Three Minutes to Tomorrow...Yesterday

I fell asleep very early and didn't wake up until morning last night.   I didn't write a blog post and today I got busy and forgot to write yesterday's post again.   So now it's three minutes until tomorrow and I'm writing yesterday's post.   I'd better press post so I still have two minutes to write today's post. 

All Better (I Think)

I think all is well with my eye that I blasted with super strong UV light several days ago.   This is the first time in my life I've ever done something that caused more than a short-term retinal retention mark.   I was nervous about it, but I also had a strong feeling it would heal.   I'm quite relieved it has. 

My husband and I have been working on a large video project for Protopasta.  This particular video is going to represent their company on Amazon for all their pages.  It's the one video that should be the best representation of their company.   It's a big message, and something we didn't take lightly.  

We were stymied for the longest time and then we figured something out.  Well, a lot of somethings.  The number of individual shots in the video is quite large, but it was what needed to happen.   We weren't sure what they would think about the video, and I sent the email with words saying we could change the music or any of the areas they wanted to be done differently.   They responded back fairly quickly that they loved it.   

They had a lot of other very kind things to say about the work we'd done.   The video has some placeholder shots they'll need to get of their plant, and then we'll have a final sixty-second video.   Sometimes the shorter a thing is the harder it is to make well.

Back To School Groove:  Both children have gotten back into the groove of the school year almost effortlessly.  They both very much like their teachers and their classmates.   They like going to school.   And that makes me happy. 

Do Not Tell My Father

I did something stupid.   It was one of those things that makes total sense in your brain at the time but the fraction of a second after you execute doing the thing that seemed like such a good idea is when you realize you made a horrible judgment call.   If my father knew, I would get a lecture.  I know him, he is Doctor Safety.  He gave me the undertow lecture every time I went to the beach and always advocated for safety in everything. 

Let's just say that there was never any intent to be unsafe; it was one of those things where you want to know if the burner is hot, so you test it to see—with your finger.   That kind of bad decision making.   That's what happened, and I'm still paying for it. 

The other day I was working on a project, and I needed a light to see under one of the printers.  I grabbed the flashlight closest to me, which happened to be a high-powered ultraviolet flashlight.  I got this flashlight for glow-in-the-dark filament and other black light reactive filament because I needed something powerful to charge them up. 

I did the thing I do a lot—I dropped the flashlight.   I drop things all the time.   In this case, I was worried I'd broken the bulbs.   It's an LED flashlight, but it's still breakable.   So I turned it on and looked at it to see if the bulbs were lit.   You got what just happened there, right?  I looked at a powerful ultraviolet light straight on.   Stupid.   

The bulbs weren't broken.  That I discovered from the fraction of a second I looked at the light before I tore my eyes away.   But the damage had been done.  The light was an extra powerful one I had bought.  But it gets worse.   I don't have natural lenses in my eyes.  I've had them replaced with artificial lenses.   People who have cataract surgery have their natural lenses that are clouded as a result of the cataract, replaced with artificial lenses.   I had the same thing done, but for corrective vision purposes as I wasn't a candidate for LASIC or other options. 

And I love the lenses.   They are wonderful and I haven't needed glasses at all, nor will I need reading glasses as I get older because I don't have natural lenses that can harden, making it harder to see things close up.  

But there is a downside: the artificial lenses don't have the UV protection you get from your natural lens.  Which means I got a fraction of a second's worth of damaging light to my eyes.   The left eye seems to be fine, as it was further away from the light I angled towards me as I turned the flashlight on.  The right eye has had the image of the three bulbs persisting for several days now.  

It's getting better, and I suspect things will heal completely, but what a stupid move.   And what a big lesson learned.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a great first day of school.  He came home telling me about how he was going to be in charge of ordering pizza for the upperclassmen at the school as a fundraiser.  It's for his end-of-year capstone trip, which it looks like he'll get to take this year.   He's quite excited about being the leader of the school in this way. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter started choir tonight.  She wasn't going to do it again this year but she changed her mind at the last minute.   She is going to like it a lot more this year.  They have a lot more students in the capital city girls choir. 

Ready or Not

My son has been responsible for preparing things for school this year.  I printed out the list of supplies and other items he would need to bring to school with him.  He was reminded several times, and finally, this morning, I told him he absolutely, positively needed to stop what he was doing and at least go through his backpack from the end of the year last year and see if he needed anything added. 

Did he need more pencils, colored pencils, erasers, gluesticks, or anything on the list?   He reluctantly took a break and started going through things—because it was the final day and stores would be closed early, so this wasn't an eight o'clock at night thing to be waiting to do. 

He didn't really need much, and what he did need, we already had in school supplies.   He has a new teacher, and I wanted him to make a good first impression.  But it is important for him to do things himself. 

