August 28, 2023

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (169)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 150: I was in a funk waking up this morning in so much pain. Nightmares all night meant my jaws ached from clenching. A new viral thing got hold of me this weekend and started up fresh mouth sores instead of throat sores, so that’s worse. My joints are extra cranky, probably from the remnants of Hurricane Hilary passing over. Tendons and ligaments were down for the count as well.

Sigh. I’d already emailed my ENT and set up a follow up with my primary so I just needed to try and get through it.

Our nice elderly neighbor (of gift card confusion) was badly injured in a fall a week ago and her husband gave me her phone number and address where she’s being treated so I could check on her. We ordered her some treats as well. She’s keeping a positive striving spirit about it but I know she’s in a lot of pain.

Year 4, Day 151: The orthodontist office manager really ticked me off. By email, they agreed to honor the old quote from last year, but not the discount that was included. Of course, they didn’t say the latter part until we had been in the office for almost two hours getting ready to pay for the treatment plan. I politely but irkedly pointed out that our delay to the treatment start was only because their prior office manager who was promoted had ghosted me for several months. A brief but pointed silence after she apologized for that followed, and then I nodded that she could proceed with charging my card while wearing my “I’m definitely not happy with this” face which doesn’t translate VERY well under a flo-mask but translated well enough that she interrupted herself to offer me a halfway decent compensatory $75 gift card from a promotion they were running for new patients. I was perfectly aware that they had a $200 gift card promotion but the $75 made up the difference, so I didn’t bother to push harder.

I am second guessing my decision not to wait another year to start this treatment for JB. We would have needed to choose the better dental plan at the 2022 open enrollment, but we didn’t know we needed ortho coverage until after open enrollment. We’d have to choose the higher priced plan this fall, and then we’d be able to use it January 2024.

– JB may well need to have another round of treatment when all their teeth are in. This treatment is only intended to help their jaw grow in a way that corrects an overbite and makes space for the incoming teeth which are already too crowded. We can only try to set them up for success and give their incoming teeth a chance to come in straight.
– Insurance will only pay $2000 one time for any orthodontic treatment.
– This is the biggest thing, though. There’s also a very limited window of time when the soft palate is just cartilage and this can be done. About 2 years? Roughly? Their dentist said last fall that she’d recommend getting this done ASAP though we had a couple years to do it.

If we wait until Jan 2024, will that window be closed? We don’t know but I don’t really want to risk making the treatment harder on them than it has to be or even missing the boat entirely. Remember, the recommendation was made in November 2022.

I’d mentally classified this as saving that coverage for later but that felt like lying to myself. It’s better to save the money earlier than later. I think I’m more at peace with acknowledging that we are choosing to spend the money outright now because it’s the better medical choice, and that it’s ok if we don’t use the ortho coverage later.

Year 4, Day 152: Having dodged the bullet with JB’s microaggression bully from last year, we were surprised that the kid who was hitting and kicking them last year came back for a third round of attack.

I don’t know why I was surprised, I guess I had the wild notion he’d learned his lesson. But since he hadn’t, we initiated another conversation with the principal and teacher to ask for next steps. The daycare would not have tolerated a third incident but I’m getting the sense that public schools do the absolute least possible when it comes to bullying.

Canvassing my friends across the nation confirmed this sense. It seems that schools won’t do anything to intervene unless they’re absolutely forced to.

The principal’s meeting with the kids and email back to us was so woefully inadequate I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I ran it past two public school teachers to confirm that I wasn’t overreacting, and they confirmed it was boilerplate cover your ass text and that I should push back. It took me a day and a half to compose myself enough to start formulating the reply.

I’m still not done editing.

In summary, this week feels like garbage, let’s compost it for something better.

I have the sneaking suspicion that I feel this way specifically because I loathe dealing with interpersonal issues. And also someone keeps being aggressive at my kid and won’t stop and the adults won’t do anything to stop it either.

Year 4, Day 153: Right when I least needed it, because I need to get that letter to the school done today, the brain fog moved in. If I really needed an answer to the debate of physical pain vs mental impairment, who loses? It’s definitely me but also mental impairment. I hate being in pain from top to toe but at least I can mostly think even when everything hurts.

I consoled myself with the thought that their barely sufficient action has ruined my week. 27 drafts in, because this other student is the offspring of a teacher at this school and I have to worry about reprisals against my kids from teachers for holding the administration accountable for protecting my kid against a bully (who fully admits to the bullying, by the way! Clearly he feels he has nothing to fear at this school!) I have such a headache.

My brain hurts. My face hurts. My rage continues to steam out my ears.

A polite but pointed “we’re not done, actually, until you take more than the bare minimum slap on the wrist action” email should land in their inbox on Friday morning so as to ruin her Friday. I’m feeling petty and I’m not ashamed of it given how little consideration she’s paid to my kid being hurt at school.

