health issues

Pariah

/ Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

Hmmm…

Rolando Moon is looking a bit like how I feel!

Warning: venting ahead!

Today was a mix of good and bad.

The kitties are always part of the good. :-) Rolando Moon was especially wanting attention this morning.

My main thing today was to help my mother with her groceries, so she could get more than what she can carry home in her walker. With that in mind, I called the grocery store first, asking about medical exemptions to the new mask mandate. This municipality has been under one for a while and we had no problems before, but the province is putting on the pressure, so I wanted to check. I was assured it was not a problem; I was just asked to let the cashier know when we came in.

Then my mother called. She was ready, so I ended up leaving early.

The caretakers in her building are still harassing her, so she was waiting for me outside one of the side doors. With a mask on under her nose. :-( At least she can breathe, but she may as well not be wearing it! She tried to say, it keeps her mouth warm. :-( The harassment is definitely getting to her.

She wanted to go to the pharmacy first, which I was not expecting. I did have my exemption card, and a printout of the new mandate’s medical exemption portion, ready. Of course, I kept my distance from everyone but my mother, and didn’t touch anything but what she needed help with.

It wasn’t good enough.

I got kicked out.

The irony of it is, when a manager was brought over to tell me they would not recognize the medical exemption in the mandate, he was wearing a gappy mask, and pulling on it as he spoke. So he wasn’t wearing a mask properly, himself, but it’s me they’re worried about? They (he and the woman who first tried to make me wear a mask) kept making comments about protecting their staff – from me! – and they were following some other guidelines, instead of the mandate. I was treated like a pariah.

My mother, whom they know by name, with her mask under her nose, was allowed to keep shopping. I did mention she was exempt, too, but they didn’t care. So utterly arbitrary.

Thankfully, she did not need much there, and I waited for her outside. Like I was some kind of leper.

The grocery store, on the other hand, was awesome. I told the cashier we were exempt, and that I’d called ahead about it, and she said it was fine. A friend of mine works there and we started to chat a bit. I told him what happened, and he was flabbergasted. He told me of a person he knows that cannot wear masks. When the mandate came in, she was laid off. Permanently. Which is illegal, but they did it, anyway.

When my mother was done her shopping and I was helping her at the cash desk, I made sure to tell the cashier how much I appreciated that they don’t discriminate against people for their medical issues, and to please pass my thanks on to management. She was very understanding about it. I suspect she’s seen a lot of this.

Once back at my mother’s place, she was acting like she had to sneak me in through the side door, out of fear of the caretakers. Once we had her groceries inside, I took a printout of the relevant portions of the mandate to tape to her door, making it as small and neat as I could. She has a mask exemption card there already, but medical exemption section number in the current mandate has changed, and I don’t know when I can get an updated one.

Then I stayed for a little while to chat. Not long after, we heard voices in the hall. No big deal – until those voices stopped outside her door. We could hear two people talking about the portion of the mandate on her door, and how “she had to do that…” because the section numbers had changed.

Then the person doing most of the talking said, “she can’t be allowed to get away with that” and “this shouldn’t be here”.

!!!

My mother recognized one of the voices as one of the caretakers.

Clearly, this person was aware of the exemptions, but didn’t want people in the building to know about them, or actually use them.

They continued talking and I got my phone out to try and record it, but it’s really hard to hear. I did catch the “shouldn’t be here” comment as they were walking away down the hallway.

I didn’t stay much longer. As soon as it was quiet, I left.

As I did, I saw two people sitting outside the main doors, watching me. Both pulled their masks down while I was walking to the car and, as I was leaving, I could see one of them on her phone.

It could have been anybody, or the woman making the call could have been one of the two people we heard in the hallway.

As soon as I could, once I was home, I made a phone call to a social worker who has been trying to help my mother. When last I spoke to her, she’d given me the number for the housing department responsible for the building my mother lives in. I told her I’d tried calling, left message, and there has been no response. She was not surprised. I told her there was another incident.

She told me she just had another incident, too, but to go ahead and tell her mine, first.

I knew immediately they were related.

I told her what happened, and she was able to put names to the voices we heard. We had a pretty extensive chat about the whole thing.

I’ll also be coming in on Monday to write an incident report.

As for her incident? Yup. It was related. There was a complaint about my mother and “she can’t be allowed to get away with this” along with the accusation that my mother was lying about her medical issues. I’m guessing the person I saw outside her building, making a call, was the person who phoned to complain.

Since I was there to hear what they said first hand, and I don’t live there, I can make the incident report myself. Something a lot of the people who live where my mom does either cannot do, or are to afraid to do.

I was also encouraged to file a human rights complaint about what happened to me, too. I’ve also been encouraged to go to the media.

On the one hand, I really don’t want that added stress. On the other, the stress of all this is already there.

This is all so very wrong.

The Re-Farmer

A Lazy Day

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

Gotta start with some morning smiles!

Nostrildamus aka Nosy, really wanted attention this morning! Even the Spice Boys let me pet them. :-)

Rolando Moon kept following me around while I did my rounds, then again when I made a quick trip to the post office (timed it badly, though; they were still closed for lunch, so I couldn’t pick up a parcel) and to pick up a few things. (I did phone ahead to ask about medical exemptions to the mask mandate, so I had no issues while I was there.) When I got home, Rolando Moon met me at the gate and kept following me!

I was still taking off my shoes and jacket when my husband suddenly asked, “who’s this?”

Rolando Moon had snuck into the house while I was carrying stuff in!

The other cats absolutely surrounded her, sniffing away. Amazingly, she wasn’t growling or hissing at any of them while they did! Even more surprising was Fenrir, who was not only sniffing her, but rubbing her face against Rolando’s. I wonder if she recognized her? At some point, though, there was a sudden scuffle. My daughter broke it up, and when I opened the door, Rolando bolted for the great outdoors. :-D

Meanwhile, today was a completely lazy day. I did not continue any of the stuff I’d started yesterday. It was a dark and dreary day, and by the time it warmed up to a decent temperature, what little light there was, was gone.

