And That’s the Week

I con­sid­er Sun­day the first day of the week rather than the last.

It was a week full of appoint­ments for the girl and get­ting paper­work shuf­fled to var­i­ous bureau­cra­cies. Sam and I had love­ly dates Wednes­day and tonight, although we were so exhaust­ed Wednes­day that we turned in much ear­li­er than usual.

Fri­day, I was sup­posed to take Katie to an appoint­ment and woke up with one of those migraines—the sort that tempts you to take an ax to your neck to make it bet­ter. I lost the vision in my right eye, which hap­pens with the nasty ones. This appoint­ment had been sched­uled for three or four months, and resched­ul­ing it would mean anoth­er delay of at least that long. But dri­ving is a bad idea when the vision isn’t there on one side and isn’t trust­wor­thy on the other.

My hero moved heav­en and earth to dash home (via MARTA!, which was quite a feat) and took the girl to her appoint­ment. There was some brief non­sense at the office over Sam’s rela­tion­ship with Katie,¹No, he isn’t her bio­fa­ther. Bio­fa­ther is dead. I’ve giv­en Sam all man­ner of “autho­riza­tion to obtain med­ical treat­ment” and “pow­er of attor­ney” forms, and nobody’s raised a fuss in the past that I can recall. but it all worked out.

We all dis­liked the oth­er doc­tor Katie had been see­ing in this spe­cial­ty, and the new lady was dif­fer­ent. She was also entire­ly on the same page as we are about med­ica­tions. Anoth­er spe­cial­ist has been grad­u­al­ly chang­ing Katie’s migraine med­ica­tions. The poor kid has had so many bad/weird med­ica­tion reac­tions that it’s even more crit­i­cal to make one change at time with her than for most patients. That’s the ratio­nal approach, any­way, when you’re try­ing to mon­i­tor the effects of a change. Right?

The old doc­tor seemed to have some bee in her bon­net about “polyphar­ma­cy” and kept want­i­ng to change or take the girl off meds that have man­aged a chron­ic ill­ness for years. Not because the ill­ness has gone away, no—just “because,” or at least we could­n’t ever get any­thing more spe­cif­ic out of her. She ignored every­thing Katie and I said, and Sam only dealt with her slight­ly bet­ter due to his years of liv­ing with that psy­chot­ic hell beast to whom he was married.

The doc­tor also refused to accept the diag­noses with which Katie arrived at her prac­tice, or do a thor­ough eval­u­a­tion of her own. When she claimed, “I see no sign of X,” Katie said, “um, what about (symp­toms A‑G).” The bitch actu­al­ly said, “Oh, that’s just text­book.” Excuse me? That’s because she fits that diag­no­sis, you crazy old twit!

Oh—we also had trou­ble just see­ing the old doc­tor. One time, we showed up and were informed that she was “out of the coun­try” and had been for sev­er­al days due to a death in the fam­i­ly. So, who’s cov­er­ing her patients for her? Nobody. Why did­n’t they call us to can­cel or change the appoint­ment? There were too many appoint­ments to call every­body. Oh, that’s pro­fes­sion­al. Yep, a death in the fam­i­ly is a legit­i­mate cri­sis, but med­ical pro­fes­sion­als make arrange­ments in advance in case of such things²Espe­cial­ly when, as we learned was the case, they have elder­ly, ail­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers in oth­er coun­tries who might kick off at any bloody moment. The death could­n’t be con­sid­ered a “sur­prise” in any prac­ti­cal sense.

Any­way, we won’t have to wor­ry about the crab­by old beast again! The only thing good about that office was its prox­im­i­ty. Since the new doc­tor is hap­py to see her patients every three months instead of month­ly and gives them refills for that peri­od, the fact that her office is a lit­tle fur­ther away isn’t a big deal.

So that’s some­thing improved. Yay!

Our A/C quit today. It has been limp­ing any­way, and obvi­ous­ly, we’re not any­where near the real heat of the sum­mer yet. Sam changed the fil­ter last night,³We do it month­ly, even though the fil­ters we buy say they will last for three months and the sys­tem worked a tiny bit bet­ter, but not enough. Then it just died this morn­ing. Sam called the land­lord, who sent out their handy­man, and we were told that the com­pres­sor was dead. The handy­man said he “might” have a spare com­pres­sor,⁴Odd thing to have around, isn’t it? I mean, there are many dif­fer­ent mod­els of A/C sys­tems, and that isn’t a one-size-fits-all part, as I under­stand it. and if he does, he’ll come back Sun­day to install it.

We haven’t been sleep­ing well due to the heat, even with the A/C on, so Sam picked up some things and installed a win­dow unit in our bed­room. It is beau­ti­ful­ly icy in there now! That is, of course, the best tem­per­a­ture for sleep­ing, espe­cial­ly if you want to cud­dle or oth­er­wise have skin-to-skin contact.

Oth­er than our bed­room and Katie’s room,⁵which has had a win­dow unit since 2006 the house is steamy. It isn’t near­ly as hot out­side as it is in here. This place just holds heat awful­ly well, for what­ev­er rea­son.⁶We hard­ly used the heat this win­ter because we did­n’t need it. We dis­put­ed the Sep­tem­ber or Octo­ber gas bill and got a refund that left us with a cred­it bal­ance ’til April! So I hope the shade-tree mechan­ic, as Dad­dy would call him, does show up to get it all work­ing on Sun­day. I’m less than thrilled that Mr. Obvi­ous­ly-Not-EPA-Cer­ti­fied runs around han­dling fre­on, but that’s beyond our control.