Year 4, Day 154: Friday food review! Actually. Nothing particularly exciting this week. I pulled out frozen chili for dinner one night and whipped up an experimental GF cornbread because we had no flour on hand. Now we have no cornmeal either. (Add to grocery list, note to self). The texture was wonderful but the butter didn’t come through well and the kids didn’t like it much. I’m guessing it’s because it didn’t have a lick of sweetness. Maybe I’ll try making it again and add honey next time. We had leftover takeout from a local Chinese place one night and … Huh. I can’t remember any other dinners. Oh, right, a frozen Costco lasagna one night and then rice, salmon, and broccoli one night. Very basic stuff!

August 21, 2023

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (168)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 143: Woof, it’s hard to tell but it’s possible that 15ish minutes of weeding for two consecutive weekends mornings utterly wrecked me. All my major joints so angry and swollen they’re radiating heat, and all my muscles are also angry. My body is more like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than is healthy for a human. I wanted to wallow in bed all day. Couldn’t, of course. Monday being Monday, I had kids to get out the door, a hundred emails and a stack of reports to get through. Normally I’d pace myself more but I’m taking a day off to ferry everyone to appointments later this week and would rather clear the desk enough to ignore work on my ferrying day.

Year 4, Day 144: We didn’t make it a week before a report of a COVID case on campus cropped up. I’m not surprised. But more people are more surprised by the fact that we’re even getting reporting. Naturally, we then were notified that our district won’t be reporting cases anymore. What a sad state of affairs this is.

~~~~~

Good news bad news on my health front.

I hate meeting new doctors. I never know if they’re going to take me seriously and I hate having to make them take me seriously. So meeting a new doctor this week about my chronic sore throat problem strained my nerves until we started chatting and I realized this guy is at least 5 years younger than me. He reminds me of my younger cousin! That let me relax a smidge. Then the fact that he listened carefully to everything I had to say was reassuring. He took a look and spotted the issue in my throat, and gave me a rundown on treatment options along with his opinion on each. That brings me to the bad news part. He thinks this is my body overreacting to viral infections that I’m picking up from Smol Acrobat. Every. Single. Month. So it overreacts by producing a truckload of sores in the nose and throat while it’s trying to fight the infection and then … Sigh. Chronic severe sore throat.

Year 4, Day 145: I frequently feel like a bad or inadequate parent. A combination of never feeling good enough to want to play with my kids and feeling like I should want to.

I try my hardest not to consciously compare myself to other parents as much as possible but it’s hard not to feel it crop up now and again. Today, I had two small moments of good: Smol Acrobat asked me to build rock towers for them and they were pleased enough with my builds to give me cheesy grins for pictures. JB wanted to play catch but PiC wasn’t in the mood so I took them for 15 minutes of 2-square. (Not enough people for 4-square.) PiC would usually indulge every request, regardless of his own feelings, but it was better that I did it. Even if my knees feel swollen to the size of soccer balls (they aren’t, it’s just the feeling of inflammation), it actually felt better to me to play than not today. And on an extremely bad body day, at that. I’m kind of proud of myself.

Year 4, Day 146: Crossing my fingers that we settle into a manageable routine next week. I’m still recovering from my day of nearly back to back appointments for the family. Dentist, daycare dropoff, errand, doctor, short break, dentist again for almost two hours.

Back to School night is tonight and I couldn’t scrape together even an ounce of energy to go. PiC took the hit (and JB) while I prepped Smol Acrobat for bed. I’m not sure how I feel about the expectations for third grade but as usual, we’ll roll with it. Fundraising starts on Friday, that’s what we get in lieu of school supply shopping lists.

Year 4, Day 147: Food talk Friday! Just made that up. Sunday I used up all my egg boiling luck to whip up a batch of egg salad for our lunches this week. Win! We initially planned to do pizza one night to make the week easier but it didn’t work out so we made “fancy” ramen night with Costco tonkotsu bowls, roast pork from the freezer, frozen corn and soft boiled eggs (had insufficient luck left, they were too soft). But still an overall win. We had leftover small potatoes from my pot roast experience and that went into a yellow chicken curry (premade from Costco). Everyone liked that too.

I think this makes two weeks we didn’t wish we had done takeout to save some energy. I’ll want some soon enough, I’m sure.

*****

Housekeeping: You’d think we never washed the rugs around here. The bathroom rug is all fluffed up after I did a load of bathroom rugs and everyone is disproportionately happy about it. Small wins in the sensory department.

August 14, 2023

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (167)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 136: JB starts school this week which is both good and bad for me. They’ll finally be out of the house for a large chunk of hours during the work day, yay!! We actually have to be up and out the door by 8 am, siiiiiiigh. I’m not looking forward to that bit.

Mixed bag on the health front. My throat has been sore for 8 days, along with mysterious mouth pain that made me wonder “hand foot mouth??? nooooooo!” It’s not COVID after three at home tests, nor anything the family is susceptible to since I’m the only miserable one. HMF is generally very contagious so I am hopeful it’s not stealth HMF. I have no idea what it is but it stinks. I chatted with my doctor who’s putting me on 2 months of antacids to see if that improves anything before referring me to ENT.

On the other hand, I took Sera for a much longer afternoon walk than we usually take and I wasn’t gasping for breath or debating crawling back the last steps. That’s a huge change from the norm!

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