Tomorrow will be colder still, but I’ll be out helping my mother with her shopping. We’re supposed to warm up again on Saturday, but it’s also supposed to rain. We’ll see how that works out.

So I guess today was a day of rest and recuperation. My wrist and hands have been giving me grief, and working on those trees yesterday didn’t help. I am pretty sure I broke a finger a while back. Nothing major, but I think I may have had a linear fracture. I’d been trying to look behind something in the barn, not realizing the far end was under some metal bars leaning in the corner. One of them fell towards me and I’d blocked it with my hand. It hit the side of my pinky finger. That was weeks ago. I can now feel a lump where the metal hit the proximal phalange, and it still hurts. While cutting back the maple trees yesterday, I kept bumping it, or what I was going would put pressure on it, reminding me that yup; I probably broke it! No point in getting it checked, though. After all this time, it would just be confirming whether or not there was an actual fracture. It would be good to find out what’s going on with my wrists, though. Not with all the restrictions in place right now. People have been refused emergency care for broken bones until they got tested and quarantined already, and that was before the current mandates were put into effect.

It looks like I won’t be going back to the one hardware store anymore, either. I got an email back from the manager I’d written to about them refusing to honour my medical exemption. From the looks of the response, they spend quite a bit of time working it out. In the end, though, if a person cannot wear a mask, they cannot come into the store. They can phone ahead, order online, etc., then have things brought out to their vehicle and pay for them in the parking lot.

Like lepers.

All this for .28% “active cases” of the Wu Flu in the entire province, most of which are in the city, and of those, they’re almost all in particular nursing homes, or people who were already in the hospital for other things. The percentage of people in hospital with the Wu Flu is .01%, with .001% in ICU. The total death rate for our province since spring is .006%. Yet people are acting like it’s the Bubonic Plague, which killed an estimated 30% – 60% of all of Europe’s population. Worse, is the increased level of cruelty, harassment and abuse I’m seeing surrounding the mask issue, all from pro-maskers.

At times like this, I wish we could be living even more isolated than we are already. :-(

The Re-Farmer

Got a new toy, and dealing with unexpected issues

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments
“Only” 10 yard cats showed up for breakfast. :-)

This morning, after doing my rounds and feeding the felines, I headed into town to run a few errands. This included stopping at the post office in our little hamlet. Which is also a liquor store.

I bought a whole lot of wine.

Or, should I say, my daughter did, since she paid for it. :-D

We don’t actually want the wine, but it came in 3L jugs. We need to rack our hard apple cider, and I’ve been hesitating because we only have gallon jugs (4L) to rack into. With using unfiltered, raw apple juice, there is going to be a LOT left behind when we siphon off the liquid, and 4L jugs would have left a lot more headroom than there should be.

The 3L wine bottles will be perfect carboys.

We will just have to drink a lot of wine over the next couple of days! :-D

I hope it’s actually good wine. I’m not a wine drinker to begin with, so chances are pretty high I won’t like it. :-D

I was happy to see the waterproof cord protectors came in in the mail, so that’s another step closer to winterizing the cat house.

Once in town, I made a point of stopping at a local business that had been getting threats, including death threats, for putting up a humorous sign saying “face diapers” were not required to enter. I’d talked to one of the owners online, and wanted to stop in in person to show them some support. We had an excellent chat. It turned out the owner has a health condition and cannot wear a mask. Even though there is no mask mandate, some of the local businesses are refusing to allow anyone in without a mask, even if it means discriminating against people on the basis of health, so he wanted people to know everyone was welcome in his business, with or without a mask. It was good to hear that, for all the threats and efforts to cancel his business out completely, he’s now busier than ever! It’s a printing business, and he gave me a bunch of business card sized notices of exemption, citing the relevant portion of the mandates (for those municipalities the province put mandates on) and phone numbers.

One of them will be going on my mother’s door, and I’ll be giving her one to carry with her, too.

After visiting the shop, I went to the other hardware store in town, hoping they might have something I could use to cut the piece of door frame for the sun room. Even just clamps, so I could use the reciprocating saw.

I ended up leaving with an inexpensive jigsaw.

My new toy got a major workout today! It even went through hidden nails.

But before I started that, I ended up spending some time on the computer, emailing with my siblings about the situation with my mother. Then I called her and asked for the name and number for the social worker she deals with. These are the people she talks to when there are problems where she lives. She didn’t want to give me the number, saying she didn’t want to make trouble with the caretakers. She had found a note under her door saying that I should be wearing a mask in the building, but it was not signed or anything. She’s pretty sure who left it. We talked about how she should not be wearing a mask, and she again said she didn’t want to make trouble, and just takes it off her face when she needs to breathe. !!!! I convinced her to give me the information, and promised to be nice to them. :-D

It turns out that the number was for a senior’s office, and while they often do things where my mother lives (until they got canceled by the pandemic restrictions), they don’t actually have any say in what goes on there. That falls under a provincial department.

When I called them, identifying myself and my relationship to my mother, then told them what happened, they immediately came to the same conclusion as my mother about who left the note. At one point, I was talking to two people on speakerphone, and they seemed so incredibly happy that I was calling on behalf of my mother. It turns out they have been trying for years to get this caretaking couple fired, due to their horrific and abusive behaviour towards the seniors in the buildings they work in – not just the one my mother is in! – but they have the residents so intimidated, no one is willing to write a formal complaint to the provincial department that manages the building. It turns out this couple has especially targeted my mother, who stands up to them the most. The ladies I spoke to vehemently agreed that my mother should not be wearing a mask, but she has told them she’s afraid of what would happen – meaning how the caretakers would react – if she didn’t. !!! They have already threatened to get my mother evicted, and it turns out they’ve threatened the job of one of the social workers, too!

In the end, I got a name and number for the person they’ve been working with at the provincial level, and they were thrilled that I was willing to call with a complaint (because even if they witness something, they are not allowed to say anything themselves), asking me to let them know how it works out.

When I called the number, though, it went straight to voice mail, so I left a message saying I wanted to talk about elder abuse towards my mother. I will try again tomorrow.

