I am noticing a couple of different kinds of pandemic mornings:
1. Keep dozing off; trouble getting out of bed; play Candy Crush for awhile to convince myself to get up; take shower; drag self downstairs and hope breakfast has a heartening/energizing effect.
2. Wake up at 4:00 a.m. needing to pee, try and fail to get back to sleep, lie awake fretting instead; finally get up, put shoes on, go for a walk before showering because otherwise I won’t do it; come home sweaty and gross, do one of the grosser household cleaning tasks as long as I’m already feeling gross; take shower.
Actually, there is a third kind too, but it doesn’t catch my attention:
3. Feels like a normal morning; I just get up and do my usual stuff without thinking about it so much.
The past few days we have been in Mode Two. I have limited motivation/energy to get things done, so I am doing them first, because otherwise they won’t get done. Today I went for a walk (I hate sweating so much, I hate it so much, it makes me so miserable), then cleaned a toilet, then scrubbed the stupid sliding shower doors and took a shower. Now if I am done for the day until I have to cook dinner, that’s okay, I can still check things off my list.
I have been agitating about what we should do about Elizabeth’s upcoming scoliosis check-up. At her last appointment, back in December, the doctor had predicted he’d be telling her she was done growing and could stop wearing the brace, but then the x-rays showed she wasn’t QUITE done growing, so he said she should come back in six months, and I think the scheduler accidentally put us in July instead of in June, and anyway that’s why it’s upcoming instead of last month.
The appointment is in a big city, in a hospital, with a stressful drive. It’s the kind of appointment where we go in, walk through long hospital corridors, wait in the x-ray waiting room, have some x-rays, then walk through long hospital corridors to the doctor’s waiting room, then go into an exam room and see the doctor for less than five minutes. Lots of exposure to air and different people—and this is the doctor who once kept us waiting two hours past our appointment time. I wondered if we should just…skip the appointment and have her stop wearing the brace. Just assume she’s done growing now, seven months past the time the doctor was already pretty sure she would have stopped. How much damage could it do? Well, that’s the kind of question my mind wants to roll around in at 4:00 in the morning.
So then another option is to postpone the appointment and have her keep wearing the brace. But it isn’t as if the end is in sight here. How long would we have to postpone it? Six months? A year? A year and a half? Meanwhile she’s wearing something uncomfortable and very likely unnecessary, and maybe it’s not fitted right anymore and starts doing damage??? (More 4:00 in the morning thoughts.)
But yesterday the doctor’s office called us and asked if we wanted to do a virtual appointment, and have the x-rays done locally. Well hell yes that is what we want. But now I am in a bit of a tangle because the orders they emailed me looked wrong to me (“Ordering MD” is listed as “FIELD, FIELD,” for example), and I didn’t want to go to the x-ray place and have the orders not be right and have to go home and then back again and breathe an additional batch of medical air. But when I emailed to double-check a couple of things I was concerned about, the doctor’s office said, without addressing my concerns, that the orders were fine and we shouldn’t have any trouble. So I called the x-ray place Just To Be Extra Sure, and they said the orders were not fine and that they can’t do the x-rays based on them, and that they need the orders faxed to them from the doctor’s office. So I have sent a new secure message to the doctor’s office asking them to fax the orders directly to the x-ray place, and WE SHALL SEE. I hate this kind of thing so much. Why am I, the only unpaid and non-medically-educated person in this transaction, running back and forth as go-between? What if doctor’s offices and x-ray departments talked to each other directly, speaking the same language and getting paid for their time?
Speaking of which, I had a rare excellent experience with that very thing, right after I wrote that paragraph. Well, perhaps “excellent” is overstating it, considering I had to make two phone calls and they took in total nearly an hour. BUT! What happened was, I got a bill for the full amount of a routine physical I had 11 months ago, which seems…a little tardy, bill-wise, but also, there was no reason I could see that it wouldn’t have been covered. I called the provider, who said they had submitted the claim multiple times to the insurance, but the insurance had denied the claim; the provider said there was no reason given for the denial. So I called the insurance, who said they HAD paid the claim.
In ALL MY LIFE EXPERIENCE WITH SUCH THINGS SO FAR, I would have expected the insurance company to shrug and tell me I’d have to take it up with the provider, maybe give me a reference number I was supposed to say to them; and the provider to shrug and say I needed to talk to my insurance company, maybe give me a reference number I was supposed to say to them. INSTEAD: the person I talked to at the insurance company said, “If you want, I can give the provider a call right now and see what’s going on.” DO I WANT? DO I WANT? IS THIS HEAVEN? So I said “YES PLEASE” and then I was listening to the insurance company’s hold music (which, to be fair, slaps) for Quite Some Time, but being on hold waiting for someone else to handle a problem for you is a VERY DIFFERENT kind of being on hold than waiting to helplessly explain to yet another person what is going on. And it seems that she DID handle it?? And she’s sending me copies of the forms she’s sending the provider, so that I’ll have them too?? Just in case the provider tells me it’s NOT handled??
