Busy Day

Very, very busy!

I retrieved shad­owkatt from her brief stay with mayre­mi’s fam­i­ly. They attend­ed a home­school­ing “park day” yes­ter­day and a “gym day” today, so she’s had lots of social time.

Then the girl and I went down to Decatur and took care of some busi­ness stuff, and swung by Nease’s Needl­work to pick up some floss bob­bins I’d request­ed. Now I can fin­ish putting away the newest DMC col­ors! Susan was­n’t there, but I did see tely­nor briefly. She and her harp seemed to suit the envi­ron­ment nice­ly. Music and hand­work go togeth­er well.

Then we picked up sam­bear and head­ed back up the road. We stopped at home just long enough for sam­bear to change out of his work clothes and for shad­owkatt to grab the cup­cakes she and mayre­mi made for the meet­ing (they were cel­e­brat­ing the birth­day of the Girl Scouts). 

Then it was back onto I‑75 and way up the road to find the meet­ing place (yet anoth­er new one). The cup­cakes were very popular.

After drop­ping off the girl, Sam and I grabbed a bite to eat, then chat­ted and gamed for a bit. After the meet­ing, we picked up the cook­ies for deliv­ery and hit the road again. We stopped at a Mcdon­ald’s that’s part of a truck stop to get food for Katie. Sam was fas­ci­nat­ed by the unique array of gad­getry designed to run in a vehi­cle. Did you know they make ovens that’ll do that? I had no idea!

We learned that “night­sticks” (I spare you the term I first learned for them back in Alaba­ma) have been renamed “tire check­ers.” Right.

shad­owkatt is get­ting the net fix she was jonesing for. I’m enjoy­ing being undressed. I want to game more, but I think we’d best go to bed soon as we have anoth­er busy day planned tomorrow.

Oh—tonight’s episode of The Infi­nite Mind was very inter­est­ing. It was about Oxy­Con­tin, but it did a good job of cov­er­ing the prob­lems those of us with chron­ic pain have with get­ting ade­quate treat­ment. Very few doc­tors are actu­al­ly trained to treat chron­ic pain prop­er­ly. Patients are often labeled as addicts seek­ing drugs to get high—or peo­ple who want to sell the drugs on the street. 

Siob­han Reynolds became so frus­trat­ed with try­ing to get good care for her hus­band, that she found­ed the Pain Relief Net­work, an advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion for pain patients and doc­tors. Through her work, she’s spo­ken to hun­dreds of des­per­ate pain patients. Reynolds says, “You can’t imag­ine what it’s like to be sort of set upon by soci­ety, because you find your­self in this incred­i­bly vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion where you’re ruined by the pain. You’re feel­ing your life leave you. You’re feel­ing your abil­i­ty to func­tion leave you. You can’t per­form your duties. You can’t have spousal rela­tions. You can’t do any of the things peo­ple do, and, when you try to go get help for that, you are absolute­ly turned away. The under-treat­ment of pain is an appalling real­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. It effects the most pro­found­ly ill peo­ple in Amer­i­ca in ways I think most Amer­i­cans would find dev­as­tat­ing and mind-boggling.”

That’s it. Pre­cise­ly. The pain becomes anoth­er per­son in your rela­tion­ships, a bar­ri­er to work­ing and play­ing and tak­ing care of your­self, much less any­one else!