Once I did as much as I could with that, I headed outside and started to set up to use my new toy.

I was being watched!

Sibling snuggles!

So adorable!

Of course, once I started making too much noise, they ran off.

With my daughter’s help, I was able to cut the marked area off the piece of frame. Then we set it in place and…

… made a new mark to cut it again.

Finally! We can close the door with the frame piece.

I had considered screwing the pieces in place, but in the end, decided we’ll just nail them.

The crazy thing is, with all the buckets, jars, tins and plastic margarine containers full of nails all over the place, we have absolutely no nails that we can use to put the frame pieces in!

We’ve got lots of roofing nails, though. :-D

So tomorrow, I will make another trip into town.

Once the frame pieces are back, we will remove the door and use the pieces I cut off the frame on one side, to add to the frame on the other side, so that the door will hang straight, even if the sun room itself is now shifted.

It is all a horrible, messy looking patch job, but until we are in a position to replace the entire door frame, it’s the best we can do for now.

I’m glad I found that little jig saw. It still had a hard time cutting this surprisingly hard wood. That is also managed to cut through some hidden nails, barely slowing down, is bonus.

I will have to make a point of stocking up on spare blades. I foresee using this baby a lot, in the future!

Once we did as much as we could with the door, I had a chance to paint the other side of the support post for the old platform bird feeder. I’ve already picked up a new hanging feeder to put on its hook, ready and waiting. For now, I will not be trying to put on a new platform, and will just leave the little support pieces for that, where they are.

If all goes well, we should be able to set it up by the end of this week. I’ll just have to pick up some more bird seed. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Forgot about that…

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Yesterday, while working on the squash beds, I was thinking ahead to working on the beet and carrot beds today.

Braveheart (front) and Nostrildamus (rear) both allow me to pet them, and even skritch their ears now – but only after I’ve provided them with kibble in the morning!

Forgetting completely that today was our day to do our monthly shop.

Which turned out to be a good thing, since it also turned out to be a day of intermittent rain, so I wouldn’t have been able to get much done outside!

Rosencrantz (eating by herself) eagerly let me pet her this morning, but her babies and grand-baby won’t let me near them!

So my younger daughter and I made the trip into the city with our itinerary. It’s taken almost three years, but we’ve got the routine for ordinary stocking up down to a pretty efficient routine that also ensures the least amount of time for frozen and refrigerated items to be in the van. Ice packs and insulated bags are good only so far! We didn’t have any unusual things to get this time, so it was just breakfast (drive through, then eating in the parking lot) and the three regular stores we go to.

I was a bit concerned this time around, since the city’s “casedemic” resulted in mandatory masking, with fines, beginning rather arbitrarily two days ago. My views on the usefulness of masks aside, I really can’t wear one. (My daughter wears a home made cloth mask.) I’d heard some people had been given a hard time already. With medical exemptions, we should be able to just say we can’t wear one and that’s it. I’d heard that some people had letters from doctors demanded of them, which is ridiculous. For starters, as far as I know, doctors have been instructed not to give those out. Plus, it’s against PIPA to ask that information. Not all employees are told this, though, and some are are… shall we say… far more aggressive about it then they should be.

Thankfully, I had no reason to be concerned for the places we went to.

The first stop was Walmart, which is where we get some of our cat food. They have more flavours than Costco does, and we like to give the cats some variety. The last time we went there, there was someone at the entry that tried to offer me a mask, but was okay when I politely said I couldn’t wear one. This time, there was no one at that station at all. The sanitation station was still there, so I used some on my hands, but there wasn’t anyone at that station, either. Almost everyone in the store had masks, though I did see a few without. I might have gotten some startled looks from other customers, but with only half their faces visible, I’m not sure. :-/

The next store was a local international grocery store franchise that carries a few things we can’t find anywhere else. It’s also where we get our fresh produce in smaller-than-Costco quantities. This place has always been awesome. Aside from some signage, nothing had changed. I wasn’t really paying attention, but I think I only saw a couple of staff without masks, and that’s it.

The last stop was Costco. The last time we were there, there was someone at a booth offering masks. Again, there had been no issue with me saying I couldn’t wear one. Just a rather startled response. I think. Hard to tell behind the mask. In spite of all the booths, counters and cash registers being shielded, all the staff had to wear masks, though I did see a few face shields, instead.

Today, the woman in the booth with the masks, who had both mask and gloves on this time, immediately started using some kitchen tongs to pick up a surgical mask to offer me. I just told her “I can’t wear one, thanks”, and that was it. I think I saw maybe one or two other people without masks. I saw no staff wearing face shields this time.

In each place we went, things went smoothly. The only hitch was at Costco. The section where the toilet paper, facial tissues and paper towels usually are, was empty. Not a single product! Just a couple of pallets! I’d heard that people were starting to panic buy toilet paper again, but really? I wish I’d thought of it earlier and picked some up while we were at one of the other two stores. They had plenty of inventory. We have enough to last us a little longer, though. We’ll see if we have to make a second trip into the city later in the month. That partly depends on when we can get a plumber in to switch out the well pump, and how much that ends up costing.

Still, we managed to get pretty much everything we needed, and it was all nice and quick. No one gave me a hard time, which was greatly appreciated.

As we started heading out of the city, though, I did have to pull over and get my daughter to drive. My mystery pain in my side decided it was a good day to kick in. While shopping, I can use the cart as a walker, but it was getting difficult to sit up straight while driving.

The drive home saw us going through several downpours along with way, with wind gusts trying to push the van off the road. !! It sure felt good to get home – and to be restocked for at least most of the month, again.

Oh, I did have one splurge while at Walmart. I found and picked up a package of fermentation lids. I’ve never seen any other store with fermentation lids! These have a cap to fit a wide mouth jar, with a build in airlock and, instead of a fermentation weight, it has a spring to push things down.

Too bad we didn’t have these when we were pickling our squash! :-)

I’m thinking maybe we should pick up another cabbage and try making small batch sauerkraut again. :-)

Meanwhile, it looks like it will continue to be wet, chilly and unpleasant outside.

I think it’s time for a nice big pot of tea!