The Bath Time Gauntlet:  I told my children they needed to take a bath or shower today since school was tomorrow.  My daughter made a groaning sound.   I said, "from this point forward, anyone who complains about taking a shower will have to take one every day until such time as I think they are eligible to go back to every other day."  My daughter said, "I was talking about my brother sitting on me."   It was true,  her brother was sitting on her, but that groan was not intended for him it was obvious.  But I let her get off with a warning this time. 

Fondue Delight

My mother-in-law prepared all day for us to come over and have a special fondue dinner with her and my father-in-law.  I would write lots and lots about how amazing the cheese was that I scraped the bottom out with the spoon onto my plate so none was wasted. 

I could go on about the custom sauces she made by hand and the select cuts of meat she procured from various locations.  I could mention the two stock pots and the special plates and the chocolate cake for dessert.  

But I am so full I'm not sure I can do it justice other than to say it was absolutely amazing.   So full.   I think I'm going to bed.  

The Children Without Alexa:  My daughter lost her Alexa tonight due to behavior.  My son is going without in the hopes he can get to sleep earlier than normal because he's having a hard time resetting his sleeping schedule and school starts in two days.   I have four Alexa devices on my dresser now.   Thankfully they're not plugged in because they all would be responding should we say her name. 

Not What We Were Thinking

I sent an email to Protopasta asking for them to get some shots of their plant so we could put it in this very important video they've asked us to create for all their Amazon product pages.   They sent a video their marketing contact at Amazon suggested they create a video like, and we've been using that as a general basis, although I thought that style didn't play to their strengths. 

We had been working on some filament-based shots for them and were going to interleave the plant shots between them.   I'm glad I emailed because they came back and said they thought the video would be all filament and models.   

Ugh.  If we had known that, we wouldn't have spent so much time trying to work in one direction.   So we have to rework what we had, and we're not even sure what we're doing for the video, which has to be a very attention-grabbing thirty-second video.   Both my husband and I really want this video completed because it's been challenging working together on it because we are not sure what to do, and that's stressful. 

The Pokemon Card Children:  My daughter is interested in trading Pokemon cards because Mcdonald's has Happy Meal toys that are packs of four cards.   She wants to trade, which means we aren't putting braille on the cards so she knows which is which.   And that means she can be taken advantage of.   You would think of all people, her brother who has a large collection of Pokemon cards from the past four years of collecting, would trade fairly.  Only he didn't.   She figured it, out and then to retialite, took one of his cards.  She took the single most valuable card he has that was a Christmas present from Olivia, Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Dale.  The card is solid metal with enamel on the front and back.  It's quite beautiful.   I don't know if he learned his lesson because she, of course, had to tell him what she'd done and why as opposed to letting him discover the card was missing and then worry where he'd lost it for a while until she confessed.   Hopefully, he learned a lesson.  I'm not sure he did, but we can hope.  My daughter has to rely on sighted people for so much; taking advantage of her in this way is a very low thing to do. 

"Yesterday" Stuck In My Head

I have the song "Yesterday" by The Beatles stuck in my head.  It's been in my head for several hours now as my alarm has been snoozing every ten minutes, reminding me I need to write the blog post I should have written yesterday but was too beat up to do so. 

I really don't know how my parents and in-laws and all the people in the generation before me manage to live such active, busy lives.  My life is busy, that's for sure, but sometimes I just don't know if I can manage it.   I really don't know how they do it.  My parents and in-laws are inspiring to me. 

Some of it has been spine/back/pain related, I know.  It's hard to fight the pain when it gets bad.   There is a ring of burning pain around my trunk just below my ribs.  It's been difficult to diagnose because nothing in that area seems to indicate there is a problem there.   We were finally able to get insurance approval for imaging in my cervical region, and that showed some degeneration that is likely the source.   Any location in your spine has all the nerves for pain and functionality for everything below that area. 

I am exceptionally grateful that there are nerve medications that help with the kind of pain I have.  Neurontin or generic Gabapentin is the most common one prescribed. I took that for some time but now I take Lyrica or generic Pregabalin, which works a better for the type of nerve pain I have.   It's not a narcotic and is what I would consider a "good" medication in comparison to a lot of the other options for pain in general.  I liken it to taking Tylenol for a headache—there are no other side effects, the pain just gets better an hour after taking it. 

I fight taking any and all medication.  I don't like talking about it because it is a topic that brings a lot of judgment from people.   There is a lot of judgment from people who hear medications are "addictive," for instance, or are "bad" and should be avoided at all costs.  Typically those people are well-meaning in their comments but haven't dealt with constant, debilitating pain.  People associate "addiction" with a medication instead of a state of mind.   People who need heart medication or insulin aren't labeled as addicts, but when it comes to pain, the distinction between a necessary dependence and addicitve drug-seeking behavior which is not needed or necessary to combat chronic pain. 

