The definition of crazy...
Jun. 10th, 2024 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maygraderhema...is when you keep doing the same thing but expect a different result. Journaling is apparently one of those things since it's been a year plus since I updated. Not actually that much has changed, really, but I keep poking at life in different ways, in the vain hope that something might shift.
And some good stuff has happened, like I got to spend a glorious couple of hours with Khaleesian back in January, where we spent a good 3-4 hours catching up while eating sushi and drinking coffee in Athens. It was great fun, and I love getting to see her. Her family has some property not terribly far from where I am now so that worked out well. Also, to get the scoop on her kids and their world travels, which is like better than any book I've ever read. (She tells stories just as well in person as she does in writing)
We did get the kidlet's room finished finally - which was a process and a half between the lead paint and the unfinished flooring. But it truly is cute and I would show you pictures, if she wasn't such an amazing slob. She just had her 11th birthday, and the world is not ready for this child. In mixed news, we are (and by we, I mean her mom and aunts) sending her to Florida this summer and then she's going to remain with her aunt for the school year. One of the downsides to living this far out, is that she really has no friends, not near home and not at school. The bulk of the kids that go to here school have known each other their entire lives or they have siblings. K has neither, and while she's super smart and actually fun to talk to and hang out with, she's not really great with kids her own age and never has been -- with the exception of her Florida cousins, of whom she has many. She's been in counselling the past year because of her loneliness and some depression and acting out, so we're going to try this and see how it goes.
I don't want to be anyone's debbie downer, so feel free to skip the next bit. Some of this is just me trying to get my brain around how things seem to cascade which just makes my depression worse, but also to maybe acknowledge that at this moment in time, some of it is situational, which normally it's just wonky brain chemistry (which is why my drugs work, when I can get them)
My insurance has continued to refuse to cover the Rexulti despite multiple appeals. I think we're on round number 4 at this point after completing a whole review including what other anti-depressants have I tried, and what have we not tried, which literally required me to contact my longtime GP to pull records from 30 damns years ago. So I keep floundering along, some days (weeks) better than others, but mostly, it takes everything I have just to maintain. I'm so out of spoons, I'm using plastic coffee stirrers.
I am probably doing slightly better at times - like if I have something to hard focus on, but that's been it's own downside. I took kind of a huge financial hit at the end of last year, only to have to turn around at the beginning of this year and figure out a way to replace the entire septic system at the house, so I am back in debt again after I had just, *JUST* kind of gotten out from under it for the first time in my life.
And then, right as we got that resolved, I found I had cancer again. Not fun. I had gone to see my new doc (She's actually a PPN, but she's a gerontology specialist, and she has been working very hard to get the insurance company to cover the Rexulti.) We thought it was just a basal cell deal between my left eye and ear -- I'm fair skinned, and growing up, I spent a lot of time in the sun. I've had small cancers removed before over the years none of them malignant. This one was and also a whole lot bigger than it appeared to be (literally on the surface) and I had two surgeries to clear it out.
The good news is that they found no sign of cancer cells in the prime lymph node, so it hadn't spread, so I didn't actually have to make the decision to follow up treat or not treat. What they did find, and want to kind of keep an eye on, is some cells more often found in the generation of moles - which is not unheard of, but apparently not common either. So, yay?
I had surgery on the 16th of May to remove the tumor and then had to go back a week later to have reconstruction done on my face. The initial excision was about the diameter of a coke can and pretty deep. (Were I more trendy, I could have like one of those deep set cheek piercings done, like all the serious body mod goths get.) It was an impressive looking chunk of my face gone. The reconstruction is not unlike a face lift (without the de-aging benefit) where they took a larger flap of skin from the same area and up behind my ear and stretched it back over the cavity. My surgeon, I will say, is extremely good at tiny little stitches I'm going to have a bit of a dueling scar along my temple but down my cheek, I think you'll barely be able to see it once it heal. It's hard to see most of it now, to be fair.
I've still got some pain and stiffness from the reconstruction (Oddly enough, the excision barely hurt at all. I only needed Ibuprofen even though they gave me something stronger and an antibiotic.) The reconstruction is kind of spiky but manageable. The bruising has mostly faded, so now I just look like I filleted my temple somehow.
I don't actually look any different except for a bit of a droopy left eye, but I can definitely feel it--it's very weird and very different from any other surgery I've had.
And then last Friday, I had to put my Cat, Mouse, down, which is less traumatic than it sounds, because he's been sick for awhile and we figured we would lose him this year. He was nearly 20 years old, so he had a good long run, and he wasn't particularly in pain, except when he ate because of a tumor we'd found back in February. (Seriously, February was a MONTH.) Anyway, we really like our local vet and Mel and I both went with him and held him and told him what a good boy he was. But yea, not unexpected but the timing all around just sucked.
Also in there, my older brother was diagnosed with Prostate cancer (early) and so he and I actually had surgery around the same time. WTF, Universe?
Our current house project is converting the back porch into a catio and that I will try to get pictures of because it's kind of built-in perfect for it. We are trying to do it with the supplies we had left over from the previous renovations (We had a fair amount of paint and caulk and trim and a smaller amount of lumber left over) rather than spending any fresh money on it.
And there is so much that I love about this house and this area actually. Like the flock of swallows that have come back every year to entertain us with their arial expertise as they swoop and dive and cling to the fricking walls under the porch. Or the very racy (and hysterically funny) acrobatics the armadillo's get up to when a male is trying to impress a female. And baby COWS! like everywhere this spring. So many little cuties whenever you drive anywhere. Or that we have found 4 decent sushi restaurants in Athens and one small but oh so well stocked asian market, so my love for homemade pad thai and Indian curry's has not gone unmet for the most part.
