^^^^ That thing that Beck said ^^^^
What Beck said. Also, see if the people who took the MRIs will give you copies (it should be on a digital support such as a thumb drive, not paper printouts). It’s YOUR information, you should be entitled to it and that way you can show them to any doctors as needed.
And you should be able to get a report of the radiologist’s actual observations. “Your results are normal” strikes me as a little succinct, not to mention terse.
Extended family Mother’s Day dinner is scheduled for after I have to leave for work. I’m not offended by that, but I was bothered by the pressure to show up (and bring stuff) before I go to work and while they’re cooking food I won’t be around to eat.
So I’m not going. Its just for the best. Thankfully, once I told my 80 year old mother that I wasn’t going, the pressure stopped.
Too much of my energy right now is being spent dealing with depression. It’s like this meme I saw on FB this last week. “No, I’m not doing nothing, I’m busy fighting my depression.”
Well, at least the new location I’m working in is about 500% better for me (at least by the last four working day’s experiences) than the previous location. That at least took one of the shit cards off the table. (He said, shaking his head at the remaining shit cards on his table…)
When I had an MRI done for my dog, I asked to have the information, which was useful because after getting the specialist’s opinion I took it to a veterinary research college for a second opinion. I don’t know whether there are standard protocols for MRI images but what I got was hundreds of files on a CD (I don’t remember if they were individual JPEGs or something else) and special software for viewing them, which I believe reconstructed 3D views. So in my experience MRI results are not just a simple picture, like an X-ray.
I did get a copy of the CD right after the MRI and the radiologist’s report as an attachment to the e-mail. All good things, but there’s no “okay, now go see this neurologist” or “what the hell, let’s try prednisone” or even “I think it’s just stress. Get a coloring book and stop bothering me.” I mean, I know my brain is my concern and this whole process is my job, but I feel like I have to put a lot of work into coaxing everything along. Vet medicine seems so much more straightforward.
No ER for me… I’m not going to lie and say suicide isn’t on the table, but it has been for a long time- long before this- and will likely continue to be. I don’t have immediate plans or intent. At least not at this point. My deal is, though, if I lose my ability to write or if this hits the three month mark without significant hope of answers or improvement, I get to bow out and nobody gets to say a thing about it. But I’m uninsured and I’m not sure they could offer me anything at the hospital if I walked in and said I was suicidal other than a few days of astronomically expensive babysitting and… I’m okay there. I can be trusted with shoelaces and metal utensils. So far, I’m still sticking around because it would be terribly rude not to. It would make a big mess and all. Just unpleasant all around. Doesn’t stop me from wishing.
Oh, Dorothy I’m happy to see your post. Can you not get on Medicaid? You need a hospital stay and complete work-up. I’m leaning toward Lupus or MS (ianad), it just seems like those sorts of symptoms. Keep kicking, I think there are better days ahead.
Y’know, I’m beginning to wonder if it might not by Lyme disease. It can cause a LOT of neurological issues, and it is often mistaken for MS, amongst other things. If it’s been long enough, it takes special tests to discover what it is. I know a couple of people who have had mysterious symptoms and it turned out to be Lyme.
It can take a specialist to track that down, and some special tests, too.
The CDC lists these as “Later Signs and Symptoms”.
[ul]
[li]Severe headaches and neck stiffness[/li][li]Additional EM rashes on other areas of the body[/li][li]Arthritis with severe joint pain and swelling, particularly the knees and other large joints.[/li][li]Facial palsy (loss of muscle tone or droop on one or both sides of the face)[/li][li]Intermittent pain in tendons, muscles, joints, and bones[/li][li]Heart palpitations or an irregular heart beat (Lyme carditis)[/li][li]Episodes of dizziness or shortness of breath[/li][li]Inflammation of the brain and spinal cord[/li][li]Nerve pain[/li][li]Shooting pains, numbness, or tingling in the hands or feet[/li][li]Problems with short-term memory[/li][/ul]
Might be worth a check?
My elderly mother has had visiting nursing aides coming to her apartment to help her for the past ten years now. The agencies have a high turnover and some of the aides have been fired for theft. Apparently one of them was stealing cans of food from a client. And of course there are those who were fired for trying to steal medication. Luckily right now the two aides she has right now seem to be pretty dependable.
This + 1000.
What kind of blood work have you had done? Hypothyroid can lead to poor cold tolerance and brain fog, though not some of the other symptoms you mention. IANAD either but MS was the first thing I thought of.
Where’s the nearest “big guns” hospital to you (Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic and the like)? I’d suggest calling their neurology department and asking for help. If they need a referral (as we found when my daughter needed to be seen at Dartmouth) your primary care doc should be willing to write the referral… and if s/he isn’t, raise hell because SOMETHING needs to be done. Or I suppose you could go to the ER at such place.
Ooooh - I just read Morgyn’s post - and the timing is interesting; I had my hair done Saturday (coloring / highlighting, so a lengthy process) and my stylist let fall that she had, after years, been diagnosed with latent Lyme disease.
