Another Day, Another Doctor

I haven’t been post­ing a lot of per­son­al stuff late­ly, large­ly hop­ing to avoid whing­ing too much about pain and such.

I saw the new pain doc today, though, and I real­ly like this prac­tice much bet­ter than the first one. The doc­tor actu­al­ly did an exam! (I did have to gig­gle when he asked if I’d been a gym­nast when I was younger, based on my flex­i­bil­i­ty and posture.)

He’s switch­ing me from mor­phine to methadone, as he says his fibro patients have gen­er­al­ly had more con­sis­tent pain relief with the methadone. He also changed the mus­cle relax­ant to some­thing stronger, pre­scribed lido­caine patch­es, a TENS unit, hydrother­a­py, and a great mess of x‑rays and MRIs to update my med­ical records.

He and the nurse and oth­er staff were obvi­ous­ly very famil­iar with fibromyal­gia, includ­ing knowl­edge of fair­ly recent stud­ies. He seems to be the doc­tor of choice for the local FMS/CFS sup­port group mem­bers, and now I know why.

I had a bit of an anx­i­ety attack when I arrived at their build­ing and saw that the only obvi­ous park­ing was in a park­ing garage with a 7 1/2′ clear­ance. The van won’t fit in such struc­tures. For­tu­nate­ly, I called and one of their office staff guid­ed me around to well-hid­den aux­il­iary park­ing behind the build­ing. I would have been out of luck with­out the hand­i­capped park­ing permit.

In oth­er hap­py news, it seems that my insur­ance does not require eval­u­a­tion by a phys­i­cal ther­a­pist before the doc­tor can pre­scribe a scoot­er or chair. The rheuma­tol­o­gist is sup­pos­ed­ly mail­ing me a pre­scrip­tion for one, after which I can begin real­ly shop­ping. I need to call around local places to see if any­one around here has a Feath­er­lite Deluxe that I can test and com­pare to oth­er models.

My sec­ond sleep study, for CPAP titra­tion, was Mon­day night. I was­n’t able to tol­er­ate a CPAP mask, which was­n’t a sur­prise. I did warn them that I’m claus­tro­pho­bic! Hap­pi­ly, the nose thingie did­n’t pro­voke a pan­ic attack. I slept most of the night, so it must have helped. I don’t like the restric­tion of being hooked up to a machine, much less the con­stant noise it makes. I’ll cer­tain­ly use the thing if it helps me to sleep bet­ter and have less pain/better func­tion­ing, though.

I just want Sam to be able to go and have sleep stud­ies and get one of those things for him­self. I know he has sleep apnea, and I wor­ry about him.

I final­ly got the title for the van from the state, which means that we should be able to wrap up the insur­ance claim from the acci­dent tomor­row. We haven’t found a replace­ment vehi­cle yet, which presents logis­ti­cal problems.

I real­ly would like to have an extra vehi­cle in the fam­i­ly again, to cov­er these kinds of sit­u­a­tions for us and oth­er peo­ple. I’ll miss the van in some ways, and it would be a great “spare” rather than some­thing to dri­ve every day. I fig­ure we’ll have anoth­er one, someday.

I’ve been research­ing vehi­cles list­ed for sale at upcom­ing auto auc­tions. I have to say that Car­Fax rocks. If we fig­ure out this whole auc­tion thing and the prices are as incred­i­ble as they’re rumored to be, we might even acquire a car for Sam before long and end up with the truck as a spare again.

Katie began attend­ing a tran­si­tion-to-high-school sum­mer school pro­gram this week. She’s enjoy­ing it so far and was real­ly upset about miss­ing class today due to a migraine. As long as we can get the tuition worked out for the fall, I think she’s found her school. She’s get­ting signed up for fall dance, as well. It looks like she’ll be in class­es 4 nights a week again unless she drops some­thing. We already know that she’ll be much busier with being in school again, espe­cial­ly high school, so that is worrisome.

I just got stuff in the mail from South­ern Poly, want­i­ng me to sub­mit my tax returns for ver­i­fi­ca­tion for fall finan­cial aid. Um, like I’m going there again? Not like­ly. I’ve been admit­ted to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri-Colum­bia, and am going over all the “this equals that” trans­fer cred­its with them now. I don’t know if this will be my final school “home,” as there are some finan­cial aid aspects that aren’t exact­ly as I’d pre­fer, but I’m not think­ing of return­ing to SPSU right now.