Meanwhile, the scoliosis doctor’s office, which I have been hoping all this time would have faxed the orders so we could go do the x-rays after I was done spending an hour with the provider/insurance problem, turned out to have sent a message asking which of two x-ray places I was trying to use. I GAVE YOU A FAX NUMBER AND ASKED YOU TO FAX THE ORDERS. PLEASE FAX THE ORDERS TO THAT NUMBER.
I can so very relate!!! Hard to believe some of these incompetent people actually keep their jobs!!! So incredibly aggravating!
My husband is a 100 percent disabled VA vet, and occasionally sees what they call “care in the community” doctors when the VA can’t get him an appointment soon. For over a year now have been fighting with local hospital, who rather than billing VA as it should have, billed Medicare (and got paid their amount)….but are NOW telling us we need to pay the remaining balance. I wish I would have kept track of the amount of time I’ve spent on the phone…..and YES having to explain the situation multiple times!!
Hopefully you will get your medical problems solved….
What a nice surprise about the scoliosis appointment! While I was reading through the preparatory paragraphs, I was thinking, “Why would she have to wait hours to see the doctor when it’s something that could be amply covered in a phone call?” Et voila!
I had been doing pretty well, most days, with the Pandemic Mode, until we had a visit from our adult daughter. She lives 7 hours away, in a big city, and we had last seen her in late February, right before everything shut down. She’s been VERY careful, and VERY concerned about her old parents, and it was a lot of back & forth to get her to feel comfortable visiting. And THEN, we had a delightful surprise, which resulted in her having a lovely whole house to stay in, NOT IN OUR HOUSE, but a couple of miles away, and she was happy to not be putting us in danger and also, to be sure, happy not to be under our microscope 24/7.
Now, today, she has left to go back to her home, and in addition to the usual sadness when she leaves, I am struck with how much things have truly changed. All of the restaurant meals we couldn’t have. All of the easy evenings on the couch watching TV, all of the hugs. Museums, galleries? None of that. Did I mention how careful she is? Masks all around, and she did not even step foot into our house in a week. Oh my, this is what we have lost.
Thank goodness for nice weather and a lovely back yard where we could sit and visit, and eat our meals outside together. But today I am wallowing.
And this morning, when she stopped by to say goodbye, we got our hugs. With masks. And tears.
I am a Very Sweaty Person who has been trying to exercise more while also hating sweating. I particularly dislike how the sweat gets in my eyes and makes my glasses slip. I started wearing a thick, cotton headband right at my hairline and it has been a serious game changer. It’s kind of an obvious solution (it’s a sweatband…. let’s be honest) but it would recommend trying it if you haven’t. It makes me feel slightly less sweaty so I can think about something else while exercising. I think a “buff” style headband would also work well but I haven’t tried it.
You are going to think I am ridiculous, but it really never had occurred to me to try this. I AM GOING TO TRY THIS. I am so glad you mentioned it!! YES, the sweat interfering with my glasses!! And also running down the back of my neck! IF ONLY THERE WERE A PRODUCT TO TAKE CARE OF THESE THINGS OH WAIT
This only recently occurred to me and IT TOTALLY CHANGED MY FEELINGS ON EXERCISE IN SUMMER. Highly recommend!
I’m tickled simultaneously that you dislike sweating so much, that you are not alone in this, and that there have already been helpful suggestions to mitigate the Sweat Situation! To me, sweat = accomplishment – like, I can prove I Did The Exercising, because, you see, here I am all sweaty! WHERE IS MY COOKIE THX. I know walking 2 miles is just as good for me as running 2 miles is (better, probably, because of my janky knees) but if i don’t work up a sweat, it seems like it doesn’t “count.”
I don’t know how you are managing all of these appointments and medical everythings for SO MANY PEOPLE. Just the very few medical situations and snafus I have to deal with personally make me want to throw myself dramatically off of tall cliffs each time.
Me too, I don’t like to sit around sweating from heat and humidity, but I love working up a real sweat when I exercise. Look at me! I am Working! And I can prove it by the fact I am Sweating!
At times like this I count myself very lucky to live in England which a) is mostly cool enough that walking probably isn’t going to make you sweat and b) has the NHS. Which is not perfect by any means and there’s still lots of red tape and bureaucracy for sure – but you’re not paying for anything at the end of it! So that’s nice.
Also: FAX? I feel like with all that money from insurance payments and patients’ cold hard cash, it’s time for the x-ray place to move on from the early 90s? Or is that actually quite standard?
More standard than you would think because faxes can be confidential. Actually though even when something is “faxed” it’s often faxed through the computer.
Don’t even get me started with THE FAX and doctors offices. It makes absolutely no sense and is totally ridiculous. They say it’s the only secure method but that is complete and utter nonsense. And it’s not only x-rays, it’s any prescription. Can anyone out there in Swistle land explain this?
https://www.vox.com/2017/10/30/16387306/american-medicine-healthcare-fax-machine
This should explain it.
The doctor’s office stuff is simply infuriating. The Worst.
I hope you will report on the success of the sweatband. I have been exercising on the treadmill recently and then immediately showering, and the ability of my body to CONTINUE SWEATING after showering is what angers me. Like, just stop it now, please? We are cooled off and no longer need this function right now.
