I've been trying to explain to my parents why I'm not currently job hunting, and why I'm not going to be taking any classes this summer. My mother understands, perhaps because she's gone through something moderately similar with her hip replacement.
My father has been wondering aloud on a daily basis why I'm not job hunting right now, and explaining that no one is going to want to hire someone who will have to go out on medical leave for at least two months hasn't cut it. I'm obviously just being a wuss. And then earlier this week he ran into a young man on campus with his arm in a sling and got talking to him. The kid had a similar surgery to what I'm going to have, but his was about two months ago. He's still using a sling a lot of the time, and his rehab team have just started letting him use his hand to pick up relatively light-weight objects, like a cup of coffee.
Suddenly with outside, independant verification (NIH, Mayo clinic, Yale, etc online apparently don't count/sigh) Dad can suddenly understand what I've been talking about for over a month and why I'm doing what I'm doing (or not doing).
So now I just have to fill out paperwork to see if I can be counted as "disabled" either temporarily because of the shoulder (sadly, I think I won't be for long enough unless, God forbid, something goes wrong in surgery) or perrmanently because of the knee. Any degree of disability might make certain types of assistance available, and right now any extra funds coming in will be a Good Thing. Also, sad to say, being officially "Disabled" might make me more employable, because folks still have to tick of those EEOC boxes. It's stupid, but as long as it's there, I might as well see if I can use it to my advantage. I've got a family to help support.
Now, if anyone can find a job which doesn't mind a new employee leaving for two to three months of medical leave right after starting , I'll be happy to apply. At least I can truthfully say I've never had to leave a job because of something that was my fault.
Showing posts with label family life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family life. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
I've come down with something, and it's supposed to snow again.
In spite of my best efforts, my family has proved that I did a good job teaching them to share. I am sitting hiding in my office at work quickly going through the box of tissues on my desk. Thankfully I have a new box out in the car. If I stick it out much to lunch time, I'm sure I'll have to go out and get it.
And they are threatening us with another one to three inches of snow tonight. My younger daughter's school may be closed again, since a lot of the streets in that town are only just starting to get plowed out today.
I slept very poorly last night. My husband went to bed early, which should have told me he wasn't feeling great, since today is one of his days off. I got up there, read for a few minutes, and as soon as I turned my light off he started snoring. Even on his side. Even after I poked him to get him to move. And when he wasn't snoring, it was because he wasn't breathing. After a few seconds he would start up again with a noise fit to wake the dead. And I was neither dead, nor even asleep. I didn't get to sleep myself until well after 1am, woke up twice during the night, and had to get up at 6.
I'm debating heading home; I have around 4 weeks of vacation time. But I have to schedule knee arthroscopy for later this year, and if it goes like last time, though it shouldn't, I'll be out for at least three weeks. But the knee has started keeping me up or waking me up at night, and it's started buckling for no particular reason again, and it's about half again the size of the other knee. The MRI from last week showed lots of arthritis, possible re-tearing of the medial meniscus (the one that was torn last time), definite tearing of the lateral meniscus, and a 2cm cyst under the patella. I don't think conservative treatment will work very well on this.
And my new computer at work as decided that it has to have an HP pop-up every hour or so asking me if I would like the Software Update to check for updates now. If it were my computer I'd do it, if only to get the damn thing to shut up. But as it is, I have absolutely no admin rights on this thing, and MIS seems to think there is no way to tell it to go away. Grrrr.
And I'm still running an outdated browser, although we are at least up to Windows 7 for the OS (only just replacing XP) and Office '07 from '03. Not that I'm one to talk about Office. My new laptop didn't come with Office or even Office starter with the ads. So I've got Open Office, and for those times when you just need an MS product, I've installed my nice copy of '97. It does what I need it to, and it's not like I'm sharing files so getting a newer version isn't a high financial priority.
I'm going to go back and continue hunting for obscure articles for my patrons, and hope that my nose survives the afternoon.
And they are threatening us with another one to three inches of snow tonight. My younger daughter's school may be closed again, since a lot of the streets in that town are only just starting to get plowed out today.
I slept very poorly last night. My husband went to bed early, which should have told me he wasn't feeling great, since today is one of his days off. I got up there, read for a few minutes, and as soon as I turned my light off he started snoring. Even on his side. Even after I poked him to get him to move. And when he wasn't snoring, it was because he wasn't breathing. After a few seconds he would start up again with a noise fit to wake the dead. And I was neither dead, nor even asleep. I didn't get to sleep myself until well after 1am, woke up twice during the night, and had to get up at 6.
I'm debating heading home; I have around 4 weeks of vacation time. But I have to schedule knee arthroscopy for later this year, and if it goes like last time, though it shouldn't, I'll be out for at least three weeks. But the knee has started keeping me up or waking me up at night, and it's started buckling for no particular reason again, and it's about half again the size of the other knee. The MRI from last week showed lots of arthritis, possible re-tearing of the medial meniscus (the one that was torn last time), definite tearing of the lateral meniscus, and a 2cm cyst under the patella. I don't think conservative treatment will work very well on this.
