Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I had the quarterly meds refill appointment this morning. We took care of those prescriptions first, including me telling Carmen the date on which I filled the most recent prescription, so she could put appropriate "do not fill before" dates on these.

I also gave Carmen updates on the breathing and cough, and told her a bit about my appointment with the new neurologist, and that it's possible she'll hear from the Social Security disability people. My follow-up appointment, three months from now, will be after I see the eye doctor, and after I see the pulmonologist if we don't postpone that to September.

Over the last few weeks, I've had an intermittent feeling as though there's water in one or both ears. It doesn't hurt, and it doesn't last long, but it's weird. I mentioned this in a telemedicine appointment a couple of weeks ago, and the doctor told me that if it was still bothering me after Thanksgiving, I hsould make an appointment to come into the office and have my ears looked at. (This is another thing that can't be done via a phone call or Zoom.)

I called after Thanksgiving, and made an appointment for this afternoon. I ran into a subway delay, and arrived late (after calling a minute before my appointment time from a stopped train); they managed to fit me in, briefly.

The doctor saw nothing either worrisome or informative when she examined my ears, and has given me a referral to an ENT.

Separately, she wants me to check my blood pressure in the afternoon or evening, as well as in the morning, for a week or so, in case it really is much higher in the afternoons (rather than being higher in the doctor's office than at home).

I went to a drugstore afterwards and got some more rapid home covid tests, so they'll be here whenever we need them. The PA system kept playing an ad for covid vaccine boosters, which was particularly annoying since the vaccine isn't currently available at any of the area drugstores.

ETA 12/8: I have an appointment with an ear, nose, and throat specialist at the end of the month.

I saw my neurologist today, for a basic checkup and to have blood drawn for tests. (I could have gotten the blood drawn elsewhere, but it made sense to combine them.) We realized that *everyone* had forgotten that I was supposed to have another MRI in November or December. So he's contacting Mount Auburn to have them schedule one for me, in a process that looks something like:

Mt Auburn: We've scheduled you for March 5 at 4:00.
Patient: That doesn't work for me.
Mt Auburn: OK...March 3rd at 2:00.
Patient: All right.

I don't remember whether than save time by saying "Sorry, that doesn't work. How about a morning appointment?" But they insist on being the first party to suggest a time.

It was more difficult than I expected to get across to him how hard the current hand pain is. He kept asking things like "how bad is the pain?" and "is it all the time, is it?" That anything I do with that hand might hurt, even if it didn't the previous time, also didn't get through. When I started explaining the tings that are difficult or impossible right now, and the list included not only "typing" but "use a knife and fork," he compehended why this particular thing is for me. I don't appreciate a doctor whose response to being told that pain in one hand was making things difficult was something like "it sounds like the bit of arthritis that everyone gets when they get older."

It may be time to check again with my doctor or health plan, whether her "we only refer within the Mt Auburn system" would stop me from seeing a neurologist outside that system, if the neuro is in-network for my health plan.

After I saw the doctor, cattitude and I met on the common and walked into Chinatown to try a random restaurant, to generally support the neighborhood economy while enjoying ourselves. Unfortunately, the place we tried wasn't very good. We clearly need to try again, soon.

I finished and sent back a copyedit for *acm queue*. Usually the material they send me isn't as close to the headlines as this month's has. This article mentions both the coronavirus and the US-China trade war; something I proofread a week or so ago referred to the recent 737 plane crashes. (All the references made sense, which doesn't exactly help.)

adrian_turtle came over for dinner tonight. She was away for a few days, and told us about her trip; I mostly told me about my day. It was good to see her, and cattitude made us a very nice dinner.

I am just back from seeing the hand doctor. She diagnosed it as trigger finger again, both hands this time, and did i want both cortisone shots now.

i said yes, despite likely numbness for an hour or so (not bad, if at all, that was 20 minutes ago as i type) and the risk of a pain flare-up from the cortisone. not having had the flare last time, i decided to do it, despite the work deadline saturday night.

Well, I have the results of the pulmonary function test.

