Posts Tagged ‘health’

08
May
2020

If it’s not one thing here, it is another.

categories: personal; word count: 247 words

Apparently the new hospital that my neurologist switched to… is no longer the hospital that my neurologist is working at. Or, I guess I should say, my former neurologist. He only worked there for six months (or, if you actually take the time to look at a calendar, less than six months, which makes this whole thing worse) before switching to a new hospital that is far enough away from where I live that it is not even worth getting a referral to continue to see him, because the commute is an hour and a half one way. It would literally only be worth putting the planning, time, and effort into that if there were absolutely no other neurologist in this area which took my Medicaid HMO, which still makes me glad that I switched HMOs when I did because otherwise that might actually have been the case… I can see one of the neurologists that works in the hospital twenty minutes over from this city, which isn’t the most ideal, but it’s a lot better than the alternative of that, let me tell you. I got a call from that hospital yesterday to let me know that my appointment with him had to be canceled for that reason, and to set me up for a visit with one of their neurologists at that hospital.

But seriously, if it’s not one thing it is something else. I’d just like to be able to keep seeing a neurologist…

17
Mar
2020

Coronavirus pandemic and… not chill, much?

categories: personal; word count: 408 words

As of the time that I’m writing this, we have had two positive cases of coronavirus in my county. Both of them appear to be as a result of travelers coming back with it and then testing positive, and as soon as they realized that they might actually have it, they sought medical care and put themselves in quarantine. All of the school districts in this area announced on or around Sunday evening that they would extend their Spring Breaks for another week (for the ones that were on Spring Break from the 9th to the 13th), effectively granting another week of Spring Break from the 16th to the 20th. Some of the districts that are… a bit further away from here have chosen to go one week further out from that. The district that I am currently living in has not released any further word on that. But the state that I live in has suspended the requirement for standardized testing for all students that would normally be required to take it, as that would start to come up in a month or two. I do know that much. But they test the different students at different times depending on their grade levels, what the requirements are for each grade level, and whether or not they need to re-test to successfully “be passed up” to the next grade, so I’m wondering if this is on the heels of a bigger plan to “hunker down”, or if school for the rest of the scholastic year might actually be scrapped in the face of this.

Obviously (or, well, maybe not that obviously?), I’m in a “high risk” group, meaning that I would probably not be able to shrug off the coronavirus if I got it. I’m an asthmatic, and definitely not a mild one at that. I just came off of prednisone and am hoping that I can manage having shortened both the dose and duration of the burst that I finished taking. I may temporarily cease my inhaled steroid if we keep getting positive cases in this county, and especially if we get any in this city. So I need to take extra precautions to ensure that I do not catch this, especially if it does become extremely local, hope that others are prudent enough to do the same to protect individuals like me, and hope that I do not actually catch it. Because that would really suck…

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…

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