Chatterday! Open Thread.

This is our weekly Chatterday! open thread. Use this open thread to talk amongst yourselves: feel free to share a link, have a vent, or spread some joy.

What have you been reading or watching lately (remembering spoiler warnings)? What are you proud of this week? What’s made your teeth itch? What’s going on in your part of the world?

Today’s chatterday backcloth, one weeny turtle on the head of another, comes via The Daily Squee.

turtles

24 thoughts on “Chatterday! Open Thread.

  1. I have a question – when is it okay for a Dr to ask about your therapy with somebody else?

    Dr Ego has asked me at least twice, and on Monday, I told him it wasn’t his business. “I want to treat the whole body.”

    But what good is my report of therapy? Wouldn’t it be better to have something from the therapist, someone who can say more than “uh… we talked about stress?”

  2. hey everyone, I have an ableist language question for y’all. Would the word “tardy” incite an ableist meaning? I know that the suffix -tard is an ableist reference. I go to a high school, and a late arrival is considered a “tardy”, and once I looked at the root of the word it got my wheels turnin’ and became curious. Thanks!

  3. Snowdump 2k10 continues… I’m feeling cooped up. I want to go out & do something active. I think I want to take a break from reading & blogging & heavy computer work for about a week. Unless that computer work is video games. Maybe I’ll take a break & blog about video games this week.

  4. I am tired, and have been taking a break from the internet for a couple of days. I think almost everyone reading this knows why.

    But: LITTLE TURTLE! Also, I finally watched Orphan last night and actually enjoyed it, even though it was really schlocky and ridiculous for the most part. I especially liked how Max’s disability was not treated as anything *special* or *magical*, but as just a fact of life. I also really liked the acting on the part of the kids in the film (particularly Isabelle Furhman, who was able to strike a fantastic balance between unsettlingly creepy and believable). Certainly, there were a lot of issues with the way Esther’s “problem” was treated, but ultimately, I am glad I saw the movie.
    .-= Annaham´s last blog ..Just a link =-.

  5. Kaitlyn, I’d talk to your therapist about it and see what your therapist thinks. Many doctors will write up reports on such things and send them along if it’s necessary.

    Sarajh, the words don’t have the same meaning. ‘tard is a shortened form of r#tard, as in the former diagnosis of mental retardation. ‘tard as a suffix plays off that. “Tardy” means late. It has nothing to do with the suffix.

    K, if the horrible weather we were getting right now came in at 2 degrees lower, we’d have the snopocalypse. As it is, we’ve got this horrible wind/rain thing going on that leaves me thinking the window is going to blow out.

    Annaham: Tired? WHYFOR? (she says, in her sarcasm voice.) *grin*

    I spend most of this week in and our of the archives, and I’m a happier person for it. Except for the weather. WTF weather?

  6. Anna – I saw my therapist the day after the disastrous (“I hate you!”) appt with Dr Ego. She has no problem with it, and I’ll sign the papers next time. I have no problem with it.

    But why ask me so … unofficially? If he had said, I’d like to keep up with your therapist last spring, I wouldn’t have had a problem. But it was just weird. Am I under an obligation to tell him what we do? (Especially since some recent stuff revolves around me ranting about him for ten minutes or more.)

    I had my 4th PT today, and learned two things. One – just because biofreeze does not hurt one part of the body does not mean the rest is safe. Monday, it was on my back. Today, my abdomen, pain site zero. First it was skin pain, then deep pain, then OMG OMG deep breaths hold on why won’t it go away? For the love of all that is good why?!

    Another point in my PT’s favor (he’s Dr Ego’s son! I can’t figure it out!) is that when I told him, I said I couldn’t do anything else, and he didn’t make me. We got out the tenge unit, it didn’t work, tried again, plopped a heating pad on and just waited. It was much better after that! Instead of reading, I pulled out my ipod and watched Bollywood videos. And he knew it was Bollywood. I told him watching pretty people dance helped distract me, which is very important.