If it sounds like I'm ranting, I am.  There is an opioid crisis in the country because of people and physicians who take or prescribe medications above and beyond actual need.   Those people make chronic pain patients jump through hoops every single month because we have to have monthly appointments to get medications prescribed that only last thirty days, even for some medications that have no addictive profile to them. 

Then, once you have your monthly appointment, you have to deal with the insurance company, who denies medications regularly citing prior authorization is required.  Your physician and their insurance people have to fight to get a medication you've been taking for years covered for sometimes only one additional month.   Once the insurance company approves it, which might be after the date you need it which leaves you with no medication after the thirty days are up, you have to deal with the pharmacy.  Sometimes medication are out of stock.  They keep things in stock, but only the general amount they commonly dispense and if new prescriptions appear they have to fill them.   Which means you might have to wait days for something to come in stock.  Or you can get a partial month filled, but the rest of the prescription is lost due to the medication class and then you have to go back to the doctor's office, and then back to the insurance company who may not approve the second prescription because they already paid for one that month—even though it was a partial. 

Then medications change.  I was on a new medication that was a different formulation and was much, much less medication that just worked better with the nerve pain I have.  It was over eight hundred dollars per month with the insurance coverage, because it was new and there was no generic.  But there was a coupon and I could get it for $125 per month—and it was definitely worth that.  

That coupon just went away, so we're now trying to find an alternative that works as well.  And that's been challenging and stressful and fighting with the insurance company and dosages weren't right and I was spending hours and hours in the day because I was just in too much pain.  Which makes me feel like a terrible mother and wife with my children understanding their mother needed to be in bed a lot.  They spent a lot of time with their father and I would lie in bed and cry, because I just feel so broken and useless. 

Things are getting better, but now my provider thinks I have a mental health issue.  I yelled at him (after all this time we are friends and enjoy catching up on each other's lives each month) saying I was a happy person.  I have a wonderful family.  We have friends that are just the best.  We aren't in financial difficulty and I have the best husband in the world.   But I CANNOT FUNCTION right now and can we please get this fixed?

And we've been trying, but it's been five months and I've about lost my mind.   There is more complexity to the situation but that's a high-level overview.  Before this current month's visit I changed my medication to what I thought would work.  And the small change I made did indeed put me back to close to what I was before all this mess with insurance company and medication with no coupon now.   I was chastised by my doctor for doing this, but I told him I was tired of having to do thirty day tests that we couldn't address until the next month (even though he said "call me, we'll fix it" because I tried that and it is not simple.)

Actually, let me talk about that a bit.  Two appointments ago I had a laundry list of all that had happened, because my doctor has a lot of people he sees and I could summarize better and let him see how things had been happening from my side because I absolutely have been on top of things but I can only control my side of things.   But when he walked in he launched into a story about his mother having multiple strokes and how he had to leave to go take care of her.  He was so distressed about it and I was a good friend and listened.  And I didn't complain when we got to the medication change because there just was no time left and he had other patients he needed to get to. 

This month I made a change, I pushed back and said it answered questions and we didn't have to wait another month to see.   He had some insurance issues (of course) but called me two evenings later at close to eight o'clock, still at the office.   I calmly told him that I hadn't gone into things because he needed to talk last time and he felt really badly.  He really did make me angry though, accusing me of taking incorrect dosages and saying I had refills left until he looked and I was (of course) taking the correct dosage and had been out for close to a month and had been stuck taking old medication at a lower dosage. And yes, I had called his office.  I had even talked to the other doctor when I was there getting an injection.  That doctor talked to my doctor and assured me that the refill was being called in right now. 

But was it?  No, because he conveyed the message incorrectly.   And my doctor never called to ask me what I meant, he just did nothing.   I called, nothing happened.  I had the pharmacy request refills to their office, nothing helped.   And yet my doctor contends that it is "easy" and "they can handle it, I shouldn't worry". And yet things go wrong at least two-thirds of the time and it is the most stressful thing to me. 

Easy is the one word I would never use.   So I've dealt with five months of reduced activity and have felt like the worst parent and spouse.   Hopefully, things are better this month with the change we made that I suggested.   I just want to be able to feel normal or I can take some pain, I'm used to it.  It's just when it gets so bad that I can't fight it and function.   Hopefully things will be back to normal.  I would really like some normal.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has not been too terribly angry about having to go to sleep earlier this week.  He starts school on Monday and he's not going to sleep until eleven o'clock now and the next three days we're going to have him go to sleep even earlier.  He's still getting up very late, even though he contends he doesn't need that much sleep.  He actually does. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We finished Ghostsitter, the Audible Original production.  There are three books and we loved all three.  The disappoint thing is there are a lot more but the author is German and we don't speak German.   We are hoping the next installment will be coming out in the next few months.   My daughter really wants to know what happens.