I continue to be exhausted and fretful and overwhelmed. We went back to Urgent Care for Edward’s abscess, and he DID make progress, which was encouraging if it lasts: the doctor put in a much smaller wick, and said after 48 hours he can take it out and let the incision heal, and start taking showers and so forth. But this is with the warning that things may then get worse again, and then, because we’d let the incision heal, it would mean making a new incision. The doctor also gave him three more days’ worth of antibiotics, so I have to go into the pharmacy again to pick those up. Is there no way to modify this system? I AM GOING SO MANY TIMES INTO SO MANY PLACES WHERE PEOPLE ARE SICK. [Edited to add: we picked up the prescription, and it’s for the same medication but half the strength, which matches what is printed on the discharge papers, so it’s not a pharmacy error. So now I have to figure out if I want to somehow track down that Urgent Care doctor on a holiday weekend to see if it was a mistake or if he wanted a lower dose (which surely he would have mentioned, rather than just saying he was going to extend the prescription by three days), or just give Edward the lower dose, or give him the dose he’s been taking but for one and a half days instead of three.]
Also, the Urgent Care doctor said that when we got home (this would have been Friday around lunchtime) we should call the pediatrician and make sure we got a follow-up appointment for the next week. I called as soon as we got home, and got put on hold, and after an hour of waiting I gave up and hung up and had some lunch. I waited another hour or so, then called again, got put on hold again, waited another hour, and hung up. This is a fully automated system, so it isn’t as if I can hang up and call back and tell the receptionist what’s going on; all I can do is listen to the 5-minute repeating loop of advertisements for the same medical center I am currently on hold for, and wonder if something is wrong with the system, or if they’re that busy, or if they’re closed but forgot to turn off the system, or am I hanging up 15 seconds before the nurse would have come onto the line.
Meanwhile, the same day I took Edward back to Urgent Care, I dropped the cat off for his ultrasound at around 8:30. The vet’s office called around noon to say I could come pick him up now, but that the vet wouldn’t be able to call to talk to me until late afternoon. I waited all afternoon and into the evening (I know doctors often make calls after their last patient of the day), fretting as I made dinner that she would call right in the middle of that and I would have to leave things stranded, but she never called. Now we’re in a long holiday weekend, and the cat doesn’t have the antibiotics the vet mentioned, or the subcutaneous fluids she mentioned, and I don’t know what the ultrasound showed. I’d thought at least we would have information at this point, even if it was very bad news. Instead we are not only still waiting, but also wondering if mistakes were made: like, maybe someone forgot to put our file in the vet’s call pile, and when she called she was going to have us come back to pick up the antibiotics, or whatever.
And Edward has his MRI appointment on Monday, and they haven’t called to confirm it or to give the instructions about fasting, so I’m wondering if maybe it was canceled and no one told us? We made the appointment before the pandemic, and there were a couple of other appointments, such as with the orthodontist, where we got an email saying all appointments were canceled and they’d be calling individually to confirm cancellation and reschedule, but then we never got a call. You’re tempted right now to tell me I can call the hospital and ask, and I know I can: the fretful/overwhelming part is that I feel like I’m being expected to manage something that someone else should be managing. AND I AM ALREADY DOING SO MUCH PHONE STUFF AND PHONE WAITING. [Edited to add: The MRI department called a few hours after I wrote this, and they confirmed the appointment and pre-registered him and told us about the fasting. Whew.]
And a few days ago I cancelled two routine dentist appointments that were scheduled for next week, one appointment for immunosuppressed Edward but the other for Henry who has braces and could really use the cleaning—because EVERYWHERE I was seeing news that Covid-19 cases were SKYROCKETING; and also because the appointments were for just a couple days after the July 4th weekend when so many people would be getting together and causing further skyrocketing; and also because I hadn’t heard anything from the dentist yet about whether they were still acting as if the pandemic was in progress or whether they were in the “Hey, we’re legally allowed to be open, so the pandemic is over and everything is back to normal!” category; and also because I had just been to Urgent Care where the registration nurse took off her mask to chat at length with the screening nurse, and then a different nurse took us back to a room and said “Oops, I forgot my face shield! I can tell because I can SEE for a change! Ha ha!” and then continued working with us, without going to get the face shield; so I was feeling as if it didn’t matter WHAT the protocols were ANYWHERE, it DEFINITELY wasn’t worth the risk of having someone putting their hands and breath right into my child’s unmasked nose and mouth for 45 minutes for just a routine cleaning, especially after that same someone could have spent the weekend getting together with large groups of people but not yet realize they’d been infected. And I felt so, so, so much better after I cancelled the appointments. So much better! So relieved! Until then, over the days following the cancellation, I was seeing EVERYWHERE that the dentist was considered safe, and that furthermore dentist appointments should be done NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW because soon they won’t be safe; and then I got a belated letter from our dentist explaining their protocols, which sound pretty much like what you’d expect in an operating room, and made me feel like the appointments would have been absolutely fine and I was being ridiculous. It feels like every decision I make is wrong.
