Sick

All posts tagged Sick

Just another fun experience with the world of healthcare.

Published June 4, 2021 by Malia

If you were here in January 2020, you might remember me writing about an absolute nightmare experience at the pharmacy.  Strap in, kids, it’s time for another round of “Malia has fun at the pharmacy.”  Different pharmacy, same level of “fun.”

Earlier this spring, I went to the endocrinologist, and she decided she wanted me to start taking Farxiga along with my regular diabetes med.  So, the script got sent to the pharmacy, and I waited.  The first few days, the app showed me that filling  the med was “In Process.”

Okay, sure.  New med, needs time to get all the insurance cleared, etc…

Then the status changed to, “Contact the pharmacy to fill the prescription.”

I had a few other meds that had been filled, so when I went to pick them up, I asked about the Farxiga.  I was informed that my insurance had declined to cover it, and was recommending a med called Jardiance.  They offered to contact my doctor about this, and I gave them the go ahead.

A week passed and nothing changed.  No new script was listed for the Jardiance, and I had heard nothing from my endo.  So, I sent a message to the endo to find out what they wanted to do.

I received back a message from the nurse telling me to go to Farxiga’s website, and there should be coupons there.  Now, the pharmacy had already told me that I was looking at well over a thousand dollars if I paid  out of pocket.  I received the message right as the fun with Tom’s kidney began, and so dealing with it fell by the wayside.  Besides, I reasoned, I had another endo appointment coming up soon, I’d deal with it then.

Fast forward past the surgery, to the next endo appointment.  The endo told me they had sent a script for the Jardiance to the pharmacy when they had been informed it was the recommended switch from the Farxiga.  Since the script had never shown up in the pharmacy app, the endo resent it. 

After the appointment, I checked the pharmacy app and saw that a script for Jardiance was there, listed as, “In Process.”  I breathed a sigh of relief.

Which was a dumb thing to do.

The next day, I checked the app and found that “In Process” had changed to “Contact the pharmacy to fill.”

So, I called the pharmacy and asked what was going on.  They informed me that Jardiance isn’t covered by my insurance.

So, I sent a message to the endo.  Two hours later the doctor called me and told me that the person in their office who talks to the insurance people (there was a title for this person, but I’m blanking on it), had called and gotten the med approved for coverage.  The doctor told me they’d contacted the pharmacy and the med  should be filled by end of day.

Again, I breathed a sigh of relief way too soon.

At this point it was a Thursday. I watched the app and the fill status remained unchanged. And it stayed unchanged through the weekend.

The following Tuesday, I received a letter from my insurance showing that they were going to cover the med. I stupidly assumed this was going to mean my med was going to get filled.

I gave it two days, and then when nothing had changed, I went in to the pharmacy, clutching the letter from the insurance.

The pharmacy tech pulled up my info and after looking it over said, “Yup, I show we got approval for this last week.” Which he followed up with, “So did you want us to fill this?”

Yes, I contained my rage. Yes, I remained nice and polite. Yes, they finally filled it and I was able to pick it up and start taking it this last Tuesday. (Delay in pick-up was on me trying to conserve gas. I waited until my other diabetes med had been refilled to go pickup.)

After all that, turns out my body really doesn’t like the Jardiance. I gave it until today, and it’s just kept making me sicker. I was so baffled, because nothing I was experiencing was listed on the bottle as a side effect, so I had to go to Jardiance’s website, and I found that I’m having most of the uncommon side effects.

So, now I’m waiting to hear back from the endo since I’m fairly certain I probably should not be continuing to take this med.

May we all live in uninteresting times.

Published May 6, 2021 by Malia

Behold my glamorous life…

I’m doing the slightly monotonous work of making inserts for greeting cards. I have all this really pretty cardstock paper that I’m cutting down into correct size.

I’ve also got New Girl on in the background. I realized yesterday that I fell off the show, completely unintentionally, after the second season. And since my memory sucks and it’s been a few years since I last watched it, I started it over from the beginning. The show is quite a bit funnier than I remember it being. One small problem though, since I spent so much time throwing up, my abdominal side muscles hurt super bad every time I start laughing. On the bright side, I still haven’t thrown up since before I made my non-post post yesterday. And I realize that is way too much tmi about my bodily functions. The whole point is, this show is making me laugh so much, but because it really hurts to laugh, my laughs start out normal and then quickly turns to me going, “Ow, ha, ow, ha ow ow ow!”

Tune in tomorrow for another exciting installment of “Malia is either actually getting stuff done or she’s been disassociating for the last 8+ hours.”

