Archive for the ‘The Chronicles of Irony’ Category

Today was the first time I’ve seen a brain doctor since January. I’m sure that doesn’t seem like an especially long time because, well, it’s not, but it has felt like an eternity, especially considering how much pain I’ve encountered since the last appointment.

They had conveniently scheduled an MRI for 12:30 (check in at noon) before my 1:30 appointment with the doctor. The scan would be immediately available to the doctor, no waiting. I appreciated this on a special level because that hospital? Almost 50 miles from my house. And saving me a trip is pretty much my favorite thing ever.

When I checked in, my information was there, but within a few minutes, the front desk realized there was a problem. I had an appointment, but they had no doctor’s orders. And then when they called the doctor, they couldn’t remember scheduling the MRI. Nothing like looking like the crazy MRI seeker in public.

After the doctor’s office faxed in the orders they finally remembered creating, the guy at the front desk lost them. And seriously, could not figure out where they went. He looked and looked and looked. They were no where. There’s just something really comforting about knowing that a piece of paper with all your personal and medical information is floating around a hospital. I mean really.

After all the hullaballoo, the MRI didn’t start until after 1. Which meant I had a snowball’s chance in hell of making my appointment on time. Which, really is fine, I haven’t been on time to anything in the last year anyways.

And then there was the scan itself. You remember that one time where I said I’m not going to have MRIs without sedating myself first? Yea, well, I didn’t until 10 minutes into the MRI. Oops. I was actually doing totally fine until she said that it was time for the “really loud” one, but what she neglected to mention was that the really loud one also bounces you around like you’re an kitten in a clothes dryer. Dear God.

And for whatever reason, the bouncing all around caused my brain to go totally fucking haywire.

I got hit with a wave of dizziness that rivals any I’ve ever had before. When the loud scan finally ended, the dizziness slowed. But as soon as the dizziness stopped, my eyes lost their shit and for the next 10 minutes my eyes danced from side to side, completely out of control (it’s called nystagmus and unfortunately is not a really new thing). They continued to wiggle back and forth through the gadolinium injection and all the way until the end of the last scan.

I walked out of the imaging center around 1:45 and made it to the office by 1:55. They agreed to see me late, which I was incredibly grateful for.

Despite a lengthy wait, the doctor hadn’t had much time to review my actual MRIs, but in the little time he had, he was able to identify pachymeningeal enhancements on my scan. Having done excessive amounts of research on the screwed upness that is my brain, I knew what he was talking about (sort of). It’s basically another nice objective sign that my body is dealing with low intracranial pressure and it’s a brand spanking new one.

And because of that and my ever decreasing pressure, he thinks that the problem really has to be a spinal fluid leak. Frankly, there just isn’t any alternative cause.

But the great part is that with this diagnosis, comes treatment. TREATMENT. He gave me two choices, but because of the cost and complications and time factors, only one option was really feasible.

Later this week, I’ll be having two high volume blood patches. They’ll do one down low in my spine and one a little higher, in an attempt to basically coat my entire spinal column (with blooooood) and clot holes that could be anywhere along it. He said that sadly they won’t double the Versed for the doubled patching. Tragic, really.

I’m more than a little scared, because, well, these blood patches hurt like a sonofabitch. But at the same time, I can’t even begin to tell you how nice it is to hear a doctor say that he thinks a treatment will work. It’s been a really long time since anyone has said that to me.

Probably since the last neurosurgeon prepared me for brain surgery. Hello, irony.

And I believe him. I believe that we’re looking at the first real possibility of relief. I think we have a plan that just might be the first thing in 7 months that will make a difference. The first thing that can give me even a piece of my version of normal back.

And for now we just wait, and hope.

And try not to spend much time dwelling on the irony that it’s going to take two REALLY BIG NEEDLES in my back to make me feel better.

We’re officially half-way through the week of hell, with three midterms down and just three little midterms ahead. And by little, I mean the exact opposite. The last two exams on Friday are the mothers of all exams. The second of which we have all been told we will fail. Which really? Makes me not want to study for it AT ALL.

But, I’m not going to complain about the exams because I’m trying to stay positive about their passability, and frankly, I’ve chosen a different calamity to attack.