The Re-Farmer

Unexpected

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Oh, what a day this turned out to be. I’m looking at the time and wondering why it’s not several hours later, because this day has felt much longer than normal!

But first, I share the pleasantly unexpected thing.

As I finished up my outdoor morning routine and headed for the house, I noticed something white in the window of the cat house.

Plus, something moving in the shadows behind!

Unfortunately, my coming closer startled the cats. You can just see a hind leg of mystery kitten, who dashed out as I got closer. Little Braveheart was still in the window, and I was pretty sure it was Tabby that I saw in the shadows.

Then, the Creamsicle emerged!

Creamsicle was the first cat I saw checking out the new shelter, and I’ve seen Tabby lounging in the window. I’ve seen other kittens coming out from under it, but this is the first time I’ve seen Mystery or Braveheart inside, and the first time I’ve seen more than one cat in there. This is very encouraging. I know, in past winters, even cats that didn’t get along would still join the pile on the swing bench to keep warm, but it’s still great to see some confirmation that they can use the new space peacefully together.

What I am really hoping to see if Butterscotch’s babies going in there! They are so much smaller and younger, they are the most as risk from the coming cold. Weather Canada is forecasting a long fall and late starting winter, though. I hope they are right, because I’ve also seen forecasts for an early, long and bitterly cold winter coming up.

Meanwhile, the predicted rains last night turned out to be a brief but wicked thunderstorm, complete with driving rain, thunder, lightning, high winds and – no surprise – losing our internet. Thankfully, we did not lose power. As I write this, in the early evening, we’re still at a very warm 25C/77F!

Among the things I needed to do today was head into town and pick up my husband’s prescription refills. Even with a box of insulin, thanks to his excellent private insurance plan, the grand total is rarely more than $100. Last month, his refills happened to include both his injections and needles, and for the first time since things got messed up with his restricted painkillers, his bubble packs had all of his medications in them. So it was quite a shock, but not too unexpected, for the cost to be closer to $300. This time, it should have been less.

It was more. The total was almost $400.

At this time of the month, I simply didn’t have that. The cashier started checking the slips for me and noted that not all of them had the 3rd party payment (what the insurance company pays) on them. With 16 medications, it added up fast.

So I got her to suspend the sale while I stepped aside to look through the slips and then, if necessary, transfer funds from our emergency account. I was perplexed, though. What changed?

I went back to the pharmacists and asked if anything new had been added. The pain clinic doctor was supposed to call our regular doctor and talk medications. Our doctor said that he would fax any new prescriptions directly to the pharmacy. Could that be what happened?

Nope. Nothing was changed. However, according to what was showing up on the computer, we had reached our limit with the insurance company for medications.

Our what???

This has never happened before.

In the end, the pharmacist took back the printed out slips and told me to just take the medications, and come back after we cleared it up with the insurance company. They would rebill the amount then.

Yes. The pharmacy let me walk away with hundreds of dollars of medications without paying for them! Her comment was “we know you’ll come back.” Which is true. There’s no risk to them, since we are regulars, but still… that’s a lot of money walking out the door!

The next several hours was spent alternating between my husband and myself on the phone, with him calling the insurance company first.

In a nutshell, because we now live in a province that has Pharmacare – a provincially run government insurance program – the insurance company covers the cost of the deductible, then stops paying out because the system then covers the rest – but the system didn’t kick in.

As far as I knew, when we sent in an application for Pharmacare, shortly after moving here, we didn’t get accepted. I remember getting a letter asking for my tax information from 2015, when no such information was asked for on the form (my husband and I were both on the one form). I remember getting another letter since then that was basically a giant word salad and, as far as I could make out, we didn’t qualify. So I assumed we did not have it.

The insurance company’s limit on the deductible was only $1500. I called the pharmacy and talked to someone there who looked up my husband’s file, and they’d actually paid out almost $2000, so we were well past the limit. Most confusing of all, according to what she was seeing, is that we were approved for Pharmacare. We had it. But it didn’t kick in when it should have.

She gave me the number to call and find out why.

It turned out our Pharmacare deductible was actually over $3000. Which meant we were on the hook for the rest. The guy I spoke to said we should have gotten a letter back in the spring with the deductible amount. That would have been the letter that I understood as telling us we didn’t actually qualify. He said he would mail us a new one, which our insurance company would probably want to see.

Also, two of my husband’s medications (one of which is the pain killer that comes in slow and quick release forms) are not covered by Pharmacare at all.

My husband then called the insurance company back. Sure enough, once they have the proof in hand, they will adjust the limit to match what our deductible.

I called the pharmacy back and explained it to them, and they are fine with our coming back after all this was done, so they could re-bill the insurance company, and we would be paying only whatever was left. How long that takes depends on how quickly the letter gets to us in the mail (after that, my husband can just email a copy to the insurance company), which could take more than a week.

Our pharmacy is awesome!

If we were living in a province without Pharamacare, this would never have happened. What I don’t understand is why this didn’t happen last year! I guess the new medications my husband was put on after his stay in the hospital was enough to kick it over this year, but he was put on them late enough in the year last year, that it wasn’t an issue.

By the time this was all figured out, my husband and I were both completely drained.

The rest of the day’s plans went out the window.

It’s time to de-stress!

The Re-Farmer

Broken. Like our system

/ Re-Farmer / 13 Comments

Okay.

I think this is going to be a difficult post to write.

To recap for our new followers (Welcome! Thanks for joining us!); about a year and a half ago, my husband ended up in the emergency room for what turned out to be pulmonary edema. He spent the night in the hospital, was sent home with a prescription (without being told what it was for) and told to follow up with his regular doctor. He had a week’s worth of what turned out to be water pills, but the earliest he could get an appointment with his doctor was almost 2 weeks later.

While he had been feeling a bit better for a while, once he ran out of the pills, he started to crash again. When we got to his appointment, he was in such bad shape, I had to ask for the use of a wheelchair to help him come in.