And some good stuff has happened, like I got to spend a glorious couple of hours with Khaleesian back in January, where we spent a good 3-4 hours catching up while eating sushi and drinking coffee in Athens. It was great fun, and I love getting to see her. Her family has some property not terribly far from where I am now so that worked out well. Also, to get the scoop on her kids and their world travels, which is like better than any book I've ever read. (She tells stories just as well in person as she does in writing)
We did get the kidlet's room finished finally - which was a process and a half between the lead paint and the unfinished flooring. But it truly is cute and I would show you pictures, if she wasn't such an amazing slob. She just had her 11th birthday, and the world is not ready for this child. In mixed news, we are (and by we, I mean her mom and aunts) sending her to Florida this summer and then she's going to remain with her aunt for the school year. One of the downsides to living this far out, is that she really has no friends, not near home and not at school. The bulk of the kids that go to here school have known each other their entire lives or they have siblings. K has neither, and while she's super smart and actually fun to talk to and hang out with, she's not really great with kids her own age and never has been -- with the exception of her Florida cousins, of whom she has many. She's been in counselling the past year because of her loneliness and some depression and acting out, so we're going to try this and see how it goes.
I don't want to be anyone's debbie downer, so feel free to skip the next bit. Some of this is just me trying to get my brain around how things seem to cascade which just makes my depression worse, but also to maybe acknowledge that at this moment in time, some of it is situational, which normally it's just wonky brain chemistry (which is why my drugs work, when I can get them)
My insurance has continued to refuse to cover the Rexulti despite multiple appeals. I think we're on round number 4 at this point after completing a whole review including what other anti-depressants have I tried, and what have we not tried, which literally required me to contact my longtime GP to pull records from 30 damns years ago. So I keep floundering along, some days (weeks) better than others, but mostly, it takes everything I have just to maintain. I'm so out of spoons, I'm using plastic coffee stirrers.
I am probably doing slightly better at times - like if I have something to hard focus on, but that's been it's own downside. I took kind of a huge financial hit at the end of last year, only to have to turn around at the beginning of this year and figure out a way to replace the entire septic system at the house, so I am back in debt again after I had just, *JUST* kind of gotten out from under it for the first time in my life.
And then, right as we got that resolved, I found I had cancer again. Not fun. I had gone to see my new doc (She's actually a PPN, but she's a gerontology specialist, and she has been working very hard to get the insurance company to cover the Rexulti.) We thought it was just a basal cell deal between my left eye and ear -- I'm fair skinned, and growing up, I spent a lot of time in the sun. I've had small cancers removed before over the years none of them malignant. This one was and also a whole lot bigger than it appeared to be (literally on the surface) and I had two surgeries to clear it out.
The good news is that they found no sign of cancer cells in the prime lymph node, so it hadn't spread, so I didn't actually have to make the decision to follow up treat or not treat. What they did find, and want to kind of keep an eye on, is some cells more often found in the generation of moles - which is not unheard of, but apparently not common either. So, yay?
I had surgery on the 16th of May to remove the tumor and then had to go back a week later to have reconstruction done on my face. The initial excision was about the diameter of a coke can and pretty deep. (Were I more trendy, I could have like one of those deep set cheek piercings done, like all the serious body mod goths get.) It was an impressive looking chunk of my face gone. The reconstruction is not unlike a face lift (without the de-aging benefit) where they took a larger flap of skin from the same area and up behind my ear and stretched it back over the cavity. My surgeon, I will say, is extremely good at tiny little stitches I'm going to have a bit of a dueling scar along my temple but down my cheek, I think you'll barely be able to see it once it heal. It's hard to see most of it now, to be fair.
I've still got some pain and stiffness from the reconstruction (Oddly enough, the excision barely hurt at all. I only needed Ibuprofen even though they gave me something stronger and an antibiotic.) The reconstruction is kind of spiky but manageable. The bruising has mostly faded, so now I just look like I filleted my temple somehow.
I don't actually look any different except for a bit of a droopy left eye, but I can definitely feel it--it's very weird and very different from any other surgery I've had.
And then last Friday, I had to put my Cat, Mouse, down, which is less traumatic than it sounds, because he's been sick for awhile and we figured we would lose him this year. He was nearly 20 years old, so he had a good long run, and he wasn't particularly in pain, except when he ate because of a tumor we'd found back in February. (Seriously, February was a MONTH.) Anyway, we really like our local vet and Mel and I both went with him and held him and told him what a good boy he was. But yea, not unexpected but the timing all around just sucked.
Also in there, my older brother was diagnosed with Prostate cancer (early) and so he and I actually had surgery around the same time. WTF, Universe?
Our current house project is converting the back porch into a catio and that I will try to get pictures of because it's kind of built-in perfect for it. We are trying to do it with the supplies we had left over from the previous renovations (We had a fair amount of paint and caulk and trim and a smaller amount of lumber left over) rather than spending any fresh money on it.
And there is so much that I love about this house and this area actually. Like the flock of swallows that have come back every year to entertain us with their arial expertise as they swoop and dive and cling to the fricking walls under the porch. Or the very racy (and hysterically funny) acrobatics the armadillo's get up to when a male is trying to impress a female. And baby COWS! like everywhere this spring. So many little cuties whenever you drive anywhere. Or that we have found 4 decent sushi restaurants in Athens and one small but oh so well stocked asian market, so my love for homemade pad thai and Indian curry's has not gone unmet for the most part.