P.S. I do have regular dissociative episodes that frequently involve me just staring at a wall for hours on end. I frequently deal with my mental health issues by making jokes about it.

Traditions

Published January 1, 2020 by Malia

During my twenties, every January 1st was spent marathoning the entire extended Lord of the Rings. While it is possible to do in one sitting, now that I’ve gotten a bit older I’ve discovered it’s also super exhausting. Then, I turned 30, and the tradition changed.

Tom and I had been together almost a year. We were engaged, and it was our first New Year’s Eve. I worked that night, but was done around nine or ten. I drove to Tom’s. He got a bunch of pizza and we sat up half the night eating and playing Diablo 3. Since then, every New Year’s Eve we’ve gotten pizza and played Diablo. Nothing like ringing in the new year by slaying hordes of demons.

This year, tradition shifted. Last night, we went out on New Year’s Eve. Nothing super fancy. Taco Bell and Star Wars. I’ve had a nasty respiratory infection, so it was both super fun and incredibly exhausting.

Today, I’m keeping quiet. Trying to continue getting better. So, we’re doing pizza, Diablo, and rewatching the Clone Wars series. Again, it’s nothing exciting, but it is pleasant and a lovely way to start the new year.

I’m still trying to figure it all out.

Published March 21, 2018 by Malia

I was going to write this whole post about how frustrated I am that I can’t maintain a “normal” body temperature, and constantly run on the cold end of the thermometer. However, I was boring myself as I was writing it. Which means all you lovely people would be equally bored. So, I’m gonna set that post aside for awhile. It’s kind of funny, but it’s taking too long to get to the funny.

Instead, I’m going to take a moment to assure the world at large that as of right now I am NOT pregnant, and not adopting either. Maybe someday. Apparently, a previous post from a few weeks ago was a bit misleading, since I mentioned that there were some changes ahead in my life. Said changes are more of the “I’m trying to figure out what I want ro be when I grow up” variety.

There’s this thing about being married. You have to take the other person’s needs and wants into account. This isn’t always the easiest, especially when I spent the first twenty-nine years of my life being very single, and my choices really only affected me. Having the flu and then bronchitis and now bronchitis again (it’s not officially been diagnosed this time, but this is not my first bronchitis rodeo) has provided me with a ridiculous amount of time to think. There are things that I know the boy would like of me (his top love language is Acts of Service). They aren’t difficult things, and certainly nothing that is wrong of him to expect and want. I’ve come to realize that those things are far more important to me than so many other things. I know I’m being a bit cryptic, but that’s cause things are still kind of in flux. I just know that I want to be a good wife (especially since he’s such an amazing husband). I want to have the boy want to come home at the end of the week. I want to get healthy.

And my chest is really hurting, so maybe I should go to the doctor and get this bronchitis officially diagnosed…

The Flu

Published February 12, 2018 by Malia

Reason for no posts lately? I have the flu. It hit insanely fast last Thursday morning, and I’ve been sleeping through Netflix since.

The worst part? I’ve actually been a relatively good patient the last several days, and yesterday I really thought I was finally through the worst. I took the boy to work this morning, and as the day has progressed I feel like it’s doubling back on me. So, I’m going to try to get some sleep so I can try to get through my shift at work tomorrow.

Also, don’t get the flu. It sucks.

I didn’t stay up all night playing Heathstone. The keyword in that statement is “all.”

Published January 14, 2018 by Malia

I blame the Metformin.

Seriously.

Okay, so Metformin is the medicine I have to take for my diabetes/pcos. It’s supposed to help both things. I’m not sure it does, but I’m taking the pill anyway. I am sure that it hates me.

On a good day, I take it and just feel a bit off. The way you feel when you’re about to come down with something, but you aren’t truly sick yet. However, on a bad day, things get ugly.

And the bad days are far more frequent than the good days

Here’s a bad round with Metformin. It acts like I’ve come down with a stomach bug. I get achy (head and all over), lightheaded and dizzy, hot, exhausted, everything in me liquifies and comes out the southern end accompanied by intense abdominal pain, and then there’s the nausea. So much freaking nausea. The good news is, I only feel this way the first 12-24 hours after I’ve taken my meds. Usually, by the time it’s time to take my next dose (24 hours later) these symptoms have abated. Just in time, to start the whole process all over.

Believe me, I’ve tried to appease the Metformin deities. It doesn’t matter if I make good food choices or bad, it doesn’t matter if I’ve been in constant motion or just been a sedentary rock for the day. This med just hates me, so very much.