The clinic was part of a hospital building, but there was only 1 bariatric wheelchair. I can’t even remember right now if they ever found it. I think he ended up using a regular wheelchair. The nurse that wheeled him into the exam room was looking very alarmed, and was saying my husband would probably be going straight to the emergency room. Sure enough, the doctor basically took one look at him and sent him over. They were wondering why he hadn’t been followed up on after his time in the emergency before, and we told them that this was the follow up!

He ended up in the hospital for 3 weeks. In that time, along with almost killing him by giving him too much insulin and not checking his blood sugars before deciding on the doses, they managed to drain over 100 pounds of fluid out of him. His pulmonary edema was actually peripheral edema, and he was diagnosed with heart failure.

Since then, my husband had been expected to go into the city once a month or so, as they tried to determine the cause of his heart failure and decide on courses of action. There is only one cardiac clinic serving the entire province so, as you can imagine, it’s pretty busy.

These trips have been incredibly hard on my husband, his back injury and his pain levels. It’s one thing to be sitting in the van for the drive (about 3 hours driving in total). It’s another to be sitting in the waiting room for such a long time, then waiting again in the examination room, only to be seen for maybe half an hour.

Now, we deliberately leave early for these appointments. It takes an hour to reach the city, under normal circumstances. Getting to the hospital, if traffic is light and we get nothing but green lights, takes maybe 10 minutes. Most of the time, though, it takes about 20 minutes. That gives us another 10 minutes for me to pull in, unload his walker, leave him to find his way in, then search for someplace to park.

However, we don’t leave things to chance and leave 2 hours early, and today is a good example of why this is necessary. On the way to the city, we hit a section where cracks in the road were being patched. A two lane highway was reduced to one lane, and they were alternating each direction of traffic to let through. So we spent some time driving very slowly through the construction, then just stopped on the road as we waited for traffic from the other direction to pass through. Then, once in the city, we were delayed by more lane closures bottle necking traffic. That one area has been under construction for as long as we’ve been out here, so more than three years! I really would have expected them to be done by now. :-/

My point being, we respect their time and go out of our way to ensure we will be there before the scheduled appointment, so he can be checked in and ready when they are.

There was one day, however, that – after waiting for 1 1/2 hours – he was in so much pain he walked out. It was that day that we discovered they built in a half hour waiting period. So while he was told in to come in for a certain time, they had his appointment for half an hour later. We’d already come in 15 minutes early. Even with the built in waiting period, they were still 45 minutes late when he left. Who knows how much longer he would have had to wait if he hadn’t. They certainly didn’t seem like they were going to bring him in anytime soon.

He talked to the clinic on the phone after that, and for his next appointment, they had a stretcher for him. It helped, but the trips still wiped him out.

To make things worse, they have not been able to figure out why he has an ejection fraction of only about 20% (I think it’s up to 22% now). They can’t find anything to explain it. There is no reason that they can find, for him to have heart failure.

Then the pandemic shutdowns happened.

He was supposed to have an appointment in April, when they called in March. After interviewing him on the phone, it was decided to continue with phone appointments until they could start rescheduling. It was a surprise to be called back for a June appointment. We were expecting July or August.

He ended up having having to cancel due to pain.

He was rescheduled to July and had an appointment then, but with the pandemic measures, I couldn’t go in with him. It was a short appointment.

He had an appointment in August. Pain was a major issue again, so he called to ask if they would be able to accommodate with a stretcher again. I’m not sure what exactly they said, but he was made to feel like he was imposing on them significantly, so he cancelled the appointment.

Today was the rescheduled appointment. One of the things they want to see him for, is to decide if he is a candidate to have a defibrillator implanted.

With all the delays, I was still able to drop him off almost 15 minutes early, then found a place to park some 5 blocks away. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go in with him, so I just walked around to play Pokemon Go.

The high winds that broke our tent had clearly hit the city, too! This tree was in a park near the hospital, and I was seeing broken branches all over the place.

My husband was able to text me to keep me updated, so I knew when he was able to get checked in. Some time later, I got another text from him.

He was still in the waiting room.

Alone.

There was absolutely no other patients waiting. Not only that, but I found out later that at 12:30, which is he was told his appointment was for, he saw and heard a group of doctors, leaving. They were going for coffee.

Did they book in a half hour waiting time again? Without any other patients???

Finally, after he’d been waiting half an hour, and he was already telling me he was ready to leave, he was brought into an examination room. By that point, I was starting to meander back to the van.

Then I got a text simply saying “I’m out.”

So I rushed to the van. When I got there, I quickly texted him to let him know I had reached the van, so he would have an idea of how much longer I would be.

That’s when I noticed the time stamp on his last text.

There was no way anyone had seen him.

So off I went to pick him up at the main entrance. This is supposed to have a patient loading zone in front, with enough room for several cars, or a couple of handi-vans.

Of course, people were just parked there. The vehicle in front of me didn’t even do that. He just sort of half pulled in and stopped. I ended up having to drive around him, then stop in the lane – thankfully, there was no traffic behind me – to pick up my husband and load the walker into the van.

As we drove, he told me the rest of what happened. After waiting, in pain, for so long, he finally struggled to get his shirt back on, then simply left. As he was leaving, a tech was coming in with the EKG machine, and she called out to him, but he kept going. As he went through the waiting room (which finally had one other patient in it), the woman behind the counter started chasing him down. By this point, he had no tolerance left and simply said that next time, make the appointment for the actual time, and kept going.

We both realize that he is probably viewed as a problem patient right now. What we can’t figure out is how a cardiac clinic in a hospital can be so oblivious to accommodating the needs of disabled patients. I mean, besides heart conditions. After a year and a half, and his pain being an issue in the past so often, you’d think they’d at least have notes on his file or something, about his extenuating circumstances.

I don’t know.

My husband plans to write to the clinic with a letter of complaint – though he’s going to give himself time to calm down, first! I suggested that he send a copy of it to our new doctor, too.

At this point, he doesn’t want to go back. At all. He sees no point. They’re not finding why his heart is doing what it’s doing; everything else related to his heart is checking out healthy. He’d already been doing most of the things they recommend, and the things he isn’t doing, he can’t because of his back injury and pain levels. They did acknowledge this issue.

