Health updates, mine and cat’s

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fluffy’s health

My new doctor has already proven himself to be way, way better than my last doctor. He’s really diving into my records and gathering insight to confirm my suspicion of hEDS. Meanwhile he’s put me on muscle relaxants “as needed” and I was taking them a couple hours before bed for a few days and started to feel a lot better. But I haven’t been taking them for the past few days, and I’m feeling worse. Go figure. So, muscle tension is definitely a factor, which I think goes along with hEDS? Like, reducing my muscle tension gives my shitty connective tissue a better chance to actually heal.

I also finally got an appointment with a new dentist. It’s towards the end of September (I really should have gotten on this sooner, as I’m due for a cleaning in, like, a week) but I’m really optimistic about the new dentist; her intake form is incredibly inclusive regarding gender stuff (with an open-ended selection for pronouns, and gender checkboxes that include non-binary!) and neurodivergent things (questions about a whole bunch of dentist-specific anxiety triggers to avoid, whether a blanket or weighted vest helps, whether it’s okay to be lectured about dental health, etc.). Also, she’s a PoC. I’ve never had a dentist who wasn’t a white dude before, and maybe that explains why it’s always felt like dentists don’t care about privilege or diversity or, y'know, taking care to make people feel comfortable.

Werner’s health

Little dude is definitely slipping away more and more each day. By the rubric he’s probably past the point where I should consider euthanasia, but he doesn’t seem to be in pain and he’s enjoying pets/skritches/sitting with me/eating (especially stealing my food) so for now I’m going to just let it ride.

If he starts expressing pain I’ll have to make a tough choice, but for now he’s basically just getting progressively drunker and sleepier all the time (except when food’s involved). I really hope he just drifts off one time and never wakes up (although every time I check up on him he ends up waking up and gets excited about the prospect of food).

He’s having trouble staying steady while standing or walking, and Fiona’s started to interpret this as him being a lost kitten. She tries to pick him up by the scruff, even though he’s nearly as big as her, and he has none of it. So Fiona gets pretty confused by this.

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Various updates

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fluffy health

So, I had a very bad experience with my doctor with this latest chronic pain flare (and the short-term disability leave situation), and with encouragement from my therapist I am switching to a different doctor. The doctor I’m switching to specializes in LGBT healthcare (and apparently 10% of his patients are trans) and also has a specific interest in treating chronic conditions, which is what I need.

I’ve also gone back to my self-determined physical therapy regimen. You know, the one that my GP and the pain doc and physical therapist she referred me to all think will cause more injury, even though it’s always helped me in the past. So far it feels like I’m actually making progress on recovery.

Said regimen:

  • Frequent powerball sessions
  • Upper-body stretching and partial chin-ups using a chin-up bar
  • Playing DDR (okay I haven’t resumed that yet but I’ll probably be starting that again soon, and I’ll be streaming it when I do)

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Werner updates

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Werner was unable to keep his liquid antibiotics down so yesterday I got him pills instead, at least for one of them (unfortunately the other one was liquid-only). He’s of course been lethargic but generally happy most of the time, and during my birthday party yesterday he mostly just hung out in my bedroom, but occasionally said hi to people — very uncharacteristic for him, and towards the end I even took him around to everyone to get pettings.

Anyway, today he’s been feeling a bit better, and I had a cheeseburger for lunch, which he got really interested in and wanted some of. So I decided that he can, in fact, haz cheezburger, and he’s enjoying it quite a lot, and eating way more than I’ve seen him eat lately. Really going to town on it. (I tried taking a picture for the meme™ but he was way more interested in snarfing it down than waiting for me to manage to get any shots in. Oh well.)

He’s such a good little guy.

Lazy Sunday

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Yesterday I spent some time at the new house, trying to install Ethernet, but I discovered that my drill doesn’t have nearly enough torque to successfully drill a sufficiently-large hole in the subfloor, as it turns out. Investigating some other things made me realize that I need to get a bunch more power outlets installed in the basement anyway, so I hired an electrician (the same one who did the work on my kitchen) and he said that he can also run the ethernet cabling while he’s there.

I was also feeling pretty cruddy from allergies, so I didn’t finish the other big thing I wanted to do (namely assembling my new standing desk), and instead I went home and took a nap before my vaccination appointment, which went off without a hitch.

So far I’m not experiencing any major side effects, just a sore left arm and some vague headachey feelings, but that said I have no interest in working on house stuff today.

Tuesday I’m going to be busy all day with preparing my condo for the movers on Wednesday, and part of that means taking all my computers offline. So my access will be limited until Friday, when Centurylink comes to install the fiber.

Annoyingly I’m probably going to have to go to the house at some point on Tuesday, because a package which was going to arrive over the weekend got “helpfully” bumped up to Tuesday and I’d really rather not have it sit unattended on my porch for longer than necessary. I mean, the neighborhood seems pretty safe, but package thieves are everywhere now. But it’s being shipped USPS so maybe they’ll just hold it at the post office anyway? Who knows.

Anyway, wow, I’m feeling so overwhelmed by all the stuff I need to do, even with paying lots of money for movers to do all the things. But in a few days I’ll be moved in! And then hopefully my condo sells quickly and then I can get started on all the projects I want to do in the new house. That list is long.

Vaccination

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It’s been nearly 13 months since COVID-19 made its way to Seattle, but I’m finally getting vaccinated on Saturday! And so many people I know are vaccinated now!

I didn’t have a lot of choice on the vaccination day, but at least I was able to choose a time in the afternoon. My plan for Saturday is to spend a bunch of time at the new house to install the Ethernet, and then to get my first vaccination dose, and then hopefully any side effects I end up with wear off by Tuesday which is when I need to spend all day preparing for the movers.

It’s pretty interesting to go back to March 2020 and revisit how things felt back then. Also the beginnings of the BLM protests. Holy crap, it sure has been a year, huh?

So much for Wellbutrin

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Yesterday I was feeling pretty off, in a “wow I think my blood pressure is spiking again” way. And I happened to have an appointment at the pain clinic, and they measured my blood pressure at 160/90, which is, you know, Pretty High. At the time I chalked it up to having walked over there in a hurry, but throughout the afternoon and evening I kept measuring it and it remained that high.

And then all night long I had a hell of a time sleeping. I only got around 3 hours of sleep total; most of the time I was just lying awake, blood pounding in my ears, feeling like I was going to die. At 3 AM I also checked my blood pressure again and it was 160/100. Yikes.

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Ugh no I need to get off nortriptyline

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Nortriptyline helps me with pain and brain stuff but it also has been making my blood pressure steadily go up. These problems I’m having are a repeat of why I tried getting off of it the last time around. Constant dizziness and headaches and tinnitus and feeling like crap.

I appreciate how much it helps me with my anxiety and my insomnia and pain, but I need something else.

The sorry state of medication reminder software

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I use an app called Medisafe to give me my medication reminders. It’s useful because it tracks my doses and also tracks how much I have left so I know when to order refills and so on. I’ve been using it for years.

Unfortunately it has a critical problem in that it only sends three easy-to-miss reminders spaced ten minutes apart with no way of configuring it. So often I’ll end up taking my medication a few hours later than the scheduled time, because I head to bed and notice the pending reminder that I meant to fulfill.

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Healthcare followup

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Today I had a followup with my doctor after the cessation of gabapentin. My blood pressure is the lowest it’s been in years (118/75!) and she was really happy to see how much less stress I’m under. After discussing the current medication status we agree that I should stay on the nortriptyline for now, and she’s glad that physical therapy has been helping me a lot, as well as me getting better at mindfulness and other stress reduction things.

She also encouraged me to get going with a psychiatrist again so that I can possibly get back on Adderall or to try something else. I think before I do that I’ll see how well I tolerate caffeine. Which I’ve had a bit of over the past few days and it’s not been hecking me up at all, so this seems really promising.

Anyway she gave me a lot of words of encouragement and is also grateful that I’m taking such an active role in trying to make my own life better on multiple fronts. Hopefully this trajectory can continue.