I’ve told every doctor I’ve seen about how the Metformin hates me, and I pretty much always get the sane response, “Well, you have diabetes and pcos, and this is the med we prescribe for both those things.” My ob-gyn’s solution was taking me off the non-extended release form and putting me on extended release (er) so that I take it at night, before bed, and will sleep through the worst of it. Some nights this works, and then some nights are like last night.

Last night, I took my medicine and headed to bed. Instead of waiting for me to fall asleep, the stomach pain started and I knew I needed a distraction, because sleep was probably not going to happen for a while. So, I hopped on Hearthstone, and it mostly kept me focused away from the pain. Then, though, I got into competitive mode.

I’ve been playing Hearthstone super casually for over a year. Mostly, I only played when the boy had a quest he needed to complete and it required playing against a friend, or having your game be observed by a friend. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I learned about ranked play. I knew that there were professional players, considered the best, but I hadn’t a clue how they had become ranked. Did the game just log that they played a ton? It was genuinely a mystery. Then the boy received an in-game reward, and when I questioned how he had gotten it, he explained that I could actually play and get ranked and vet free stuff. I like free stuff. I felt so dumb for not having figured this out on my own.

So, last night, I was actually doing pretty decently and making my rank slowly crawl up, and I got a little sucked into the game. At one point it suddenly dawned on me that when I’ve seen pictures of the best Hearthstone players, they’re all male. And suddenly, something inside me was very annoyed. Brcause I know I’m not the only female who plays the game. Which made me then more determined to climb the rankings. Maybe it was because it was the middle of the night, but suddenly I was rambling to the boy about how this game needed way more female representation on the leader board, and I really think I should make it a goal to be one of those females. And he, being the supportive husband went, “Ok, babe.” Which may not read supportive, but it totally was.

And then it was 3 a.m., and I was finally so tired, it outweighed my abdominal misery.

I slept for four hours, woke up and had a half-hour of quality time with the bathroom and my angry tummy, and then decided to share my pain and craziness with all of you.

Weirdly, that late night fervour I suddenly felt to excel at Hearthstone, didn’t pass like the contents of my stomach did. I’m awake, exhausted, but awake, and I still want to try to see if I can become, if not a top player, a really awesome player. (Wow, that sentence had a ton of commas. Believe it or not, I actually excelled in grammar back in high school.)

At least it would mostly distract me from the Metformin.

So…It’s Been Awhile…

Published June 10, 2015 by Malia

I think this pretty much covers it.

Turns out, thinking about writing blog posts and ACTUALLY writing blog posts are two different things.  Over the last few months, I’ve frequently had ideas and thought, “That’d make a good post,” and then never followed through.  So, it’s time to play catch up…

April

As far as I can remember, the last updating I did took place in April.  Which, while not a long time ago, is well over a month past.  April ended interestingly.

When the boy and I got married, we were on pretty different work shifts.  He would leave for work before 7 a.m. and get home mid-afternoon.  I, on the other hand, would start work at 1:30 p.m., and not get home until well after 10 p.m. (just in time for the boy to head to bed, and me to be wide awake with post work adrenaline).  Going into our marriage, we both knew this was something we were going to have to deal with, and I honestly thought it’d be okay.  Which only goes to show that I’m an idiot.  In truth, it was misery.  It was depressing.  It was lonely.  So, at the end of April, when I saw a perfect job opening at a local hospital.  So, I submitted an application.  And then a week later I got a call from the hospital asking me to come in for an interview.  It was one of those interviews that when I left I honestly couldn’t tell if I was going to get a job offer, but they assured me they were going to call my current job to verify that I really did work there.  Which meant I had to tell my boss that I had gone on an interview.  To cut a very long, boring story short, my boss wasn’t exactly thrilled when I shared this tidbit with her, and I didn’t get offered the job at the hospital.  However, my work offered to let me change schedules, which meant that I didn’t have to start somewhere new, and no more long, lonely mornings home alone.

May & Early June

May will be remembered as the month of medical drama.  About a week after the wedding (back in March), I started having bad abdominal pain.  Because I’m super stubborn, and completely convinced that things will just get better, I put off going to the doctor until May.  Finally, I broke down and decided to go get checked.  The first two weeks of May found me going to the Ob-Gyn and the Endocrinologist.  Neither were fun visits, and neither gave me a decent answer for the abdominal pain.  All that really happened was that I ended up back on Metformin (for diabetes and the PCOS).  My Metformin dose was supposed to start slow, and every week go up.  The first week I had to up the dose, I started getting super sick.  Migraines, pain, dizzyness, nausea, and other fun things plagued me for three solid weeks.  I couldn’t eat, was having trouble sleeping, and was generally miserable.  I spent a decent amount of time playing phone tag with both the Ob-Gyn & Endocrinologist offices.  Both just kept blowing me off and telling me it was just my reaction to the Metformin and to take upping the dose slower.