He is hardly the only patient they have with multiple health issues beyond a heart condition. How many other patients are going through the same problems he is, but aren’t confident enough to simply get up and walk out? How many are just meekly accepting being treated like afterthoughts, because they are too scared of their condition to speak out? I guess that’s one “benefit” for my husband; he’s been through so much over the last while, developing a heart condition is just another thing on the list, and not even near the top.

At this point, I don’t know what steps will happen next. For my husband, getting the pain under control is the greater priority. And that is waiting for the doctor at the pain clinic to talk to our new doctor. Which doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

This is all so incredibly frustrating.

The Re-Farmer

Get a little bit closer, and a follow up

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I headed out to water things this evening, but got distracted.

Junk Pile and two of her babies were out!

I ended up lying right on the ground, in hopes that would make them less intimidated by the tall(ish) human.

Creamsicle took full advantage of the situation.

What a silly boy!

Tabby didn’t come any closer than this, but did spend some time rolling around under the grapes, in between watching me.

Little Braveheart did come a bit closer to the stick I was wiggling, but not close enough to actually touch it.

It was funny to watch Little Braveheart and her mother. They share many of the same mannerisms, and often mimicked each other’s movements.

They also have the same eyes! Even though the markings in their fur are different, they have the same facial structure and many other similarities.

The grapes, meanwhile, did eventually get watered, and are looking really good.

The more shaded ones at the back of the trellis are noticeably darker than the ones that are more exposed.

While tending the rest of the garden, I found this.

The tallest of our sunflowers is starting to open up its seed head! So far, it’s the only one at this stage.

Awesome!!! I can’t wait to see how big the seed head gets.

Meanwhile…

My husband and I had our medical appointments today. Heading out two days in a row was really hard on him. Thankfully, we got in quickly, and didn’t have long to wait.

I learned one thing today that my husband forgot to mention after yesterday’s appointment at the pain clinic. The doctor there was going to phone our doctor here to discuss recommended pain medications.

Another reason I’m unhappy I wasn’t allowed to go in with him yesterday. He forgets things more often, these days. At least he remembered this while with our doctor!

The doctor had a couple of concerns. For one, he will be referring my husband to an endocrinologist, so we’ll be getting a phone call about that. He also wants to adjust my husband’s prescriptions, but will wait until he talks to the pain clinic doctor, go through his current medications, and think about it. Once he’s done that, he will fax any new/changed prescriptions directly to the pharmacy.

As for the rest of my husband’s bloodwork, it was all fine.

Then it was my turn. My bloodwork was fine, across the board. During the physical, we did get a laugh. After testing my reflexes, he did the usual putting his hand on my knee while flexing the joint, as he started to ask if I had any issues with pain, etc. When he lifted my lower leg, he cut himself off in mid sentence with a startled “Oh!!”

To which I responded to his half-finished question, “yes. Arthritis. You felt that, did you?” :-D

Yeah, both my knees do some interesting things when they’re flexed!!

One thing with both my husband and I was, what we thought were heat rashes turned out to be fungal infections. !! So we both got prescriptions for creams to treat that. When we were done, I dropped my husband off at home, picked up a daughter, then headed into town to get the prescriptions filled before the pharmacy closed. A stop at the mail on the way out found a letter from the heart clinic, with my husband’s rescheduled appointment, early next month.

I’ll have to remind him to phone them about it right away, to arrange some sort of accommodations, like having a stretcher available for him, for an appointment they say might take up to 2 hours.

So while nothing much changed at today’s appointment, steps were taken and others are being put in place, for the near future.

We shall see what comes of it.

The Re-Farmer

How it went

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So…

My husband and I are back from his appointment at the pain clinic in the city.

In a nutshell?

Nothing happened, and nothing will happen. At least not there.

To backtrack a bit.

When we first moved here, one of the first things we had to do was find a new doctor for my husband. Just a GP to start with, so he could get his prescriptions refilled, to start with. From there, he could get referrals to specialists, as needed.

Before the move, my husband had a primary caregiver (at first, a Nurse Practitioner, then a GP), a physiotherapist, an exercise specialist, a psychiatrist and, at the pain clinic, a team of 4 or 5 people; I can’t remember exactly how many, but there was the doctor that was “team lead” on his file, a doctor that specialized in medications, another on physical care/exercise, and one or two more that I can’t remember what they specialized in anymore. I might be forgetting another specialist.

It took him a year to get into the pain clinic in the city, but that was only because his paperwork somehow got lost.

Twice.

So somewhere between the regular clinic and the pain clinic, there were issues, but once he got in, things went quickly.

We were hoping to find something similar here, but really didn’t know what to expect.

The new doctor got a referral to the pain clinic in quickly. That was in February of 2018. What we were expecting to get was a phone call for an appointment. As months went by, the doctor would check to confirm, and yes, my husband was still on the waiting list. Then this doctor had to suddenly move, we found our current doctor and saw him for the first time in December of 2019.

When he found out how long my husband had been on the waiting list, he promised to push to get him in.

In February, my husband got – not a phone call, but 14 pages of questions they wanted him to answer. All of which was information that would have been in his medical file. He answered as best he could, but some of it simply went back too far, and we no longer had the details (which would have been in his file, anyhow), while others were too complicated to answer on the form. At one point, my husband even wrote in, “don’t you have this one file?”

Then the pandemic lockdown happened in March.

No more health care, unless you thought you had the virus, or were in an emergency situation – and even those got punted.

So that added another 6 months to the wait. Today’s appointment was almost exactly 2 1/2 years, to the day, since my husband was put on the waiting list.

We made the drive in, and it took about 1 1/2 hours to get to the clinic – about 15 minutes less than I’d expected, but traffic was pretty clear when we came in. (It took longer to get out of the city, later.)

When we got there, I was able to drop my husband off with his walker at a ramp, then parked nearby as he went in ahead of me. At this point, we were about half an hour early for his appointment. Plenty of time to go through the gauntlet to get to where he needed to be.

