adrian_turtle

I have carefully avoided eating in restaurants for more than 5 years now. I remember the last time I casually got a cup of tea and a macaroon in the library cafe (in early March of 2020. That was the trip where I checked out a doorstopper of a short story collection that sat on my headboard shelf for 10 months.) After the 3 of us were vaccinated in 2021, we went out for lunch, rejoicing. We didn't know how little help the vaccine was on somebody immunocompromised, nor how little it helped with the new variants. That was probably when Vicki got Covid. And pneumonia. And she's coughing yet.

For a long time, I've heard some people saying Covid has been thoroughly suppressed already and we can go back to doing what we like. The economy needs it, or everyone is exhausted, or it just isn't necessary to be cautious anymore. And I hear others say common courtesy requires stringent precautions: masking everywhere, not eating in restaurants, etc. Brunch? You would risk everyone's health for something as trivial as brunch? Yes, I am taking stringent precautions, but it's a loss. And it has been a real loss that I have not been able to have a festive meal in company. That I have not been able to invite someone over for dinner. That I have not been able to stop off for a sandwich as part of a long day of errands. It's not trivial. (footnote) I've missed it.

I spent most of last week at a shiva out of state, eating meals at restaurants. Cousins very kindly drove me everywhere, as I can't drive. There are restaurants that one or another of my relatives really like, so all eleven of us went together. Sitting under flickering lights, in a large group that contained Cousin Shouty, it did not seem feasible to keep my mask on OR ask detailed questions of waiters before each meal. Are the eggs cooked in butter? Is there beer in the fried mushrooms? I took a lot of LactAid, but it wasn't for dairy foods that I enjoyed. I ate in restaurants without masking, but they weren't foods that I enjoyed, and they weren't experiences that I enjoyed.

So now I am wearing a mask at home. To protect Vicki, in case I caught something from all that unmasked running around Ohio and eating in restaurants.



(footnote) I do eat outdoors in company in good weather, but I live in Boston and good weather for outdoor dining is not predictable, and just doesn't happen for much of the year. Especially for those of us who can't tolerate serious heat and don't have our own comfy backyards.

Well, that was a waste of time. I put so much time and energy and worry trying to find doctors in the Aetna directory that were listed as being near transit, listed as taking new patients, and listed as affiliated with the appropriate hospitals. As I said in the last few posts, I ran into an awful lot of trouble with doctors being covered, but working in hospitals that were not covered. Then I found hospitals in the network, but doctors working in them were out of the network.

It did not occur to me that Aetna would mark doctors as "taking new patients" when they did not. The information looked so plausible it did not occur to me to question it. Like, one doctor's office has 4 doctors and the network says 1 is taking new patients. Or a big clinic has 14 doctors and 6 NPs and 8 are taking new patients. And I finally find somebody I want and call to talk to the New Patient Coordinator, who tells me none of the primary care providers associated with their hospital are taking new patients. None, at any location. The wait list is closed. She suggests I call back in 2 months.

This morning, I was running a small errand at the doctor's office. It was just an errand, I'm not sick, so of course I waited while they dealt with other people. A family having a Bad Day came into the waiting room from the doctor side. The mom was carrying a child of maybe 8. They were the size of big kid you don't carry unless something is wrong, and it's a long way down the hall to the elevator. There was a little kid (2 or 3) trailing along behind looking worried.

I stood up and offered to get the door to the hallway for her, because she had her hands full. She said, "Oh no! Thank you, but I don't want you to get sick. I can get it." I was wearing an N95 face mask. She and her sick kid weren't. I want to appreciate her kind thought, her desire to protect a stranger. I just wish we lived in a world where such kindness was more usefully expressed.

This is not the future I expected, back in the 20th century. Yes, I thought I might have an alternative lifestyle that my mother would disapprove of. But I didn't expect she'd disapprove of my getting vaccinated against contagious diseases. Or getting part of my electricity from wind and solar.

She doesn't understand about being bisexual and polyamorous, but she is ok with "these wonderful people are very important to me, and I am living with them now." I don't expect her to object to my rainbow-striped airgami because of the rainbow stripes. She just thinks it's dangerous to wear any mask and I should stop.

I don't mean "why am I on Dreamwidth?" I'm HERE to stay in touch with the rasff diaspora and its friends and relations.