You see, yesterday after my morning exam, I went to a friend’s house to nap relax between the morning ass-kicking exam and worthless afternoon classes. When I woke up from, um, relaxing, I grabbed the salad I’d bought earlier and sat down to read emails.

The salad dressing was an asian dressing in a little container with a plastic lid that had to be peeled off. And without paying much attention, I picked it up and pulled back a corner of the plastic. And before I even realized it, there was a big splash of salad dressing on my laptop keyboard. The splash hit the entire top right part of the keyboard. I cleaned it up as quickly as I could with copious paper towels and turned the computer upside down to help drain as much as possible while I was in my afternoon classes.

When I got back after class I had planned to make a study guide using my computer for the test I had this afternoon. A test which I had devoted precisely ZERO time to by that point.

So you can imagine my delight when I started typing and realized that several of my keys weren’t working. At first it was just the delete key (I say just there with a hint of sarcasm because THE DELETE KEY. It’s a little important). As the evening progressed and I continued to try to type, more and more keys stopped working. When I woke up this morning to do more work, even more keys were out.

So far the y, i, o, l, 0, +/=, delete, g, h, ;/:, “/’, ENTER and the right side of the spacebar are not working at all. The u is finicky and there are a few more that are getting really hard to make work consistently.

The irony here is almost too much. My oil based salad dressing made it physically impossible for me to type the word oily.

Well played Karma.

I can’t check my school email anymore because my username AND password require letters that don’t work, and I can’t even use most of the internet because, hey, guess what? That enter key? It’s REALLY rather important. Seriously, just try to type in a web address…and then what? Because willing it to open isn’t working yet.

But what makes this so especially painful is that, if you’ll recall my husband very recently dropped his computer in a bathtub and had to replace it. And while it may be a great shock to some of you, I definitely dished out A LOT of jokes in his direction. A. LOT. And may have insinuated that he was a *little* bit irresponsible with his really expensive computer.

In case you wondered, being a hypocrite stings.

I can’t make it to the Apple store until this weekend, so until then I’m using my phone, Slappy’s brand spanking new computer and every bit of patience I have in using my own computer to type the words that I can.

While it wasn’t that much oil I have some substantial concerns about the fixability of the computer. Because apparently the motherboard is like sort of close to the keyboard. And unlike water, oil doesn’t just dry up. It sits there and stays all NOT DRY. And while I may or may not have pined over the pretty new laptops at the Apple store recently, I really REALLY do not want to buy a new one. I can’t afford a new one, I like my computer and did I mention I can’t afford a new computer?

For now I will go back to studying, be grateful that my husband is using great restraint with all the jokes that he can easily be hurling in my direction and hope that the oil magically evaporates and saves me a thousand dollars.

If wishes were horses we’d need a huge fucking stable in our apartment right now.

Okay, so way back in the fall when my stupid former neurologist decided that all my headaches could be explained by sinus congestion that had existed for more than 10 years, I had to go see an ear, nose and throat doctor to convince her that she was wrong. At the last appointment I had with the ENT, he shoved a tube with a camera up my nose while I was in the office and sent me on my merry way (because ironically, I was not interested in sinus surgery).

In February I got a bill for 200 bucks for that damned scope. The damned scope that I didn’t want in the first place. I put off paying it because sometimes my insurance will catch things late, but they never did, so I finally ponied up the dough charged it about a month ago.

Then I received a letter in the mail on Friday from my insurance company. The letter said that my doctor had filed a petition with my insurance company, over a claim and this was my notice that they had rejected the claim. Apparently my doctor did not get pre-authorization for the damned scope, and so I’m consequently responsible for my 500 dollar outpatient surgery deductible.

So, let me just get this straight. Because my doctor did not get pre-authorization for what I did not even know was a billable procedure, I have to pay 500 dollars.

Because someone else did not do something they were supposed to do, I have to pay.

Um, no.

So on Wednesday I have to march down to the billing department at the hospital where the doctor’s office is and get this taken care of because dude, I do not have 500 bucks to give to these people. I don’t have 500 bucks to give to anyone in the universe right now. And especially not for a nasal scope I DIDN’T WANT OR NEED.