Semi-related, I have been watching Hamilton in 20 minute increments while exercising and I would recommend this practice.
I have been seeking new motivation to exercise AND wanting very much to watch Hamilton, I’m so glad you suggested doing both simultaneously! Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!
YES. I will even walk around the house doing mild things to cool down, and THEN take a nice cool shower, and EVEN THEN I will still be sweating too much afterward to put on moisturizer!! WHY BODY WHY
The continued sweating!! Before everything shut down and I started WFH this was my biggest issue. I did a regular work out class during my lunch hour 2-3 days a week so I had to shower and be presentable when I got back to work. Well the continued sweating even after taking a cold shower made this nearly impossible The most frustrating part is that it’s not like the sweating is even really cooling me down that much – I still get incredibly red faced and hot within 5 minutes of any kind of cardio and remain that way for hours so the sweating isn’t working AND it just keeps going on and on and ON. My cooling system is broken. At least now I just sit around my house looking a red-faced sweaty mess for hours after exercising so, yay?
My favorites:
“Well hell yes that is what we want”
“the insurance company’s hold music (which, to be fair, slaps)”
Having long received such good advice from Swistle, my brain somehow took option 2 as a recommendation, so I woke up early and fretted.
Then I exercised (to Grace and Frankie, because the pandemic is really helping me catch up on all the shows everyone else watched years ago) because I too am someone who feels as though sweat is evidence of achievement. And normally my exercise helps me sleep well at night.
Oh I’m so glad you got it sorted out and had someone so helpful!
Related: I have a small niche love for when I’m waiting for one small household task and have JUST ENOUGH TIME to do another. Things like if I’m waiting for toast, which always takes a little longer than just heating the bread, because I like my toast cool enough to not instantly melt the margarine.
There’s no point in sitting back down because there’s not that much time. So I feel a very definite satisfaction if there’s something quick I can do while I’m waiting. Like loading the dishwasher and starting it. Like hanging up a small load of clothes. It makes me feel briefly organised and motivated.
I’d love to hear about your small niche satisfactions with household tasks!
I have a coffeemaker that grinds the beans and then makes the cup of coffee so it takes a little while but not long enough to sit down so I use that time to clear the drainboard of the dishes that have dried from the night before. It’s very satisfying. The little things are getting me through this…
Maggie, that’s perfect. The little things are so important just now!
Same! multi-tasking. doing something productive while waiting for something. love it. For a couple of weeks, I’ve secretly been doing pushups and back stretches while my tea steeps. I’m not like on a fitness *kick* but I’m feeling like I’ve reached an age where some effort must be put into maintenance and it’s not too late for me – not that it’s ever really too late for anyone. I’m in terrible shape (I started with 4 pushups on my knees) but being in such terrible shape has made the progress so FAST that it’s kinda motivating.
Oh that’s a good one, Karen! I should add things like that into my waiting repertoire. I too am in terrible shape!
I’ve also seen the recommendation that we stand on one foot whenever we are waiting a couple of minutes for something. Balance is extra-important as we age, and we lose it without even realizing it. I kind of scoffed at this when I was younger until I found out that my stepmother couldn’t stand on one foot for more than a couple of seconds without losing her balance.
That’s an excellent idea. I hadn’t thought of doing that to improve my balance.
This is something I’m trying to teach my kids! Don’t just stand by the toaster, unload the dishwasher, get a plate, your butter, jam, etc. Don’t wait for your dad to finish bbqing the hot dogs, get out the condiments. Get dressed while you’re waiting for your sister to get out of the bathroom so you can brush your teeth. Get out the sugar and milk while waiting for your tea to steep, and wipe the counter if you’ve got extra time.
My own “thing” is that when I do meetings by phone at home I find my computer distracting as I see emails pop up, etc., or if it’s early afternoon I start to get sleepy and lose focus if I just sit there, so if I don’t have to refer to documents or take notes I sweep/clean/tidy as I talk and listen. I find the mindless movement helps me concentrate and I get the satisfaction of making small dents in the chaos around here.
Oh those are all good, Shawna! There’s usually something you can do while waiting, huh. I get most frustrated if there’s nothing I can do.
That’s a great idea. I tend to sit on my behind when I’m participating in meetings, and while some of mine are Zoom and I therefore need to be visible… some are Skype and voice only and I could totally get off my butt!
WRT the fax number thing, my guess is that their electronic medical system is designed to be “helpful” and thus won’t allow them to enter the fax, but rather requires them to select WHERE it should go and then the fax is AUTOMATICALLY sent, and there’s probably no way for them to look up by fax number. In other words, the system continues to be broken all around.
I have two children, and one of them only visits the dentist, ever. I’m disabled by now (joy!) so I also have Dr appts. Due to reasons I don’t pay for my medical care, which you would think fix SO MANY PROBLEMS. Nope, I still spend a not small amount of time calling the pharmacy and the doctor’s office and so on. It’s so frustrating. I hate making difficult phone calls and here I am, probably until I die, doing someone else’s work for them while not getting paid.