After I parked and went to follow him (he was NOT required to use a mask, Thank God!), I was told they were allowing patients, only. I could not go in with him.

They did, however, allow me to use their washroom, at least!

The city is even hotter than we are – it was 32C/89F with a humidex of 37C/98C. There was no way I could wait in the van in that heat. So I started wandering around to try and find some shade in the area.

I found some.

There was even a place to sit down.

Sort of.

Thankfully, I still had some waterproof cushions in the van that I’d bought so my daughter and I could sit outside on damp concrete benches to have lunch together, months ago.

By this time, my husband had texted me to let me know where he was, at the same time I was texting him to let him know I wasn’t allowed to join him.

Since it was a while before his appointment was booked for, I took advantage of the time and played some Pokemon Go. I even found a nice, little park next to a Pokemon Go gym I could battle in.

Such a lovely, shady spot.

Sometimes, people really suck.

I’d been playing for a while when I got a text from my husband – well past his appointment time – informing me that he was still waiting.

I walked around for a while longer before returning to the shade by the clinic. By the time I got the message that he was done, it was an hour past his appointment time.

So how long was the appointment?

Well, it turned out to be a two part appointment.

For the first part, a nurse came in to talk to him about his diet and diabetes, while skimming over his file.

He ended up cutting her off to ask if they could focus on why he was there: his pain.

It turns out that some of his pain issues was listed in his file as being diabetic related.

In reality, his diabetes is related to the pain. And the other pains that were noted as being diabetic related are actually from nerve damage due to problems with his spine, which in turn are exacerbated by the original injury.

The nurse left after about 10 minutes. He could hear she was talking to the doctor in the hallway before the doctor came in, and gets the feeling she “warned” the doctor in advance.

The doctor was to the point – which was much appreciated – and quickly ran through potential options.

Surgery.

That was looking into years ago, and my husband is not a candidate for surgery. He explained that, and the why of it, to the doctor.

Shots.

That was in the file as having been tried before, without success.

Physiotherapy/mental coping skills.

It turns out there’s nothing at this clinic as far as physical treatment that he can’t get from any physiotherapist locally. Certainly nothing to warrant the 1 1/2 hour drive each way. There don’t seem to be any of the exercise specialists that helped him before, in this province, in any variation. As for mental coping skills, as a martial artist, my husband was already well versed in the use of meditation techniques they would advise. He’s been using them to help cope with the pain for years.

It makes for very quiet trips to and from the city, as he spends almost the entire time using those techniques to control/cope with his pain during the drive.

That left one more thing.

Medication.

And there is nothing they would do that our GP can’t.

Finally advice?

Go back to your doctor.

Which is what we’re booked to do tomorrow.

On the one hand, okay. This is good. We know what they can or can’t do. Maybe if we lived in the city, there would be more options? I don’t know.

The thing that frustrates me most is that our first doctor would not adjust my husband’s painkillers, or related medications, until the pain clinic saw him first. He had no problem adding more medications for other things, but he wasn’t going to touch the pain issues without that. He was by no means a bad doctor; in fact, he was better than the others we had to deal with when my husband ended up in the hospital. I think he was just too young, inexperienced and lacking in confidence for a file as complicated as my husband’s.

As for our current doctor, he’s seen my husband all of twice, and 1) kick started the pain clinic response in the first place and 2) is already considering alternative medications that might help with the pain better than what he’s on now.

And this is even with the pandemic shut downs slowing everything down.

Which basically means we had 2 wasted years of waiting for my husband’s pain medications to be adjusted, that wasn’t necessary. Plus the 6 months of no health care at all, due to the pandemic shut downs.

We waited 2 1/2 years for less than 15 minutes at the pain clinic, and there’s nothing there to help him.

The van was parked close to the ramp where I’d dropped him off, which was handy, since there was an ambulance parked next to the ramp’s drop off/pick up zone. Still, I wish I could have brought it closer, because I could see he was really struggling.

Then, we went to a McDonald’s, mostly so we could sit in some air conditioning. As hungry as he was, he couldn’t actually eat more than a few fries, as he was in too much pain, but it did give us a chance to catch up on what happened.

Then there was the drive home.

A very quiet drive home, as he meditated pretty much the entire trip.

We still have the drive to the doctor’s, tomorrow, but at least that clinic is only about 40 minutes away.

I do have higher hopes for our current doctor.

We shall see what happens tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

A little friend, and change of (medical) plans

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While picking cucalmelons this morning, I found a little friend!

We’ve been seeing LOTS of frogs about this size, every time we to go through the garden beds. Usually, they hop off too quickly for me to get photos, but this one didn’t move!

He was even okay with the cucamelon leaves being pulled aside.

I am very happy to see so many frogs in our garden beds. I’m sure they’re doing a great job of eating up things that would be eating our vegetables!

On a less cheerful note, the original plan for today had to change. This was the day I was supposed to bring my husband into the city for an appointment at the cardiac clinic. They want to discuss the possibility of implanting a defibrillator in him.

Unfortunately, about a week ago, my husband discovered cats had peed under his hospital bed, and under the small table with the mini fridge he keeps some of his medications in. He cleaned it up himself, rather than asking any of us to do it.

He still hasn’t completely recovered.

When his pain levels didn’t improve by Monday, he called the cardiac clinic about his appointment. The letter he received said to expect to be there for at least 2 hours. He explained his situation. The choices were to either cancel the appointment, or they could find some way to accommodate his pain levels and disability.

The appointment got cancelled.

They way he put it, the response was along the lines of, how dare he mess with their system.

They will send another letter with a new appointment (I find it interesting that they make these appointments with zero input from patients), and after he gets the new letter, he can talk to them about accommodations. Of course, he has no way of knowing if he’ll have a good day or a bad day – or even a good week or a bad week – that far in advance. That’s why he was stuck phoning them only about 48 hours before today’s appointment. No matter; even if he’s having a good day, being able to lie down on a stretcher of something would probably be needed, just after such a long drive.

