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 zomb­i­fied 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 step stool 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 whack­ing my chin but good on the lap desk 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 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.