And the electric bill came, and it is MORE THAN TWICE what it was last year at this time, even though the average daily temperature has been four degrees lower, and I can think of nothing to account for this. We didn’t add several large new appliances, or any new appliances. We didn’t set the a/c lower. We have only 1/7th more people here compared to last year at this time. The water heater is oil, not electric, so it’s not the increased laundry or showers. [Edited to add: Paul has gotten into this mystery, and is now doing things like changing filters, plugging an electricity-measuring device into various things, and so forth.]
And no one at our house is even seriously ill! No one in our extended family is seriously ill! And I don’t have little kids, or a full-time job, and we haven’t lost our primary source of income! My stressors are LOW, relatively speaking, and I still feel like I am having trouble coping. I am trying to imagine the impact of these stress levels on all of us, over time. It seems like it is not going to be good.
Anyway. I can’t remember if I’ve said that recently my GERD/reflux, which is normally easily controlled with a daily dose of omeprazole and hasn’t required me to modify my food/drink intake at all, has been BEYOND acting up, to the point where out of desperation I have cut out COFFEE, and also most alcohol, and also have been trying to eat smaller meals. What a time for this. I mean, it makes sense that the stress and exhaustion would increase the stomach acid, but on the other hand at the very time I most need coffee and alcohol and big hearty sustaining meals! Why, body, why! (Also: because the way I experience GERD is not as Classic Acidic Heartburn Feelings but instead as a persistent cough and a feeling of heaviness in my chest and a feeling of having difficulty breathing ((before the diagnosis, I’d thought I was developing asthma)), I have been getting a lot of laundry done as I prepare the family for my Imminent Death from What I Thought Was GERD But Was In Fact Covid-19.)
Without my usual housecleaning method of maintaining a pleasant level of tipsiness as I spend an evening cheerfully cleaning, the household cleanliness is diving, which further increases stress. I have been relying very heavily on Well, What CAN You Do and on Just Do One Thing. I have also added a method that doesn’t always work, but CAN work if employed carefully, which is to try to get VALUE out of my very limited motivation. This is the very thing that can backfire, and in fact attempting this method is what originally resulted in the development of the “Well, what CAN you do?” alternate plan, because sometimes trying to choose/do the most important thing sends me into a complete fit in which I can do nothing, NOTHING, and it’s crucial to instead be able to just do whatever I feel I can cope with, and let those little manageable less-important things bring down the Household Squalor level in their own way.
But sometimes, if I wake up to another day where I think it’s likely I’ll barely have the oomph to make sure my Candy Crush streaks are kept up to date, it’s better to have a plan to use my limited motivation to tackle one thing that has been driving me more crazy than anything else. FOR EXAMPLE. Our bathroom has one of those shower fittings where two big pieces of shower surround were brought in and snapped together, meaning there’s a slight gap between them, causing an ENDLESS WAR ON MILDEW. (IS THERE NO WAY TO MODIFY THIS SYSTEM. This is like how so many metal things in bathrooms are made of a kind of metal that rusts/corrodes if exposed to moisture. DID NO ONE THINK AHEAD.) From the toilet, there is an excellent view of this mildewy shower gap. So that many times a day, including first thing in the morning and last thing at night, I see the mildew gap and it makes me feel tired and wan, and like I can’t manage anything, and like the housework is beyond my control. Then I wash my hands, and I notice the gunkiness building up around the little gap under the faucet handles. Many times a day, this happens.
And so in the interest of getting the best VALUE for my cleaning time, this morning before showering I got up and dealt with both of those things. Maybe that’s it for the day, maybe I won’t do any more cleaning, but every time I use the bathroom I will notice that those things have been handled. For like a week until they need to be done again.