I've been working in the office all along; I'm almost always the only one here. One of the things I do is answer the phones and the number of people who are SO grateful to hear a real human being is impressive. A number of them have said that they've called and left voicemails but no one responds. All phones are supposed to forward to cell phones; when everyone else started working from home, I had to complete the command for a few people (they had neglected to click on the final "OK"). We had someone who got a lot of calls but refused to return calls (she's left) but seemingly other people have not been responding. I spoke to someone this morning who said that the call forwarding only rings twice before cutting off, which may be the issue. sigh ... technology ....

I am so sorry, esse.

Teppy, that sucks. You know a shit ton more than most laymen and I'm sorry your dad is going through this and putting you through more bullshit to boot.

My dad tends to get sharp and cranky when he is fearful or starts losing control of the situation, but he's never made me feel stupid. He knows how smart his kids are--he just doesn't want to listen to them.

Timelies all!

Sorry your dad is being an ass, Steph.

Aaaargh. Bought a treadmill. Got it delivered. Wrestled it downstairs. Hired a guy to put it together because that's where most of the online poor reviews came from. Turn it on...it blows the circuit.

Well, that's frustrating, meara. I hope you can get it working without further messing up your home power.

I got internet in the 90s and upgraded to cable internet through the same company via Time Warner cable. A few years ago TWC merged with Charter to become Spectrum, and my internet, nominally through my 1990s carrier, came through them. I found out today that my new cable company transferred me entirely to their service and I'd have to pay ~5 bucks a month to keep my old email. Since I have 25 years worth of accounts on that email I'm going to shell out the money, at least until I can be sure everything has transferred to new email accounts. But I am not happy about it.

Teppy, I'm just wondering how your dad's appointment went, if you feel like talking about it.

...

I think I found a Buffista spirit baby on the Twitters. Well, someone else found them on TikTok and brought them to the Twitters.

NSFW language toward the end, for anyone who's not working at home.

[link]

Shir, congratulations! Have a fanfic about your field of study:

Look at chrismg with the customize fanfic recs.

Sadly it looks like I'll need someone to upgrade that to a 20amp from 15. Grrrrr.

Also I bought short ribs at TJ's Sunday and pulled them out today only to discover they were "use or freeze by" yesterday! I felt like that was too short so decided to try bringing them back...and the guy was like oh grab another one....except turns out ALL OF THEM were use or freeze by yesterday. There were like 8 more on the shelf. Oops.

Teppy, I'm just wondering how your dad's appointment went, if you feel like talking about it.

I think it went very well. We saw a nurse practitioner, who was just incredibly empathetic and understanding. The appointment lasted for about 90 minutes, and the nurse practitioner spent a lot of that time just getting Dad to talk about his life and his job and his medical history, I think to get a sense of his mental state -- like, was his story cohesive, did he seem to forget things, etc. And of course she went through his medical history and addressed his primary concern of the hallucinations.

When I asked if he needed to see a clinical pharmacist for medication therapy management, she (VERY kindly) said, "Well, scrutinizing his medication regimen is part of this appointment, and we'll be doing that on an ongoing basis, so he's welcome to see a clinical pharmacist, but that might be duplicating what we're doing here." And I realized, holy shit, YES, throughout the appointment she had been getting his medical history and evaluating all of his meds in depth, and that's really all I had hoped a clinical pharmacist would do.

Her assessment is that he seems to be of pretty sound mind for a 78-year-old man, a little forgetful, but not in a dementia way. He talked about the hallucinations and described them in detail, and was really clear about the fact that he absolutely knows they aren't real, but they keep happening (he said last night a hallucination person slept on his couch and was gone in the morning).

The hallucinations seem to happen at night and in the mornings, and what the nurse practitioner really focused in on was his Ambien prescription. It's a terrible drug in elderly people, and she thinks it's causing or at least contributing to the hallucinations. And because the hallucinations happen most often at night (after he's taken his Ambien) and in the morning (when it's still in his system), she thinks there's a good chance that he's not metabolizing the Ambien at a normal rate, so he's also getting a whammy of high levels built up in his system.

He sleeps like shit (runs in the family), so the nurse practitioner wants him to stop the Ambien and switch to Trazodone for sleep, because it's apparently safe in elderly people but does work for sleep.

He takes a fuckton of oxycodone for chronic pain, which some doctor told him long ago was diabetic nerve pain (he does have diabetes, but his blood sugar is in the normal range with meds). He told the nurse practitioner that he thought that was weird, because diabetic nerve pain is usually in the hands and feet, and his pain radiates from his lower back down his legs. And the nurse practitioner said "That sounds like like sciatica," and I thought oh holy shit, how did I not recognize that?!?

So she ordered a CT scan of his back because he might have some spinal stenosis that's impinging on nerves and causing that pain, which could be treated with steroid injections.

So basically, step 1 is stopping the Ambien and switching to Trazodone, and step 2 is addressing the pain that might be back pain. If it can get him off oxycodone, that plus not taking Ambien should make his mind a lot clearer.

He has a follow-up appointment in 1 month, so hopefully he'll have some improvement by then.

I have to be honest and say that I've really hit a fucking wall with the caretaking, even though I'm not going to walk away in the middle of this process. I'm not. But it's so overwhelming after 28 goddamn years of being literally his only support system. The nurse practitioner asked me "Should I put your information in the medical record as the caregiver?" and I started internally screaming (and said "Uhhhhh...yup."). To which Dad said cheerfully, "She knows more about my health and medications than I do!" at which point the Kill Bill sirens went off in my head. NOPE. Do NOT put that on me. But it is still fucking on me for the time being.

For a while now, I'd been having therapy every other week, but I think I'm going to need to go back to every week. This is a lot, and I know I can't walk away in the middle of it, but I also need serious ground support or I am going to fucking lose it.

And the worst part -- which I will tell my therapist Thursday -- is that I'm so used to being the caretaker, I'm so good at it, that it would be genuinely easier to just stay stuck in this pattern and light myself on fire to keep him warm. Because what I can't untangle in my brain is that withdrawing from caretaking for my 78-year-old father as his care needs are increasing makes me beneath contempt, because what fucking kind of lousy sociopathic selfish daughter does that? (And yes, that last part is getting addressed in therapy. I'm just trying to explain how I feel, even if it's not rational.)

To which Dad said cheerfully, "She knows more about my health and medications than I do!" at which point the Kill Bill sirens went off in my head.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh. *flail*