  7. Kaitlyn: You are under no obligation whatsoever to disclose what you talk about in therapy to anyone. The Ego That Walks Like A Physician has no right to it and no need for it. If your therapist thinks that it would be helpful to talk to Ego, your therapist should bring that up to you.

    It is none of Ego’s business at all. I am like all snarly bristly fang and claw angry about this. You DO NOT have to give him any of that information. (And he should not be asking for it the nosy shit.) The only circumstances under which your therapist is required to disclose information to anyone is if ou believes you are an immanent danger to yourself or to someone else.
    .-= kaninchenzero´s last blog ..Re: Trust Me =-.

  8. this weekend, i have invented a game for myself called “stay inside and watch as many episodes of Monarch of the Glen (BBC series) as i can!”

    i’m planning to win!

  9. I hate being lied to. Even “just” twisting words to make a semi-lie, I really, truly, hate it.
    So that’s where I am tonight.

  10. Kaitlyn, your Dr. Ego really chaps my hide. Where the hell does he get off asking you for confidential information that you shared with your therapist? GRAH. I’m so sensitive about that sort of thing because I’ve found that privacy is rarely protected as furiously as it should be within the medical establishment. They all seem perfectly happy to share patient information with one another, despite no reason to do so, and discuss it like it were some kind of fascinating puzzle. My life, your life, everyone’s life – not a fucking puzzle to be debated over coffee and doughnuts.

    You were a lot more patient with him than I would have been, Kaitlyn. *hugs if you want ’em*

    As for the Snowcapolypse, y’all have my sympathies. Last year, during a couple of days in March, we were inundated with more than 27 inches of snow. We were literally trapped in the house for days unless we wanted to wade through windblown and packed snow up to our chests. And that was the chest of a 5’11” chick. Sheesh.

    And to everyone else that’s feeling tired, or down, or lied to, hugs to all of you as well if you want them.

    As for me, Doc’s decided I can just call in for painkiller refills now. Which, considering the kind, strength, and friggin’ amount of what I need to function daily, is so awesome I want to give him a hug. I’m so lucky to have him in town; he doesn’t even flinch at filling my meds because he knows he’s in control of the amount and I’ve proven I won’t abuse them. No hoops, obstacles, jumps, or any other nonsense. Hell, he will even see me in the E.R. if I run out unexpectedly, prompting horrible, convulsing withdrawal symptoms, and give me a shot of morphine with a fentanyl chaser to get me through til I can get a ‘script refilled. (Our pharmacy closes on the weekends.)

    Having read through this blog for the past several months, I know how fortunate I am, and I wish wish wish that everyone had the same service available to them.

  11. I’m in a very celebratory mood, because our blog has peaked at a record number of hits this month. It’s been so much work running a group blog (although this is stating the obvious on FWD, I realize!) so I’m very proud, and I’m happy that we have so many great contributors.

    Anyways, I want to invite fellow autistic bloggers (as well as those with other kinds of Neurodivergencies) to come on over to our Blog [redacted*] Open Thread to tell us about your blog/website, etc.
    We want to compile the world’s largest autistic link list, to make our blog a more useful resource.
    .-= Kowalski´s last blog ..It’s Official: The Atheist “Movement” Can Kiss My Ass =-.

    * Moderator note: Kowalski, please don’t use that word in that manner here. Thanks. ~L

  12. Hence the nickname Ego – “I told you you should see a therapist, so I have the right to know what goes on there.”

    I swore at him – “damn good and well” – much worse words apply.

    He prescribes the anti-depressant and clonopin. The nurses – when I call because moods are out of control – are like, what? But he’s a GYN.

    I have no problem with my doctors communicating (lack of communication hasn’t caused anything bad yet, but the time to fax a sheet of paper 30 miles makes me pull my hair out) but be official about it. “How’s therapy?” “Good.” “How would you feel about … whatever, going through the OFFICIAL release forms.” Yeah, you want to treat “the whole body” now, tell your office so they know too.