I called my GP's office yesterday afternoon, and told them that I needed a prescription to have it redone, and if they couldn't send it (and the receptionist seemed to think that this was impossible, and that the hospital that had lost track of the first one would happily call them to get another) someone would call me.

This morning, I found voicemail from my doctor's office from later that day, saying that they didn't want to write me a prescription to have the test redone because they had the results. Yes, phrased about that way. However, I am told that the test results were normal.

I am also told (or my voicemail is) that the hospital mailed the doctor the results. I am left to guess whether they would ever have notified me, if I hadn't kept calling to ask for a replacement prescription. The timing is a little too coincidental otherwise, and there was no suggestion of "the hospital that said it couldn't find the tests when we asked for them has sent them to us," as I would expect if they had turned up in that day's mail, rather than having been sitting, ignored for some days after I had called repeatedly asking for them. I realize that doctors wait to be called for test results. But this doctor's office had made it fairly clear that they had my messages, and knew I wanted these results: it's just not clear whether that applies when it means they have to actually give me them, rather than just convince me not to call daily.

I am contemplating changing doctors, but the questions include whether another would be better at this sort of thing, and whether near my office is actually a good idea: handy for routine things, not so good if I'm sick enough to stay home from work and want to see a doctor.

And I need to call a cardiologist, that being the next stage here given that the lungs have tested normal, as expected.

ETA: I just called my health insurance company's robot system, and found that they processed two claims for 12/15, one processed weeks ago (that'll be the X-ray) and one processed yesterday, so it seems pretty clear that the hospital dropped the ball here, not the GP. Nonetheless, my current doctor's office is also not exactly convenient for me; the question is, in part, whether it is less inconvenient than East 19th Street (or some other midtown or even Washington Heights location) would be. But the question feels somewhat less urgent.

I saw a dermatologist today, after sitting around in a waiting room where someone insisted on having Judge Judy on the television, at a volume that made it impossible for me to concentrate on my book (the Tiptree biography). He looked at the mole, named it as a seborrheic keratosis, and said it's harmless and that there's no need to remove it. I asked about itchiness (which is why I noticed the change, in late December) and he said I could use a bit of over-the-counter cortisone cream.

My feeling, after about three minutes, was that he seemed competent, but I didn't actually like him, so after he had me put my shirt back on (the mole is on my shoulder), I didn't ask him to look my skin over in a thorough, dermatological way (as my old dermatologist did periodically, and as my GP also said would be a good idea). I should probably keep looking for a dermatologist, but it no longer feels urgent.

When I called cattitude with the medical verdict , he said that he didn't think the mole had changed much recently; I remember him as saying it had, but it's possible that I grabbed "it's changed" from what he said without registering how much it had changed. (I can't see it without using a mirror and twisting, so it's not something I've kept close watch on.

Also, I went to the gym this morning, lunched in Chinatown, and stopped for groceries after the dermatology. We now have two kinds of tangerine: New Year's tangerines, of which I got eight from a vendor on Lafayette Street (I'd have gotten more had his stock looked better), and another five-pound crate of Spanish clementines.

( gym numbers )

I don't have a huge amount of free time on worknights, given my commute.

I spent much of it, this evening, tracking down a medical referral form. I don't have the most impressive of filing systems to start with. But the real problem is that I seem to be of the "I know what's in which pile" school of organization, and julian_tiger spends a lot of time pushing things off of whatever pile or surface they're on. So I had no idea of where it was other than "somewhere near my desk", and after a while wasn't even sure of that, so wasted time going through unrelated piles.

Having found the referral, I'm back where I started. I will call Inter-County Imaging tomorrow and either find out how to get there by bus, if this is possible, or reschedule my appointment. It feels a little weird to postpone a medical appointment because I'm not feeling well, but the appointment is for a routine mammogram (as in, there is absolutely nothing wrong, but it's been over a year since my last one, and I'm 40 years old), and the feeling unwell is tiredness, congestion, and such, probably from a Virus That's Going Around. As such, I suspect it would benefit from sleeping in, and a 9 a.m. appointment seems less appealing than it did a couple of months ago, when I assumed that my temp assignment and concurrent commute would be over by now.