Sneezy, Sleepy, Sore Dragon

It's 3:30 am as I type and I've yet to sleep tonight. Just one of those things.

My calves are mysteriously angry and I didn't take any Advil before bed which was a major unforced error.

And my hips are hurting because why not.

And my brain is spinning because my brain.

And I'm sneezing because fall is here and my immune system feels some kind of way about it.

As for my calves...I think it's just a case of being old enough to where if you move funny you can dislocate your eyeballs. I don't think I did anything in particular. I'm just old. Or it's my electrolytes, but in theory, that should be fine.

Anyway... I'm up and I'm out of funny memes so let's recap the latest.

I saw the OB about CHEK2 and not getting pregnant. OB ran some labs to see if I'm in menopause or not and we'll go from there. They think my risk is low, but I'm just paranoid and this is not the era of history to have an unplanned pregnancy when you're not supposed to get pregnant but also can't take birth control.

On the CHEK2, I want some extra screening, but there's little interest in that. The thing is, you can't take anything we think we know about CHEK2 as gospel. There was a study that came out in the last few months that decided there's no colon cancer risk with the mutation. But before that, they found an association with leukemia.

Basically, they don't know what they don't know. It's still emerging. So let's be a little more vigilant. We know this increases cancer risk, we just don't know which ones for sure.

But I'm almost done with doctor's appointments for the foreseeable future. I think. Maybe. Things are not going well with the hep...their retiring-but-I'll-still-see-you thing isn't quite panning out. I can't make any appointments and their secretary no longer seems to be attached to the number I have. I may have to find someone new sooner than later. 

I'm up to six phone calls and have gotten exactly nowhere. At some point in the near future, it'll be ombudsman time.

On the upside, the OB isn't retiring. So maybe I'll have ONE doctor left standing who knows I'm just partially insane. Woo.

Teen has a few more appointments and will be done for a while as well. Infectious Diseases is following her closely so we'll have that a few more times, and I'm guessing Cardiology will want to keep in touch.

Hmm. Well, now I don't know. After typing that, maybe we're not getting much of a break after all. At least part of what's happening is we're fine tuning some medication that seems to be working quite well for some of her issues. We've had a bit of a breakthrough recently. So it's worth it, but we both want to get away from the medical gauntlet run. 

Hopefully we can figure that out...

The teen continues to handle college like a boss. The one professor still has no boundaries and messages at all hours of the day and night and is grading her extra hard because they don't like dual enrollment students, but she's hanging tough.

I feel like professors need to remember dual enrollment students typically have involved parents and involved parents know how to effectively complain and hold people to account...

My one friend started their kiddo in college a year before us and they had a loony professor too. In the same subject even. I almost feel bad for that professor as my friend handed them their ass so methodically, so diligently, so maleficently...well, basically the prof got fired.

I coached the teen through a toxic teacher in fourth grade. They were flunking her and being all kinds of snarky and weird, but the thing is I have a one star Michelin black belt in Corporate Fight Club. So I walked the teen through bureaucratically backing the teacher into a corner to where her only move was to stop fucking around and then I made sure the principal saw any administrative mistakes and mess (there were some egregious ones). Magically, all the grades changed. Just like that.

And if you're surprised there are toxic teachers. Eh. I've worked in schools off and on. Sometimes teachers gang up on kids. Or get weird. Toxic stuff happens. There are cliques and mean girls. 

I'm convinced that too many women just never mature beyond the social dynamics of tween girls, and in professions where you get a lot of women, things can get pretty bad. Read any analysis of tween girl social dynamics and I promise (sadly so) you'll sit back and go, 'shit, I know adult women behaving like this.'

I'm not sure why the switch flipped on my kid---previously she'd won the school wide citizenship award which was a big deal in that ecosystem and was an A student so it's not like I had a problem kid, you know? But the parents were pretty cliquey and toxic and they tended to influence the hierarchy among the kids as well. I guess I didn't suck enough ass among the parents in power and the administration because it didn't occur to me that I was do-or-die running with the bulls full of shit.

See also...why we homeschool (aside from the school shooting, there was lots of unimpressive stuff happening).

See also...funnily enough my friends from there all left that school after being targeted by the teachers in a similar manner. The scuttlebutt was they targeted kids who needed lots of services, but mine was just getting a little OT and mostly not even that. I did however run on the periphery of the crowd that was pretty sure the board was embezzling money and had been threatened with lawsuits when they asked to see the financials (the board was very Trumpian) so...

But I'm keeping notes. Trust.

Watch which bears you poke. Some of them are dragons.

And I think the interesting thing (to me) about this post is that the leverage available to me in the corporate world or in education just doesn't exist in medicine. That's why it's so difficult to advocate for yourself. I mean, just look at how badly basic things like making an appointment can go. The patient has little to no power and no recourse other than to expend increasing amounts of resources (time, money, energy) for an all too often substandard result. Huh. Not cool.