    I will be so glad to never deal with him again and his office again. Red flag number 1 – they have an ad on local tv about weight loss (not with Dr Ego in it). Number 2 – Suck it up. The last time I was told that, a stent had been placed in my ureter wrong (it fell out) and I was contorted in pain and the doctor said, “I have pain, she (nurse) has pain, your mom has pain. You have to learn to live with it.”

    But all the condescension and misery aside, the man believes I’m in pain. On paper – perfect!

  13. Another reason he’s Ego – I need to rant so I don’t get all “hysterical female” on him next month.

    He went out of town the week before my appointment, and I knew I didn’t have enough pain meds to last me to my appointment. So I visited another doctor in the building (covered by insurance) and he was like, yeah, you’re SOL. I can’t give you anything.

    “I can’t function.”

    “You’ll just have to.”

    I can’t even go to the ER. Dr Ego – for logical reasons that seem horrible when the pain is bad – is the only one allowed to give me pain medications. So, in a letter (for me and my therapist, but I was so all over the place a lot of it came out in the appointment), I said, “Never leave town. Or give instructions so I don’t feel abandoned.”

    His answer – No.

    And they say the worst they can say is “No”? No, the worst they can say is “Get out, we’re done.”

    The most mind boggling thing about the appointment. I asked for a certain dosage of pain medication – it has worked for a few months, a long time for me! “No.” Then the chaos. Then when I said, fine, we’ll try new medications, etc etc. He gave me what I asked for. I don’t get him.

  14. I wish I had something else to talk about, but right now my life just revolves around getting some kind of treatment for my depression. I was waiting and waiting for the resident I saw to make a follow-up appointment with her and a psychiatrist, but it’s been impossible to get a hold of her, and I finally managed to talk to an actual live receptionist who said she’d remind her that very day, and then no phone call. I could have held out if I knew I had an appointment coming up, but as it is I have no idea if I will ever see that psychiatrist because she just DOESN’T. CALL. BACK.

    I finally called and told them to just forget about the whole thing. I’m going to the ER tomorrow instead.

    What makes me angry is that I’m not in an ER-worthy state at all right now, but I may as well go now because I’ll definitely end up there before I get to see a psychiatrist the other way. In the face of the system’s immense inertia and apathy I just don’t know what to do.

    Internet hugs all round!

  15. @Tlönista – good luck.

    We went with the fastest way to see a shrink and I ended up in a psych ward for 4 days and on a medication that caused alien thoughts when I was truly depressed months later.

    Ugh.

    I hope it goes better.

  16. I think I lost a filling. :/ I haven’t gone to a dentist in a few years anyway, mostly due to being on Medicaid. Exams are free, but work isn’t. I’m in a state that does crappy HMOs and the one I’m on has a bad reputation, but provides a tiny discount on dental work while the other one I can get on (I can’t find much info about it because you have to be a member to view most of their web page!) doesn’t seem to offer one at all. Ug. I’m hoping I can get this fixed somewhere without doing a full blown exam just yet. I’m just not looking forward to being forced to stick around a dentist office for long with this back pain crud still unresolved. I think I’m making some progress on that, so I was kind of hoping I could wait until it died down a bit but nooooooooo.

    It’s so weird. The last dental office I went to was supposedly the only one that would take Medicaid patients, but then they stopped taking them, and now they are again. O…K. I’m kind of hoping to go somewhere else because it was poorly run (I had to make separate exam and cleaning appointments and they wound up being several months apart) and it seems I might have other options now so I’ll see what happens. I’ll tolerate pretty much anything if they’ll just fix my filling.