As in, utter brain fog, memory issues, would be showering and forget whether she’d washed a part or not. It took years to get her diagnosed. She had some tests that were suggestive and others that were less so. I don’t recall all the details but it was something like “you have to have 3+ lines on BOTH of these, and you have 3+ lines on only the one”. I think she actually tested positive for the bacteria but not the antibodies, or whatever. She tried herbal remedies for a year and finally went on the antibiotic regimen, which was pretty challenging.
She actually went to a “functional medicine” specialist vs a regular internist finally, and he’s the one who zeroed in on the Lyme.
ETA: I noticed that you’re uninsured. As others suggested, look into Medicaid. Look into disability (hard as that is to get). And the big-guns clinics might have social workers that could help you out with the situation.
But really, how closely do the staff check that receipt? If you’ve got a cartload of stuff, are they going to go through everything?
I’ve never had it happen at our local WalMart (nor the one near where my daughter lives)
Costco does it, though. Used to be, they would actually check carefully - and one time actually caught that something hadn’t been scanned (or was scanned twice or something) - and we went back in and sorted it out. These days, though, they glance at the receipt, mark it with a pen, and wave me on. Kind of pointless, really.
When my old cat did this, we yelled back “we’re in the den!” or “I’m in the kitchen”. and that seemed to help. Og alone knows why, because cats, but give it a try. Maybe Shiva just needs to hear from you.
Isn’t their stated rationale that it’s to ensure the cashier scanned everything, not to accuse the customer?
Unless I actually hear an alarm go off I don’t even stop to acknowledge them.
I have a great idea for a cold open if The Walking Dead ever does a spinoff set in the UK. The Queen has finally passed away and now King Charles III is at her bedside with medical staff, other family, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. He can’t help himself of switching to mourning to reacting with glee that he’s finally king. Queue his undead mother sitting up and biting him. 
Why do people of a certain age insist on giving Millennials so much shit? Yesterday’s focus was on beer. An acquaintance was telling me about a restaurant he visited, and there were just too many beers! What’s the point? How do you even know what to drink? Why won’t Millennials be satisfied with a Bud Light?
:smack:
Mini rant #1: about a month ago my phone updated it’s version of the Android OS, and I’m still trying to figure out the audio levels in the new version. In the old version, for example, the phone ringer was perfectly audible two notches up from “Mute”. Now I have to have the ringer volume almost all the way up in order to hear my phone ring. Plus they changed the look and placement of the control. I don’t like it!
Mini rant #2: my Fitbit is synched with my phone and is supposed to vibrate when I have an incoming call, which is helpful because I don’t always hear my phone ringing. (See rant #1.) However, what is NOT helpful is that my Fitbit doesn’t start buzzing until the phone is just about finished ringing, so by the time I feel my Fitbit buzzing, look at it to see I have an incoming call, fish my phone out of my pocket and attempt to answer, I’ve missed the call.
Mini rant #3: I had a home sleep study done a few weeks ago. The nurse from the doctor’s office called yesterday to tell me it appears I have mild sleep apnea and they want me to try a CPAP machine for 30 days to see if it helps. When I told my wife, her response was not “I hope it helps you sleep better” or anything like that. It was “I hope it doesn’t keep me awake!” Thanks honey for caring so much.
So, because MO-DOT is crap for preventive maintenance, or any maintenance at all on the roads, commutes around here are becoming hellish. Quite a lot of people live in bedroom communities in southern IL and commute into the greater St. Louis area in MO each day. There are four major highways leading out from St. Louis into the surrounding MO areas – I70 and 40/64 are usually gridlocked; I44 has been down to half lanes in a long stretch for two years now, meaning most of its traffic is shunted to I55. That’s bad enough.
There are three main bridges to cross from IL to MO – the Poplar downtown (massive traffic), and two on either end of I270 that circles the St. Louis area (less traffic). MO-DOT has been inspecting the southern of those bridges, the Jefferson Barracks bridge. They found cracks in the metal structure this weekend, and shut down the westbound bridge for at least a week, creating a traffic nightmare. Everyone that used to use the JB bridge diverted onto little Route 3 through Cahokia/Sauget to try to get to the already gridlocked Poplar. Commute times yesterday were reported to be four to five times longer on average.
I live in MO and work in IL, so my commute is usually against the traffic mess… but our plant is off Route 3. In sight of the Poplar bridge. Ugh. It’s not enough that everyone else is stuck in this mess of MO-DOT’s incompetence, but they’re all being assholes about it. Cutting people off, refusing to let people zipper-merge in, so everyone is driving inches away from the bumper in front of them leading to bangs on the gridlocked bridge with no place to pull off. I shifted my workday an hour earlier today, but even before 6am the traffic on Route 3 was already bumper-to-bumper as far as I could see. With newscrews set up to film the cars going nowhere. And this is only day #2. I may lose my mind before Friday.
To the butt head that called my house at 6:50am: I don’t know what you are selling, buying, or collecting, but it takes a special kind of gall to inform me (by a recorded message) that the matter I am being called about is VERY important and then ask me to call THEM back leaving a random number. Seriously? If it’s that goddamn important, put a human on the phone. I’m not wasting a second more of my day.
And then there are the stories about milennials not drinking beer at all…