By the start of the third week, I had the worst sore throat I’ve ever had.  The start of the third week was also my first week on my new shift at work and it was a horrendous week.  Fearing that I might have strep, I ended up at a quick sick clinic.

I didn’t have strep.

No, as of last Thursday, I learned that I have Mono.  Not only do I have mono, but this is actually the second time in my life I’ve had mono.

I wish it felt this cute.

Through it all, the boy truly has been my steady rock.  He has taken such good care of me.  Definitely has made me feel valuable even when I have felt super worthless.  He’s nursing me through this mess, and gone on more chocolate milk pick-up trips than has been fair to him (side note: whole chocolate milk is so thick and creamy it’s the perfect thing to drink if you can’t swallow anything else).

So, in case this has all been TL/DR (too long/didn’t read)…Started a new shift at work, got mono, my husband is amazing, and I am now going to try to update more faithfully.

I’m not Goofy, but I might be Pluto?

Published September 17, 2014 by Malia

Hello Internets.  So, I promise I’ll continue the travelogue on my next post.  For now, though, consider it on hiatus due to Satan Pox.  What’s Satan Pox you ask?  I think I may have mentioned it before, but in case I haven’t, Satan Pox is the name I have bestowed on any really unpleasant illness I get.  This current round of Satan Pox is the worst round I’ve had, as of yet.  I should be sleeping, I want to be sleeping, but there’s this whole I CAN’T BREATHE through both nostrils thing that has got me in an unpleasant headlock.

Seriously.

I spent last night doing the routine of, “I can’t get comfy in this chair.  I need to pee.  Since I can’t sleep in the chair, maybe I should try the couch.  I can’t sleep on the couch, and now I need to pee.  AGAIN.  Since the couch isn’t working out, maybe I should try the chair again.”

Lather, rinse, repeat.

ALL.  NIGHT. LONG.

It’s been more than a little frustrating.

And for those who are sitting there wondering why I haven’t just gone to the doctor, I’d like to point out that even with insurance going to the doctor still costs money, and I don’t get paid until Friday.  So I’m just laying low and taking cough/cold/flu syrup until I go back to work tomorrow.

So, I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I’m more than a little hopped up on Nyquil.  True story, earlier today I was talking with mom, and I randomly began quoting Gravity Falls, “Lick that elbow!  Lick that elbow!  Sometimes I wish I had kittens for hands.”  To which mom replied, “I think you might be a little goofy.”  And I shot back with, “I’m not Goofy, but I might be Pluto.”  I think I proved her point, more than my own.

And since I’m being all delightful and cough syrupy, I want to know if I’m the only girl in the world who is not currently smitten with  the photo circulating of Benedict Cumberbatch recreating the Mr. Darcy Pride and Prejudice scene?  For some reason, I find the picture kind of creepy.  I don’t know why, either.  Judging by the things I’ve been reading, apparently I’m kind of alone in this feeling.  

The other really annoying thing about Satan Pox is that it is giving me weird memory lags.  Example, that last sentence, I forgot what I was typing for the better part of almost 2 minutes.  Then there was last night, where I suddenly had this need to go into a different room, and something in my brain was telling me that it was super important that I go into the other room.  I got there, stood there for the better part of four minutes trying to figure out why I was in there and why it was so important.  I then gave up and returned to my chair.  I still don’t know why I was in there.  Maybe it was the Silence.

And I now realize that there is not one person reading this who isn’t more than a little confused.  Or maybe I’m the one who’s confused.

Bottom line: Don’t get Satan Pox.  It’s super annoying and painful.

Dear Sick People…

Published July 29, 2014 by Malia

Cover your mouth when you cough!  When your arm is six inches or more away from your mouth, aiming in that general direction does not mean that you have covered your mouth.  Not even making any attempt to cover your mouth is even worse.  And while I’m on this rant, if you’re sick, please don’t get super near other people.  It’s not okay to announce that you’re super contagious and then stand within six inches of a non-sick person, breathing in their face.  I understand having to go to work when you’re sick, but if you do, at least keep a little distance between yourself and those you are talking with.  I know this may seem odd to you, but no one else really wants your disease.  We feel bad for you that you are sick, but we’d much rather you keep it to yourself.  Unless you were raised by single celled organisms, you have no excuse not to cover your mouth or respect other people’s personal space.

*End of Rant*