Four years ago I was standing with my family at dad’s bedside, watching him struggle through the last few minutes of his life. I don’t think time heals pain, it just throws up distractions.
Today isn’t a great day for me.
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Take care of yourself and your family and that’s a great photo!
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Called again this morning and managed to get an appointment for early in the new year. I asked whether chasing them for appointments was the right thing to do, “Oh yes, we’d always recommend that” came the response.
Funny how that’s not been mentioned to me at any point.
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They probably think everyone already knows that.
there are two sorts of people in the world: those that tell you useful things, and those that don’t. Lots more of the second type than the first. I ran into one of the first last week. We need to replace the pipe that carries water from the street into our house. I’d called a contractor a while ago, and he finally called me back. It was very clear we weren’t his customer, which is fine. But he told me a bunch of useful information about the process that he didn’t have to, and which sort of confirmed a few thoughts I’d had.
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Can’t fault the person who I spoke to when booking my MRI. I asked if they could tell me how long things would take as I wanted to know how much to put in the hospital parking meter.
They told me where I could park for free nearby.
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People always rip on the American system. And there is plenty broken to rip on. But this, my friend who broke his clavicle in France, my cousin who was treated for cancer in Italy, metrics on appointment wait times from Canada… I really don’t think anyone is doing better. Just different flavors of frustrating.
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https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2024/sep/mirror-mirror-2024
Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System
Comparing Performance in 10 Nations
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It’s 12:09 AM and I just finished wrapping the last Christmas present and got everything stashed away. Now I won’t have to stay up late tomorrow night finishing it up like most years!
Unlike most families, we can’t put our presents under the tree early, as our disabled kids will not leave them alone until Christmas. Thus, they are hidden away and put under the tree after they go to bed on Christmas Eve. Our garage is a total mess. Well, moreso than usual. Boxes for recycling everywhere, some of which contain presents where they can’t be seen by prying eyes.
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We can’t put the presents out early either, because we can’t remember which ones were supposed to be from Santa…
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We just don’t wrap the gifts from Santa! Makes it easy.
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Obviously my experience, like everyone’s, is anecdotal, but every single time I or any member of my family has needed the NHS (UK), they have been fantastic. And the more serious or urgent the need has been, the more fantastic they’ve been. And of course no worries about any treatment costing us anything. It’s one of the wonders of the world even now. God knows how brilliant it must have been in its properly-funded heyday.
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We spent years staying up late on Christmas Eve, wrapping presents after the kids had gone to bed. We have no idea why it never occurred to us sooner to wrap the presents days before at our leisure and hide them away, but once it did occur to us it transformed Christmas Eve into an enjoyable time, rather than a frenetically stressed exercise in exhausted panic.
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We’ve noticed that Santa thoughtfully avoids using the same wrapping paper that we use for family presents. Makes it nice and easy to see what’s what.
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Yeah, none of this gets around the problem that we couldn’t remember which presents should be wrapped/not wrapped differently. The only solution was to wrap them all (differently) and let the kids sort it out. Santa wasn’t about to do an early delivery though, so it’s all hidden until tomorrow.
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I’m really feeling the whole “dark at 3 pm” thing at the moment. The seasonal depression is stacking up badly with my regular 6-8 monthly “what am I doing with my life” crisis, coursework deadlines, and a months-long process of titrating some new medication which is costing me £££ a month and appears to be doing naff all…
I’m not feeling very festive, but we do at least have a lot of cheese and cake in the house and a long walk in the hills planned tomorrow.
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Can one lovingly throttle their child? Surely that’s not illegal…
So we had company over last night around 8, and our younger kiddo was already asleep and I my older went to bed soon thereafter. People left close to 11, I think, and we got things cleaned up, got all the presents set up, then cleaned up ourselves for bed.
I was just getting in the shower when I heard thumping from the kids room, which my wife handled. Both kids were awake, one needed to use the bathroom. He went right back to bed, but the other started kicking on their door demanding to be let out (we have a lock to prevent eloping if needed, but try not to use it). With all the presents out, we couldn’t let the kids into the living room or they’d demand to play with new stuff, so my wife bribed the little bugger with some salami to go back to bed.
We go to bed but get woken up by more kicking within 30 minutes. Older kid is awake again as well and does his best to barrel through us down the hall to get to presents. After a few minutes of holding him back and trying to convince him to go back to bed, my wife just holds him while her brother and I remove all the presents to the garage.
My wife is exhausted from cleaning and cooking all day, so I let her go back to bed while I lock myself in the room with the kids and try to get them to go to sleep. Get older kid to sleep periodically, younger kid is wide awake.
Long story a little less long, other than mere minutes of passing out, I have been up over 24 hours now. Got the adults up around 6:40 to open presents, and now they are back in bed while I wrangle the kids. So tired…
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So the MRI was clear for the thing they were looking for. They did spot some sinus issues that they wanted to make sure weren’t bothering me. Otherwise they would have phoned me.
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That sounds like mostly good news, I take it?
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Mostly yes. 
They’ve convinced themselves that the symptoms I have aren’t being caused by anything serious.
There’s nothing they can really do about the symptoms themselves, I’ve just got to deal with them.
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I had my first sick day yesterday since starting my new job. But after 3 days of migraine, I couldn‘t take day 4. Today is finally better. The weather let up and the hormones went back to normal. Migraine gives me intense self-pity besides the actual pain. Saw my doc today to pick up a new prescription for the triptans. She suggested we try another treatment when I come for my next regular appointment in March. -.-
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