The question is "Why am I living next to Boston?" and the answer to that is that it's a city where people live fairly close together, and I can walk to many of the places where I want to go and take public transit to others. I can be welcome in several overlapping communities. There are lots of people I don't really know, but we smile and nod and say good morning at the bus stop or passing on the sidewalk. I feel surrounded by a vague network of friendliness in a way I wasn't, where everybody traveled by car.

In other words, I love this city because it's a place where large numbers of people breathe on each other. Oops.

I went to see a new medical specialist this morning.

Office Manager: And what's your primary care doctor's name?
Adrian: Doctor [name]. It's spelled [...]
Office Manager: Do you know his first name?
Adrian: Of course. It's Deborah.

The office manager was seriously flustered by her mistake. I'm wondering how, in 2013, she might have made it. It's not like it's UNUSUAL for a family practitioner to be a woman. What surprised me even more was her thinking that I might not have known my doctor's first name.

A long time ago, when I lived in Michigan, my doctor was Dr. Bernstein. He shared an office with Dr. Blum, and I went on seeing Dr. Blum after Dr. Bernstein retired. I think I had some abstract awareness that they must have first names, but I had no idea what they might be.

Is this a difference between the 1970s and now? Or between how children and adults interact with their doctors? Or is it not perfectly routine to know the first name of one's primary doctor?

As many of you know, I live in Massachusetts, which has had a patchwork of nearly-universal health insurance coverage for several years now. We have religious exemptions to our health insurance requirements, but it's not nearly as infuriating as the type being discussed in national politics these days.

The Massachusetts plan tries to get as many people as possible into insurance plans, considering different reasons for doing without insurance:
1) health insurance plans won't sell to them
2) they have access, but can't afford the premiums
3) they have access and money, but want to save their money because they don't expect to need health care this year
4) they object to seeing doctors, on general principle

So there are rules for the health insurance plans to address problem 1, that they have to make their plans available to everybody, and can't raise the premiums too much. And rules for businesses, that they have to make group plans available to their employees. And subsidies to help low-income (and moderate-income) people with premiums. It's a reasonable attempt to address problem 2. In an attempt to get the 3rd group to pay premiums (whether they get insurance and health care or not), you're supposed to pay a tax penalty if you opt out of buying health insurance for reasons other than low income or religious conviction. The penalty money goes to support the subsidies.

The 4th group doesn't involve all that many people, but they're symbolically important. I don't know what religions have such strong objections to all medical care that the devout consider it wrong to have health insurance. (Maybe Christian Science?)

My Massachusetts tax form asks:
Are you claiming an exemption from the requirement to purchase health insurance based on your sincerely held religious beliefs?
If you are claiming a religious exemption in line 8a, did you receive medical health care during the 2011 tax year?

It was a religious exemption for individuals wanting to avoid buying health insurance. When did "religious exemption," in the context of health insurance, start to be about employers or insurers wanting to limit coverage? I feel like the jargon changed under my feet, and I didn't even notice it had changed until I sat down to do my taxes.

Strobes don't bite most people, so he can get away with that. Usually. Last weekend, it went bad.

I was uncertain about going to Chicago for my cousin's bar mitzvah. I thought it would be worth the strain of air travel to see that set of relatives* and maintain my connection with the family. What really worried me was the possibility of strobe lights at the party after the service. Strobes are the worst triggers for my seizures, and pretty bad migraine triggers as well.

I dithered for WEEKS. It would be an evening party, which made strobes more likely. Yet it was a party in the synagogue social hall, which might make it quieter and less likely to have strobes than a party in a more party-specific space. Last time I saw the bar-mitzvah boy, he had been a very young 12 year old...would that make him less likely to be interested in the kind of dance party that relied on strobes? The next older cousin (who'd had strobes at her bat mitzvah party, that kept me hiding in the lobby most of the afternoon, and still needing a week of recovery time afterward) seemed a lot more sophisticated.

I finally phoned my cousin** and asked him if there would be strobes or flashing lights at the party. I grew up with the idea that it's an outrageous imposition for me to ask somebody to turn off a flickering light, or not to wear perfume. Now, mostly, I can recognize that people outside my family are ok with such requests (and if they aren't, I can walk away.) But when dealing with relatives, I can't bring myself to ask them to change what they're doing for my comfort. It feels daring and rude just to ask for information, so I can be be elsewhere if I think it's going to be too uncomfortable.***

In this case, my cousin was very gracious about it. He said they'd hired a DJ, and didn't know if he would have strobes. He's be happy to ask the DJ not to use any strobes, if they were a problem for me. I made travel plans thinking that maybe it was no longer appropriate for me to go on defining that side of my family based on my mother, my aunts and uncles, and my grandparents (of blessed memory.) The kids' table takes over gradually, and I didn't notice a lot of it, because it happened between my aunt and my cousins.

