcorder’s memory card into the port that this computer has for it so that I can resume uploading videos to our YouTube channel, as that wasn’t even remotely a problem until… now, when it decided to become a problem out of the blue, and I suppose that will be two less headaches for me out of the abundance of headaches that I get per calendar year, which for me is no shortage of headaches. Migraines. (Or should I be saying “are no shortage of headaches”? How does one word that? I’m not sure.)

With any luck, I should be able to see my neurologist soon enough now that the referral that I needed to get to continue seeing him at his new practice should… be there. I’ll be calling about that to inquire about the status of that since I had to see my primary care doctor to get another one sent his way (“yes, same doctor, new practice… and I had to change my Medicaid HMO, so here’s that information”), and as soon as I am able to actually make an appointment to see him, will do that. I’ll let him know which medications I’m on work, which of them seem to need their doses adjusted, and which of them no longer seem to be working. For me, it honestly does not seem like triptans work. The goal is “to be in as little of pain as possible, if none at all,” and although I am well aware that the diagnosis of chronic, intractable migraine disorder probably means that the “if none at all” bit… isn’t actually going to happen short of a medical miracle, I know that I shouldn’t settle for pain, and that I should continue to advocate for myself when certain medications that I am on or take as needed do not appear to be working as intended. And with triptans, you can really tell if they’re not working. That’s along the lines of “I had to give myself the second dose two hours after the first right down to the minute, gave myself the third dose the next day, predictably maxed myself out for the week, and this has become a pattern with several triptans at varying doses”. Some migraineurs need medication that lasts longer and provides more thorough coverage. It me. I’m one of those migraineurs. It comes with the territory.

At some point soon, I may make a list of which medications I’m currently on… work, and which ones do not.

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