  17. Kaitlyn:
    “I have a question – when is it okay for a Dr to ask about your therapy with somebody else?”

    Is this a PT or a psych therapist, or something else? If it’s PT and he’s the doctor who prescribed the PT, I think it would be appropriate for him to ask how it’s going so he knows if it’s helping or not in terms of continued treatment. If it’s a psychiatric type therapist then he has zero right to ask you about it, unless the therapist makes med recommendations but can’t prescribe and your doctor does the prescribing and he’s just checking on That Specific Aspect of it – in which case, I would assume there would have been a release of info exchange between the two of them (which YOU would have had to initiate and sign and be aware of) and really then, the doctor would be getting the info straight from the therapist and he should only be asking you if you agree with the assessments being made. That’s my understanding, anyway.

    Also, about the pain meds and the other doctor – are they narcotic/opioid? Did you have to sign a contract with your doctor? Because my contract states that I am not allowed to get my narcotic pain medication from any other doctor. Although, fortunately his office is run nicely enough that if he is out of town and I need a refill, his covering doctor will write the script for me. But the point is – I’m not allowed to go and ask another doctor for that medication. Nor am I allowed to attempt to get the script filled from any other pharmacy than my usual one. It’s all in the standard contract that pain patients have to sign with their doctors when they get prescribed with certain types/amounts of pain medication. So that might be the reasoning behind that particular mix-up. Which I admit – is insulting and infuriating and terrifying and wish didn’t exist because sometimes things happen and we can’t ask the prescribing doctor for the refill or get to the pharmacy we normally use or whatever. So, it sucks and is unfair to be sure.

    sarahj: I’d guess that the word tardy probably comes from the same root as retarded, as both mean slow in some way. But neither word is a slam or ableist language in and of themselves. It’s the shortening of the word “retarded” into “retard” or “tard” that has become insulting and ableist as they have been used as insults against people with developmental disabilities (which was once called retardation). So the word tardy just means late or slow, and is not ableist in any way.
    [Note: I may have gotten some of the language/history wrong about retardation and developmental disabilities, so anyone who knows better please feel free to correct me!!]

    storm: wow, you ARE lucky. My doctor is pretty awesome, but that goes beyond awesome.

    Tlönista: I’m sorry you’ve been put into that situation. I wish it wasn’t so difficult to get our medical needs met!

    Quijotesca: Ugh, finding a dentist that takes medicaid is like finding a needle in a haystack isn’t it?? I haven’t been to a dentist in many years myself, partly because of that and partly because dentistry is hard on my fibro and on my PTSD so I just haven’t been motivated to sit down with the phone book and call every dentist in there to see if 1) they’ll take me and my insurance 2) they’re gentle with pain patients 3) they have experience with PTSD and 4) they’re actually nice and won’t harass and harangue me since so many dentists are like that and instead of helping, that kind of attitude makes me want to cry in the moment and then rebel in the long run! Too many spoons to check into all of that just to find the maybe one or two dentists out there who will take me and then have to go and interview them and probably find none of them fit my needs anyway. UGH.

    As for myself right now, I’m suffering a combo of fibro flare, nasty cold, and bad menstrual cycle. This is week two of me being mostly down for the count and the To-Do list is growing longer and more urgent every day. *sigh*

  18. The Chilean earthquake has caused damage in Hawaii already.

    Spring Breaks are coming up soon – I hope students with resources do something.

    I’m going back to a documentary called Constantine’s Sword, though I have to be careful, because Ted Haggard talks. Smarmy is perfect for him. I don’t want to damage my new computer, and I just need to remind myself he’s already been humiliated. (I laughed so hard when he popped up, because I didn’t know if the movie was pre-scandal or not.)

  19. @ Rosemary – I Would agree with this assessment if it’s PT vs. Not physical therapy. My alternative medicine dr (he has an MD alt credentials) prescribed PT & the PT kept him updated with my progress (with my permission.) She updated my specialist too since it’s all connected. Bones & muscles & nerves & stuff.

    But I’m okay with these drs sharing. You don’t have to do it that way.