I shouldn't be surprised my cousin was so gracious about this issue. We haven't spoken much in the last few decades, and weren't particularly close as children, but I have no reason to think he's a mean guy. And I wasn't thinking about it when I made the call, but he has some reason to be sensitive about this sort of thing. The bar mitzvah boy also has absence seizures, and his parents have spent the last ten years trying hard to protect him from possible triggers. His seizures are very infrequent, and he's not photosensitive, and of course parents are more protective of children than adults are protective of themselves. Even so...when they're trying hard to make sure the kid doesn't have a seizure the week before he has to do something important, I wonder if my attempts to insist "I'm fine, it's nothing," for only one seizure in an evening might be inappropriate.

So. There I was, after the service, in the lobby of an enormous Chicago synagogue. The doors to the dining room were open, and the music was starting up, and I could tell there were strobe lights. Not a single device like a photographer's strobe, or even a disco ball, that I could point to and say "please turn that off." It was a whole dramatic light show, with flickering screens in several colors. I decided to stay in the lobby, eat the appetizers being carried around on trays, and play with my little nephews and their toy trains. (They didn't like the light show, either. Or possibly the music or the crowd.) It was unfortunate to miss the party after coming all that way, but the appetizers were yummy and there were lots of them, all pareve. And my nephews and I were enjoying one another's company. And maybe I could chat with various other relatives in passing. Everybody went in to dinner, and I settled down in the lobby.

Then my sister-in-law came for the boys. They had to go in and eat dinner. "Oh, you can't stay out here and miss the the whole party!" I tried to explain. A cousin came out to chat, and to invite me in. "But they turned off the strobes! You have to come in for this part!" I explained I preferred to stay in the lobby. Eventually, I was convinced to go into the party space--just for a little while, you'll see how safe it is now, it won't bother you, you really can't miss this. It was my own bad judgment that made me go into the room. But I stayed in the room for 2 hours because my judgment was so badly impaired by frequent seizures.

I made it home with great difficulty. I've felt purely awful all week. I am recovering, albeit slowly; I couldn't have written this on Wednesday.



*I would be seeing my brother and his wife and children, all my cousins and aunts and uncles on that side of the family, but not my mother.

**the one whose bar mitzvah was in 1980, not last week. Now that I think of it, that one also had strobes that made me uncomfortable, though it wasn't nearly so bad.

***as the bar mitzvah last week was Saturday evening, the young man was talking about Lech Lecha. He spoke of how admirable it is to just *go* when told, rather than trying to negotiate. (You want me to go WHERE? What's so great about this land that you will show me?) It echoed through what little thinking I was doing, later in the evening.

I do not want to see this correlation, because it makes no sense and because implies I should limit my already limited lifestyle in fairly unpleasant ways, but here is the suspicion. It looks like audiobooks are bad for my shoulder. (Books or music. Any mp3 I listen to on purpose. But in practice, it turns out to be mostly books.) I got out of the habit of listening to anything after I got my ears pierced, but went back to it in January.

A few weeks ago, my doctor suggested trying a new kind of treatment for the chronic pain in my hand and shoulder. It's not the silliest thing I've ever heard of, but the competition there is pretty stiff. A low intensity laser tuned to exactly the right wavelength is supposed to stimulate the mitochondria to produce more ATP, which improves healing even in an old injury. What amazes me is that this therapeutic wavelength is VISIBLE light. I don't see how it can get past my skin to the damaged tendon, much less reduce the scar tissue on the other side of the tendon. I want it to help. I want so much for it to help. And I want a hypoallergenic pony unicorn.

I tried it once, for both hand and shoulder. It didn't seem to do anything for the hand at all. It might have helped the shoulder a little, briefly. It didn't do me any harm, which puts it way ahead of lots of other pain treatments (including massage, direct acupuncture, capscicum ointments, muscle relaxants, and almost all PT.) So I tried it again, just on the shoulder. Again, it might have helped a little, briefly...I can't tell if it's a real benefit, or if I'm fooling myself because I want it so much. The pain varies so much it's hard to be sure of changes when they aren't large, sudden, or consistent. Did it get better because of the treatment and worse when the treatment effects worse off? Or just a little better in the warm middle of the day and worse when it got cold at night?