And my new computer at work as decided that it has to have an HP pop-up every hour or so asking me if I would like the Software Update to check for updates now. If it were my computer I'd do it, if only to get the damn thing to shut up. But as it is, I have absolutely no admin rights on this thing, and MIS seems to think there is no way to tell it to go away. Grrrr.
And I'm still running an outdated browser, although we are at least up to Windows 7 for the OS (only just replacing XP) and Office '07 from '03. Not that I'm one to talk about Office. My new laptop didn't come with Office or even Office starter with the ads. So I've got Open Office, and for those times when you just need an MS product, I've installed my nice copy of '97. It does what I need it to, and it's not like I'm sharing files so getting a newer version isn't a high financial priority.
I'm going to go back and continue hunting for obscure articles for my patrons, and hope that my nose survives the afternoon.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Angst, angst, existential dread!
Well, not quite that bad, and not mine.
My younger daughter is having back and neck issues since she hurt her ribs coughing last month. She is very upset that I am expecting her to go to school since her sister is a piece of glass which we let get away with doing nothing. That her sister has had six vertebrae fused in her lower back, as well as developing an anxiety disorder which leaver her in full blown panic attack mode after a few hours at school has nothing to do with it.
This morning in the car on the way to school we went from tears of pain to "I should just move in with hobos, they'd treat me better", to "I should just kill myself because then I wouldn't be in pain for the rest of my life." I'm not taking the latter to seriously since it was shouted at me in the heat of battle, so to speak. I dropped her off at school, and after very emphatically slamming the car door (hard to do you'd think if her back were really that non-functional), and watched her stump her way angrily to the door, again not showing any signs of back or neck issues. If they were really as bad as she's trying to make out, she wouldn't have been able to do that impressive stumping. I know, having been there. I will admit that she probably has back and neck pain, but it's not the mountain she's trying to make of it.
The title has to do with a housemate back in college. I don't know where the others dredged him up, but he was a philosophy major, and had a tendency when things weren't going his way to start getting all angst-y. The thing is that I'd never seen the word before, and tended to pronounce it American, not German. Another housemate and I were discussing his issues over lunch one day and I used the "hang" version and she corrected me. I thought about it for a moment and then suggested that for this guy, hang was more appropriate than "tong". She thought about that and agreed. From then on, whenever he started getting all serious, in the way only a 19 or 20 year old can, we'd start laughing and saying "Angst, angst, existential dread!". He hated it, and would at least leave and be all angst-y someplace else. It also probably made it easier to kick him out when we found out he was keeping pot in the house which was a) illegal and b) something another housemate was seriously allergic to.
But it gave me a great phrase for dealing with teenage emotional woes. I do have a call in to her doctor about whether we should be making an appointment with ortho. I also need to get her back to the naturopath, and get a refill on her herbal script, because whatever is in that Vitex stuff really seems to help her emotional stability.
My younger daughter is having back and neck issues since she hurt her ribs coughing last month. She is very upset that I am expecting her to go to school since her sister is a piece of glass which we let get away with doing nothing. That her sister has had six vertebrae fused in her lower back, as well as developing an anxiety disorder which leaver her in full blown panic attack mode after a few hours at school has nothing to do with it.
This morning in the car on the way to school we went from tears of pain to "I should just move in with hobos, they'd treat me better", to "I should just kill myself because then I wouldn't be in pain for the rest of my life." I'm not taking the latter to seriously since it was shouted at me in the heat of battle, so to speak. I dropped her off at school, and after very emphatically slamming the car door (hard to do you'd think if her back were really that non-functional), and watched her stump her way angrily to the door, again not showing any signs of back or neck issues. If they were really as bad as she's trying to make out, she wouldn't have been able to do that impressive stumping. I know, having been there. I will admit that she probably has back and neck pain, but it's not the mountain she's trying to make of it.
The title has to do with a housemate back in college. I don't know where the others dredged him up, but he was a philosophy major, and had a tendency when things weren't going his way to start getting all angst-y. The thing is that I'd never seen the word before, and tended to pronounce it American, not German. Another housemate and I were discussing his issues over lunch one day and I used the "hang" version and she corrected me. I thought about it for a moment and then suggested that for this guy, hang was more appropriate than "tong". She thought about that and agreed. From then on, whenever he started getting all serious, in the way only a 19 or 20 year old can, we'd start laughing and saying "Angst, angst, existential dread!". He hated it, and would at least leave and be all angst-y someplace else. It also probably made it easier to kick him out when we found out he was keeping pot in the house which was a) illegal and b) something another housemate was seriously allergic to.
But it gave me a great phrase for dealing with teenage emotional woes. I do have a call in to her doctor about whether we should be making an appointment with ortho. I also need to get her back to the naturopath, and get a refill on her herbal script, because whatever is in that Vitex stuff really seems to help her emotional stability.
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