I understand why the province has a single cardiac clinic in a central location. It is probably much more efficient, and allows for things like better access to equipment. The problem is, like almost all Canadian provinces, we are geographically huge, and not everyone lives in or near this particular city. We’re just an hour away from the city (though it can take another half hour to reach the clinic, depending on traffic), and it’s difficult enough. I can’t imagine living in one of the fly-in communities and needing cardiac care. Sure, the small communities don’t have the population base to warrant their own cardiac clinics, but there are large towns and other cities that could serve these more remote communities.

The fact that it’s such and inconvenience for them to accommodate my husband’s disability is also frustrating. They’re in a hospital, for crying out loud. And with so many hospitals cancelling care to make room for all the pandemic hospitalizations that never materialized, there are plenty of stretchers and beds available that could be used for someone like my husband, without having to prearrange it weeks in advance.

Another unfortunate thing with my husband is that his pain levels have forced him to cancel a number of appointments. He has also done things like walked out after being forced to wait well past his appointment time, due to pain caused by the wait itself, and basically has stood up for himself. He is likely now considered a “problem” patient. I don’t think they realize that, when it comes to his list of health problems, his recently developed heart condition is actually not at the top of the list. Not even close. With everything else going on, this new development doesn’t even phase him, and certainly doesn’t frighten him, as it probably more typical. His pain needs to be gotten under control first. Some of his other health problems are caused by the pain itself, and will improve on their own, accordingly. They have not been able to figure out why his heart failure developed in the first place, and we’re pretty sure it has more to do with the large number of medications he is on, and has been for such a long time, than anything else. We already know that there is no surgery or treatment that can “fix” the physical source of his disability, and it will continue to cause further degradation of his spine. The only real thing that can be done is treat the pain. That’s the foundational thing. Without that being addressed, treating his other problems are little more than stop-gap motions.

This has been explained at heart clinic appointments a few times. I’ve watched notes get taken for his file, that the whole team looks at. There is no reason for them to not be aware of his disability, and what that means for his appointments. Even the fact that we have to drive so far and the affect that has on his pain levels has been duly noted.

Yet when he tries to address this with them, he’s made to feel like he’s inconveniencing them somehow?

Not impressed.

Well, next week he has his first appointment with the pain clinic. Hopefully, that will get the ball rolling on more effective treatment.

The Re-Farmer

Melting

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It was a hot day to be taking my mother for her medical appointment in a van with no air conditioning!

It was already cooling down when I took the above screencap. 28C/82F, with the humidex bringing it to 35C/95F From the weather radar, I don’t expect to get that predicted thunderstorm; it appears to be moving to the north of us. I hope we’ll at least get some rain. It’s been a challenge to keep the garden beds watered. At least I haven’t needed to mow the lawn in a while. :-D

While driving my mother to her appointment, she actually asked me to open the windows more, even though we were at highway speeds. Normally, she’s asking me to close them because of the wind! Well, hopefully we’ll have her car back next week. I could see she was really struggling to get into our van. She’s so tiny! :-D

Her appointment went well. She is frustratingly healthy. All her tests came back excellent. She has obvious issues with arthritis, which there’s really nothing more she can do about, and problems with her knees. She could get surgery to fix those but, considering she won’t even wear her knee brace, there is significant doubt she would keep up with the post surgical requirements, so it didn’t even come up. Her major concern is with her “heart”. By which she means her breathing. But only sometimes, and only in the morning, when she sometimes wakes up gasping for air. The doctor suggested she try sleeping upright, to relieve pressure on her chest from certain generously proportioned parts of her anatomy. I mentioned my siblings and I have discussed getting her a sleep chair, and he said he thought that would help her a lot. He also suggested we try putting something under her mattress to elevate it. I figure we can try that for a few weeks, then assess how it helps or not. She might actually do well with a hospital bed, like my husband’s, which would allow her to lower the whole thing to get in and out easier, too.

He will also be referring her to a geriatric team to assess her. Or an “elder care team”, as he put it. She still didn’t quite understand what he meant, so when we were talking about it later, I explained to her about how some doctors specialized in helping older people, with their physical and mental needs that are different from younger people. Once she understood, she was quite excited about that, saying that yes, she needs that!

Since I was driving her around anyhow, I also helped her get some grocery shopping done, and then we had a very late lunch – in a nice, air conditioned restaurant!

All in all, it went really well, and she was on much better behavior than usual. She was having one of her good days, so it made a huge difference.

After I got home and updated my siblings on how things went, I went to do my evening rounds a bit earlier. The girls had already watered the garden beds. I tried weeding around the beets a bit, but so many of the leaves have been eaten by deer, I don’t know if I should even bother. I’d mentioned this problem to my mother, and she decided that meant we needed a dog. A dog will keep the deer away! I wish I’d remembered to mention that my sister has a dog, and they still had to fence their garden to keep the deer out. And bears, but that’s a problem we, at least, don’t have! :-D

With the bird feeder painted and done, the girls are still doing coats of paint on both sides of the screened window frame for the old basement. Today, I flipped the picnic table and scrubbed the bottoms of the legs clean of dirt, so that we can apply the spray rubber on the ends. I also cleaned a rain barrel I’ve moved near the squash beds, around the cracks it has in one area. I was going to look for some sort of silicon caulking or something to patch the cracks when I realized the spray rubber would actually be better. The application will wait until tomorrow. According to the instructions on the can, the weather we’re predicted to have will affect how well it works. The 14 day forecast predicts continued high temperatures, but no rain, so that will be a good time to start applying layers of this stuff. Meanwhile I want to make some sort of screen cover for this rain barrel, plus the one set up by the house, to keep debris and critters out. I found a bird downed in the one by the house once already – I’m guessing it flew into a sun room window, knocked itself out, then fell into the barrel. :-( Once I have a cover made, and the cracks coated, I will keep the one barrel filled so that we can use ambient temperature water on the squash, instead of cold well water. If we don’t get rain tonight, I’ll likely be filling the rain barrel by the house to warm up, too.

In the long term, I want to get some large tanks like this.

Image source.

They are sometimes available from salvage places for really low prices, and would be ideal for when we plant anything further from the house.

That, however may be a few more years into the future!

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer