First What We Know Won't Work

Ahhh, insurance companies! 

When we know what doesn't work, never did work, but have to try anyway, there's still the sequential hoops one MUST step through! It's supposed to save them money, I guess. Maybe it does if the patient dies before the final, known workable, expensive treatment gets on the schedule. Because that last thing is the thing that is proven to work. 

It's not just me, either. Steve's insurance company was that way over the years with his back. A friend's insurance company, different kind of problem, ditto. Nobody cares about how much pain one is in, how one's health otherwise suffers. You're still required to used all those non-remedies, visit all those other doctors who know as well as you do that this isn't going to work this time either. Anybody ever wonder why they put you through all that crap that doesn't work and take the money for it? 

Oh yeah... silly question. Have I gotten to the part about being bitchy yet?

You know I've been complaining.... uh, commenting...  on my "bad shoulders".  I finally got x-rays taken of them this week. I had a chance to discuss the issues I've been having with the "lesser staff", though only in terms of lesser power to work on the actual remedies. I'm pretty sure they understand all the issues and their treatments, even if they're not the top authority, say, for performing surgery. They're also not lesser in terms of being caring humans. And especially not lesser in terms of listening.

I'd heard that x-rays don't necessarily diagnose rotator cuff damage, being tissue, not bone, and a proper diagnosis requires the proper machines. However, if they mean MRI instead of CAT Scan I'm already SOL anyway. I tell everybody about the pacemaker, just in case. I have known about my rotator cuff tears for a couple decades, anyway.  That was no longer the question. Recently, in addition to the pain when I (try to) raise my arms, there is the additional joy of having my shoilders dislocate themselves. The contortions I need to go through to get them back where they belong are.... interesting. Thank goodness nobody is secretly filming them! It wakes me out of the sound sleep I fought for an hour to get into, a process which depends on my bracing one arm just so against the other elbow so the pain lessens enough to finally drop off. When it doesn't, I'm out back in my recliner because mostly the arm's gravity pulls the shoulder back into place if I don't move. 

Mostly.

I do my best to avoid causing them. Because that surely works, uh huh, yes sirree! I'll never forgive the sadist who designed kitchens to have microwaves over the stove! The counter is just fine!!!

Just over a week ago when I was exchanging a good-bye hug, the other person commented that she felt my shoulder pop back into place. I'd suspected, but this was confirmation. I made my postponed appointment.

 Friday, X-rays it was. Three different angles for each shoulder. Fortunately, none required me to lift my arms. Good people in that department! One in each set did require me to twist my hand at the wrist. Interesting! I can't feel any difference in either shoulder when I do that on my own. Although, in the course of a day I'm probably doing that a lot and just don't notice new pain levels. But who am I to argue? It wasn't any worse at the moment at least.

The Doc put the digital films up on his office computer. He wasn't commenting as he went through them, but I peeked to see what they looked like. What I saw were huge gaps between the balls and the sockets. My arms had been hanging down, so naturally the "dead air" was mostly at the tops.

The verdict was instant: "'severe arthritis" in both shoulders. Like I couldn't have told them that! I went through it with my knees for over a decade before getting them replaced. The pain was similar in intensity and patterns. It never really went away from lack of joint use, but it sure did discourage using them whenever possible. I'm one of those people who never have gotten the concept of pain being good for the soul, or some such claptrap. What it's good for is bitchiness, plus loss of coordination, muscle strength, balance, and stamina over the years. One at least tries to avoid the pain.

It was also great for figuring what worked and what didn't to ease the pain, regardless of what the docs did or warned against. Tylenol? Might as well have been swallowing air. This is bone-on-bone, not a childhood fever. Aspirin? Same. Clinoril? Same lack of effect but also caused severe depression. Twenty-four hours after that last pill I was bouncing off the ceiling in reaction for a few hours, until my mood regulated again.

The docs were united in advising me not to use ibuprofin. Hurts the stomach, they say. Mine is cast iron. Hurts the kidneys, they say. My last doc warned about that, noted I'd dropped a bit in kidney function, and then summed it up with I was right on track for my age. So yeah, I do take that. Again. 

I'd stopped after my knee surgery mended. Didn't need it. I started again when the shoulders started acting up. I'm not up to maximum dose yet but pushing it. 

What I did find that really worked on the pain was a narcotic. I'd had darvon, vicoden, and others and  meh! Dentists used to like prescribing codeine after a procedure when walking out of their office was all that was ever needed. I had weird reactions, so list it as an allergy. Percoset filled in for a bit when I had to stop ibuprofin before knee surgery so I could tolerate the needed PT to strengthen the needed muscles. It let me tolerate the severe pain post surgery when doing that PT. And then the pain left. Titanium knees do not ache. (Kneeling on them with no kneecap is a different story.) The ibuprofin still sat there with some pills in it, but they weren't needed. I weaned myself down from perc as the knees recovered. It didn't appeal with any kind of a high, and in fact when not actually needed it makes me itchy. Between that and needing to legally drive, who needs the stuff? OK, I'll agree that maybe it's just me who doesn't... until I really need it. It always involves a discussion with the docs because it's related to codeine.

I got a kidney stone and discovered that fentanyl didn't touch the pain - in the hospital of course. They added something else  - toradol - and the combo worked well enough. Lithotripsy did the rest. I don't knee-jerk fear fentanyl but it better be from the hospital supply.

I had major abdominal surgery and found the drug that actually works: Dilaudid. Insurance coverage was a big issue back then and I got released from the hospital ASAP after the surgery. My knees hadn't been fixed yet at that time, but I had to walk frequently after surgery. It was great! No pain! The nurses tried to tell me to slow down for my mandatory walks, but I explained to them I hadn't been able to do that for years! This was great! I talked the doc into releasing me early, and with 10 tablets of dilaudid. It was accompanied by a stern warning that not a single more pill would be forthcoming. I stretched those out, taking halves, quarters, increasing intervals. I stayed pain free nearly two weeks until the day after that last bit was gone. When I woke to head to the bathroom, OMG the first couple steps killed my knees! I had forgotten what my knees had felt like! 

Nobody has offered me any since, nor have I asked. It's ibuprofin again. It does less and less all the time. I know the PT for shoulders is even worse than for knees. I also know it's the next thing on my "remedies" list. This doc offered to put me on steroid shots. They didn't work longer than the time it took to walk out of the doctor's  office with my knees and the novocaine in the shot wore off. You know, the kind they add to the steroid shot to keep you from screaming when they jab it into the tenderest spot in the joint. Then they put you on a fake bicycle to pedal so... whatever that's supposed to do for bad knees. It never did.

I asked this doc since it hadn't worked with my knees years ago, why were we expecting that it would with my shoulders now, which are supposed to hurt even more than knees in PT? So he offered me the option of taking steroid pills instead. I agreed. But that is when he informed me what we already know, that the hoops have to all be jumped through in order, just to prove what doesn't work.  And since I'm getting steroid pills, I have to stop the ibuprofin, since the combo is like an overdose, and the effect isn't in pain management being "too good."

After that doesn't work, there'll be the next thing, and the next...... and always with the PT.

The next weeks are going to be ... interesting.

Bitchy!!! 

At least he suggested I might take up the idea of small doses of dilaudid with a pain specialist. These days full of opioid paranoia, I'm sure that will work. Yep, easy peasy, no fuss, no bother, full trust....

Like I said, bitchy!!!!!

I'll have to be especially nice to Steve. I still need him to help me get dressed in the mornings. I tend to get trapped in bra straps or sleeves, nearly every day. Winter is worse with long sleeves and coats added. Things just don't move the ways they should any more. He's a real sweetie about it. He even offers to help me if I need any held getting the clothes off again later....

What a sweetheart! What a guy!

After A Long Year Of Hard Work…

I have a raised  circular garden in our east yard. When we moved in, it had produced a single flower and seventy bazillion weeds. Stinky weeds, even to my inept nose, because they were spearmint. I find that odor nauseating. Those were the first thing dug out, with most of the work being done by my youngest son, Paul. Large bagfuls of black dirt were added to encourage optimism for the project ahead.

Me? I "just" do the deciding, the planning, the buying, the arranging, the watering, the fretting... and finally, the shooting, camera style of course. I don't need my Concealed Carry Permit for that kind of shooting, and for that matter, don't have a gun to go with it even if that AZ permit meant anything except a piece of interesting plastic in MN. Or maybe they don't find it that interesting here anyway.

So far this year there were some tiny start and lots of disappointments in that bed. Scillas had an encouraging start, and as soon as they were ready to pop out seeds back in Paul's yard, he brought a new bunch of them over to - with luck - fill a large central gap in emergent plants in the center of the bed. We'll know next year.

Following that, a couple tulips pushed out warped and quickly munched leaves. No blooms. There went $$$$$. Crocus and daffodils didn't even bother to go that far. Some critters somewhere spent a well fed winter. Bearded iris in two of the 7 planted varieties bloomed, one a soft blue, the other deep purple, almost black. Hooray! I hope for better showing of colors next year, including from seeds chilling in pots in the fridge currently. (Yes, they're sealed in bags. Nothing will be dropping into the yogurt. Promise! Even when I do the needed periodic airing out.)

Even before the iris were done, the daylilies started pushing up bud stalks. First, everything presented small blooms, yellow or gold. Ho hum, borrrrrring! But more stalks were pushing up and while about half were green where the growing blossoms were tucked inside, close to another half were getting darker and darker.

Horray! No more just-two-colors garden! I'm expecting reds, purples, and some so dark they're named Root Beer! There should be a bunch of bi-colors as well, lots of various pinks, and some year I still want to find out if those "dead" ones, which finally show leaves, will ever actually bloom as advertised, because what was advertised was blue! 

First the yellows and golds, hard to distinguish. It is possible when they are  side by side, but otherwise  they look the same.

Next came an odd, mottled pink with yellow (right side). Then a delightfully bright but soft pink. One blossom is trying to hide some very dark buds coming up on the other side, while a day-old spent blossom is in turn trying to hide it.

The first of those dark buds to open belongs to Root Beer, so far the darkest of my daylilies, and the darkest expected. Surprises can happen, of course, I do expect two purples.

The smallest of these has opened and is called Grapette. The larger should be opening soon, but so far I only have a photo of one from its former location. So I'm going to cheat a little and put it in here anyway.

It's much darker and taller, but still more purple and less brown than Root Beer. I particularly love its name: Nosferatu. I bought 5 a couple years ago, planted them next to the former house for easy location and removal, and am waiting on results... along with several other varieties yet to bloom.

Meanwhile, this greets me in the mornings before the sun hits it, as well any anybody looking in from the street or passing on the path behind it which leads to the storm shelter/ rec center / mail room.

Lots of buds yet to open. Plus I haven't dressed yet to head out and remove yesterday's spent blossoms. To nourish the garden they get dropped onto the ground they came from.

 

.

 

 

Heartbroken: The Consequences of Stupidity

 I must have been overwhelmed when packing up the house for our multi-state move. Or  maybe I just mis-read the information on the storage of our PODS to include some kind of climate control while sitting for months in Phoenix. Possibly both, overlaid with personal stupidity.

The project started much earlier, when my laptop's photo library was getting way overloaded, and my back-up system wasn't working. I like to shoot shoot shoot and look later, something formerly not economically feasible before I went digital. A single roll of pictures would cost over $10 before I saw anything, and I can shoot multiples of that in a single outing, repeat it the following day and the next, and now not spend a penny unless I want an actual hard copy of something. I can email favorite files to friends. I even figured out how to post itty bitty ones here.

My solution was to pull out the thumbnails of each topic of files onto my desktop, stacked and overlapped like crazy, deleting each one from the photos library as I went. then I'd insert a thumb drive, move each file over, save them there while deleting them from the desktop as well - yep, very labor intensive - and tape a label on the thumb drive to identify the contents. Label might include "videos", "people", one of several different state names where I shot a lot, and above all, the name of my favorite wildlife center which incidentally has an annual photo contest.

I enter that contest nearly every year. Occasionally I place, getting a "second" a couple times. Amazing considering my modest equipment and all the photographers I see along the roads with heavy duty tripods supporting 20 inch lenses. Not that I measure them, that's just an estimate. I'm sure some are longer. Once I was invited to look though one and a tiny black speck off in the distance turned into a black ibis way off its usual migration path. That kind of straying happens a lot. I'm lucky if I can get an ordinary red-winged blackbird next to the road clinging to a cattail.

I got this lucky a couple weeks ago. This fellow was puffing his distinctive wings out every time he trilled his challenge to any nearby males: this was his territory and they could go take a hike - or something even ruder in blackbird-speak. It won't be entered in the contest because the sun was at the wrong angle and the eyes don't show well. Black is tricky that way. I had to fiddle with light levels to overexpose everything just to get a hint of one eye plus an assumption of his bill. Still, it's my best of one of these guys in the years I've been there. The yellow-headed ones are much simpler to shoot, if rarer in fact.

Back to the stupidity. I filled about a dozen thumb drives with what became the only files of a whole bunch of photos. I ignored the bag they were in when I unpacked it, thinking they were as they'd been made, and set it on a shelf in my room. But this year's photos contest is under way, and I was looking through older photos. Or at least looking for them. I'm supposed to have two drives with that name on them, but found one. There was also one with people photos separated out, many from either new babies or backyard bonfires. One held videos, another National Park shots.... you get the idea. 

I'd plug one in to the slot to open it, and nothing came up on my desktop to tell me there was something, anything, in the slot, much less a named thumb drive. Try another. Same. When I finally got to the drive with the pictures I wanted to look for a contest photo from, I finally got a list of file numbers, the kind that all end in jpg. I opened the first, and... 2/3 of it was a grey block. A whole bunch had varying levels of the same, others had grey or multicolor lines running horizontally through it, just enough visible to see what I had lost. Over and over. Again and again. I tried scrolling way down into the files and picked one at random. Same results.

Somehow labels have disappeared of some of the drives, or - knock on wood - when I stocked up before we moved on inexpensive blank thumb drives to spend more weeks  filling, they needed a second bag which might have been stored in another location, like a camera case which made the trip in the car... in March... and didn't get fried. I have no idea where such might be, of course. But I'm hoping it's a wobbly memory and not just a fervent wish.

Meanwhile, I went back into what I did still have on my laptop. I found a great heron photo, taken from the right location, meaning one of the three properties controlled by the refuge folks. That photo reminded me of a heron video I had seen recently, though from the wrong location to enter the contest. It was from 2 years ago when I took the camera along while Steve went fishing. One heron stayed close since we were the only ones there, were staying quiet, and nobody had launched a boat yet that morning.

I'd taken several stills, like the one above (with its tongue stuck out if you look close) and then since it was earnestly watching the water directly under it and stalking, I turned on video and got it catching - and swallowing - a newly caught fish. I love that video, especially with the fish tail still wiggling out my side of the bill until the heron took a second gulp to send it down the hatch. I'd seen that recently, because I'd shown it to somebody else who thought it was disgusting! 

SAY WHAT? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU ?!?

I couldn't find it. I checked around, and other still shots from that exact time are there. Same location, same heron which never came back on any of our visits. I looked for other keepers, contest entries that I didn't want to lose, and hadn't copied elsewhere. Those weren't even on my laptop, and I never erased those even when transferring a copy.

Now I have only memories of those photos, like two different babies gnawing on the visor of whichever ball cap Steve had worn and loaned to the occasion for the day. Elk lying down at the entrance station to RMNP, antlers in velvet, backlit by the rising sun, possible only because of covid and we two geezers had qualified for our first 2 shots and felt able to travel. Nobody minded the entrances, we could park on the road and capture the photos with nobody waiting and honking for us to move. Another elk walked straight in front of the car while we were stopped. I shot it too, even though the windshield turned it slightly green.

It goes on and on and on. I haven't the heart - yet - to try every one of the drives. I've been looking through what I actually still do have, since old photos still qualify if taken at the right location. The good ones still are in my memory... only. I got to the place where I couldn't bear to hunt any more. There are a few more days to get my act together and submit what I can.

What   do you do with a thumb drive which won't even say "I exist"?

Besides mourn?