Isn’t it amazing how I’m being charged for surgery when I had this scope to decide that I didn’t, in fact, want to have surgery? Or that while this whole ENT thing was going on (and also right now) I’d have killed to have a doctor run useful test to figure out what the hell is wrong with my head, but instead we ran a totally unhelpful one that I have to pay for.

I could go on and on.

But instead, I’m going to put on my big girl panties and deal with it. But not right now. Because why do today what you can put off for tomorrow? Or Wednesday?

(I know, IRONY, you are all shocked and dismayed that it’s happened again)

In the middle of teaching my last class today, I split my pants. Like ripped a 7 inch (yes, I measured) long tear right down the ass. Like, ripped it so much that I couldn’t even get up out of my chair to get a sweater without baring my entire butt to my class.

I will admit that was not entirely because the pants did not fit well, but a combination of that and catching the pocket on the chair when I went to sit down. But also? It does not help the weight complex even one tiny bit.

Also, when one rips their pants in a classroom full of 14 year olds, you might as well go ahead and putt the scarlet letter of B right on your chest.

Because your (growing) ass? It is (ironically!) going to be the butt of every joke in the next year or so.

p.s. I also cut my forehead open on a sweatshirt tonight. But I don’t think that has much to do with gaining 10 pounds as much as it has to do with being spastic.

Today we plucked a groundhog out of his home, made him stand up to see if he could see his shadow (which, let’s be honest, he can’t, because he’s a GROUNDHOG) and then made a totally indeterminate prediction about the next 6 weeks of weather.

(Whose idea was this? Seriously.

Why can’t it just be like, Human Shadow Day or something. Why a groundhog?)

Regardless of the stupid tradition that gave the movie I seem to be living its name, I can’t help but feel a bit of irony over reliving one of a kajillion past experiences.

See, after calculating all my medical bills from 2008 and suffering a medium sized stroke anxiety attack over the absurd amount of money wasted, I now, just two days later, have a raging UTI.

Because, you know, I wasn’t spending quite enough on my health yet in 2009.

I know it’s impolitic to talk about money, but guess what, as it turns out, Impolitic is pretty much my middle name. So is Danger. And Uncoordinated.

So I filed taxes today, which is something that I actually enjoy because, as a result of my measly salary and expensive educational costs, the government always ends up giving me money back. Which is always awesome. And with Valentine’s Day and Slappy’s birthday approaching, almost always needed too.

I started to file married with an “exemption” because Slappy is hopelessly poor without income, but they wouldn’t let me claim my educational deduction stuff. So then I tried to file married but filing separate, and again, no education relief.

It occurs to me that I’m probably not actually married since Slappy and Kathnyn continue to survive in wedded bliss, however, I didn’t go that route. I feel like tax auditors aren’t big fans of “technicalities” like typos on marriage licenses.

Eventually I decided to file jointly with him, and in the end I got my educational refund and Slappy got himself a nice rebate for being an unemployed money-sucker a full-time student and we continued with the deductions sections. (No, I won’t tell you how much we got back, THAT would be impolitic and you know, even I have boundaries)

This was all fine and good, and when we got to the “health” section, I thought I was golden. I had been saving all my medical bills from 2008 (including the brain surgery bills since they weren’t billed until 2008) for this very day, for this very experience and we started adding the costs. Oh, the costs. I imagined that after adding up and inputting these costs, the IRS fairy would simply fly down and give me back all my money.

You can probably figure out that that didn’t happen. But instead, I figured out how I managed to get into such deep credit card debt.

For the year 2008, I paid $3532.29 in hospital fees.

For the year 2008, I paid $860.65 in doctor’s fees.

For the year 2008, I paid $697.97 in GLASSES (for crying out loud)

For the year 2008, I had $6152.00 of items stolen from me. SIX THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO DOLLARS. And that’s not including any of the gift cards.

And do you know how much money the IRS gave me back for these fees? That would be none. None dollars.

So basically I just calculated these horrendous costs which helped to lower me into a deep depression, one which will inevitably require kajillions more in copays and prescription antidepressants.

Oh IRS, you’re so funny.