Enemy of Entropy

An Update Instead of a Book Review!

27 July 2009, 6:25 pm. 2 Comments. Filed under Health.
an-update-instead-of-a-book-review

I looked back at my recent entries and real­ized that it’s been a really long time since I posted much of any­thing sub­stan­tive. I’m com­ing out of a long period of being nearly zom­biefied thanks to one of my med­ica­tions. I didn’t real­ize that was hap­pen­ing, as I’d been on that drug for years with­out that prob­lem. Appar­ently, the prob­lem was a com­bi­na­tion of my dosage being increased last fall and inter­ac­tion with other meds. Unfor­tu­nately, I found this out because of an irre­spon­si­ble doc­tor who refused to see me as sched­uled when I was due for refills, and wouldn’t give me refills with­out see­ing me. Crash­ing off the max­i­mum dose caused insom­nia and seizures.

Yes, seizures. Some­thing I have never expe­ri­enced before, and I really didn’t need to add yet another square to my per­sonal Symp­toms Bingo Card. I fell right out of the bed dur­ing one bad seizure last week. We have a captain’s bed designed for a water mat­tress, but have a reg­u­lar mat­tress and box springs on top, so the whole thing is much higher than most beds. I have to use a step­stool to get in and out of bed. So falling out was much more painful than falling out of most beds. Hit­ting my fore­heard on the wheel­chair and whacked my chin but good on the lapdesk didn’t help. I have no idea what I hit with my right fore­arm, but it still looks like a per­son bit me. My left arm has funky bruis­ing and a cut, both knees are bruised and car­pet burned, and my torso is also bruised and sore. Lots of fun! Now my chin is actu­ally black, mak­ing me want to wash my face every time I see a mir­ror. I’ve never been able to feel the swelling in a bruise as dis­tinctly as this one, either.

I’ve seen a new doc­tor, who switched me to a bet­ter med­ica­tion. It’s help­ing to slow down the seizures, but I’m still hav­ing some. I’m still sleep­ing a lot less than I was, which is good. What isn’t good is that I’m hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing well, period. Hope­fully that will go away soon.

Social Secu­rity is still mess­ing around with my case and hasn’t paid out a dime yet, or sent me a Medicare card. If you ever have trou­ble with the SSA, don’t even bother try­ing to find any­one to take respon­si­bil­ity for straight­en­ing any­thing out. Just go straight to your Sen­a­tor or Representative’s office. I’d been try­ing to get a straight answer from some­body, any­body, in the whole orga­ni­za­tion for about a month with­out luck. Less than 48 hours after con­tact­ing a Senator’s office, I got a mes­sage that my file is at the Bal­ti­more pay­ment office, that they have all the infor­ma­tion they need to pay out the claim, and that we should see money very soon now.

I was really hop­ing to get the Medicare thing started in time to maybe have a pow­ered mobil­ity device before Dragon Con, which would let me go and enjoy the con for the first time in years. The last time I went, we rented a scooter, so if the money comes through before the con I sup­pose we might try that again.

In more fun news, we fin­ished watch­ing Torch­wood: Chil­dren of Earth last night. Talk about depress­ing! Gwen and Rhys were the only ones who came out of that as heroes. And now I read that there’s going to be a fourth sea­son? Who the heck will be in it?

I’ve slowed down on read­ing books, par­tially because I can actu­ally do some other things for a change. The house is slowly improv­ing! I’m hop­ing we can even enter­tain again before long.

I haven’t been keep­ing up with most people’s Live­Jour­nals or any­thing else, so if there’s some­thing I should have seen, I’d appre­ci­ate a poke in the com­ments here.

Tags: Health, med­ica­tions, Read­ing, seizures, Torch­wood

2 Comments »

  1. avatar teesachu. 27 July 2009, 8:12 pm

    Sorry to hear about the meds, but glad to hear you are doing bet­ter now. Hope you can make it to Drag­oncon :)

  2. avatar TechnoMom. 8 August 2009, 5:23 pm

    I wasn’t plan­ning to go, but if the SS money comes through, I think I will. If so, I’m hop­ing we can find a hotel room that isn’t too far away (of course, that’ll be a mir­a­cle). I’d love to meet you two in person!

 

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