  20. No, he was definitely asking about the mental health therapist. The PT is his son, they will communicate, no problem. I started seeing my therapist when the nurses were like, uh, he’s a gyn why call us because your moods are bouncing around?

    He’s prescribed various anti-depressants. I’m now on Pristiq and Clonazepam. My therapist can’t prescribe anything – she’s in training (probably a grad student), and she agrees that he should be kept up to date. But still, even if I had a perfect memory, it would be better for them to communicate. It’s very subjective for me, the patient. Less so for the therapist. What was so weird was that he wouldn’t take no for answer. And he didn’t bring up release forms, I did with my therapist the next day. So weird.

    I do have a pain contract, but there are no provisions if he’s out for another doc to write the same script. Luckily, I’m not restricted to one pharmacy! I try to keep it all within the Walgreens family, which was hard when I was on fentanyl patches. I’d spend most of a day on hold just to be told they didn’t have it. And it was never the same one each month. Avinza? So new I just started seeing swag for it in the last month or so. Walgreens – nope. Rite Aid – sometimes. The local non chain in town? Every time they had it.

    But I keep a list of my meds in my purse at all times, which I probably need to update and print out a new copy with less cross outs.

    What’s the purpose of restricting pharmacy usage? They keep the scrip and most have money type security to prevent counterfeiting. I’m sure someone, somewhere did it, so it’s a part of your contract.

    Since my PT is related to Dr Ego (his son), they will communicate. But one thing that rankled? I mentioned I was worried my recent weight gain was not just laziness and could be medically related to my PT on Friday the 19th. At the start of the most mind boggling appointment ever on Monday the 22, Dr Ego brought it up. Er, creepy much. I know I said “Yeah, you’ll talk about me over dinner,” but still.

    However, I’m very happy with my PT, and he is the one Dr Ego picked and he does have the medical cred to be such a pompous doof, so it’s best to go where he said. (Part of the oh so wacky insurance mix-up sent me to a sports place first.)

    Of course, a PT my doctor hand picked (or nepotism in action, whatever) is completely different from a therapist *I* chose. Okay, I had some time and walked into the psych center on campus and laid it out. Luckily, we get along. We get along so well that I felt comfortable telling her why I didn’t want to do something (very easy, a few minutes) and she appreciated that I told her. (I still had to do it.) We’re also going to take another whack at something we started not long after I started seeing her. I’m more comfortable now, so it might go better this time around.

    She pointed out quite rationally that he is prescribing psychotropic drugs and he does need to know, and she knows me better than he does and she knows more terms than I do. “We do stress management.” Release forms next week – but it says something that a therapist through the school is the one bringing up release forms and not the licensed pompous Ego.

    A side note about Ego – he and my father have the same first name. We’re all a bit alike – stubborn, but my dad has quite the ego himself, but nothing to back it up. Well, because my dad is immature, he, his lawyer, and my mom’s lawyer (mom was ordered to stay away – her lawyer is awesome, but he knows how much bad blood there is – mom was at the fast food place across the street) met with Dr Ego for “proof”. Dr Ego was on fire and scared my mom’s lawyer. Needless to say, dad lost that battle.

  21. Yay Canada!

    I remember a week or so ago, the TV people trotted out “Miracle On Ice” (30 years ago) when the US beat Canada at hockey.

    Now is this ya’ll’s “Miracle On Ice”? (Except we’re not at war.)

    Oh well, this will get posted in a week once the partying has stopped. 😉

    And Happy Holi!

  22. In the Miracle On Ice, the US beat the USSR and ended the Cold War and load of other things.

    That’s clunky up there – they brought up the ’80 Lake Placid Olympics because every time the US cares about hockey, that’s what we do.

  23. I just saw the film, “Penelope” and have been trying to view it from an anti-ableist perspective. I liked that Peter Dinklage plays an important secondary character whose dwarfism is neither mentioned nor relevant to the story.

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