Quick foot update

I got my stitches out today -- yay!! One of the things I hate most about having orthopedic surgery is having to shower with a plastic bag over the extremity in question until the stitches come out. Now I'm done with that part of it, so I'm very happy.

Everything looks good -- my foot is still a little bit swollen and bruised from the surgery, but it is healing nicely and I don't need any further follow-up care unless something goes wrong. I have to wear the ugly post-op shoe for at least another week or so, but I might cheat on that if I find that I can wear my sweet new Ecco tennis shoes without pain. My surgeon is pretty laid back about this stuff, plus he knows I'm not going to listen to him anyway.

One thing I thought was funny was that when the doctor went out to talk to my mom while I was waking up after surgery, he told her, "Yeah, the nerve was a little inflamed, so we took it out..." Today at the post-op visit, he was like, "Man, you had a giant neuroma! I mean sometimes we're not sure if a neuroma is what was causing the patient's pain once we get in there and look at that nerve, but in your case it was obvious." It was nice of him to sugar-coat things for my mom, I thought.

Anyway, I am back at work full time and I've even been able to take Achilles for his evening walk the past two days (albeit at a slower pace than usual), so everything is proceeding nicely.

Punkin Pictures

At Pounce's insistence, here are a couple of photos I snapped of Punkin last night. In this one you can see a little bit of the incision on his neck and where his right front leg was shaved for his IV:



In this one you can sort of see where his neck was shaved for surgery. You can also see that he's still very thin, but believe it or not, he looks much healthier here than he did a week ago. I think he's put on at least a pound:



And here is a bonus pic of Kerrigan, who seemed miffed that I wasn't taking her picture:

Punkin Punkin Punkin

Punkin is doing very well a week and a half after his surgery. He is starting to noticeably put on some weight, which is wonderful to see, and his old endearingly obnoxious personality is returning.

The vet called me last week with the results from the pathology lab: the growth on his thyroid was benign, and they got all of it out so it should not grow back and he will not need any maintenance medications. She said it is the best possible prognosis and there is no reason to believe he will ever have further problems with his thyroid. In another week and a half or so, he'll go in for another blood test just to make sure everything is back to normal, but that should be the end of it.

Yay!!

Foot surgery update

Everything went smoothly today and I was home by 4 p.m. after stopping for a late lunch on the way because I was famished after not being able to eat anything since last night.

I'm currently feeling a little bit poorly but I think that's mainly because I recklessly disregarded all of the instructions about staying in bed with my foot propped up after I got home. Hey, those litter boxes weren't going to scoop themselves, the pets needed dinner, and Monday is Clean Sheets Day in this house no matter what. I love Clean Sheets Day! Of course, this all entailed going up and down the stairs multiple times, which was also a no-no, but I got everything done and am now sitting here with my foot propped up, my ice pack tied on, and my pain pills within easy reach.

I'll probably be in for some bonus pain after the local wears off in another hour or two, thanks to my unapproved activity spree, but I think I'll survive. I go in for my post-op appointment and suture removal next Tuesday and plan to take it easy until then. I scheduled the entire week off from work, although I might go back on Thursday or Friday if I'm feeling up to it and the boredom starts getting to me.

The weirdest things happen to me

Tuesday afternoon I had my pre-op appointment with my foot surgeon, so I got home a little bit early and was looking forward to taking Achilles for his walk in plenty of time before American Idol started. I went upstairs to take out my contacts and change into my dog-walking clothes, but my plans were thwarted when I couldn’t get my contact lens out of my right eye. It just wouldn’t budge. I could see it in my eye. It was in the right spot and everything, but it was just stuck to my eyeball and would not come off. I tried repeatedly, until my eye was blood red, puffy, and sore. I was panicking, I admit.

I finally gave up for awhile and took Achilles for his walk half-blind, with only one contact in – I certainly wasn’t going to put the left one back in and have it get stuck, too. After our walk, I held an ice-pack on my eye for awhile to help with the swelling, and then tried again after about an hour to get the contact out – still no luck. I watched American Idol, still half-blind, and then tried one more time. No luck. I gave up and went to bed at 8:30, hoping that the contact would come loose overnight, but alas, it did not. I still couldn’t get it out in the morning, and my eye was still very red, irritated, and swollen.

I called my eye doctor to explain the situation and they asked me to come in. The tech there put some numbing drops in my eye and then managed to dig the contact out, but she really had to work at it. After she got it out, she said, “Wow, you took that like a champ! Most people are squirming around and trying to kick me while I’m doing that.” I was just happy to learn that I’m not the only person this has ever happened to. She said it happens fairly often.

My eye doctor insisted on examining me before I left and he told me that I had several “open ulcerations” on my cornea as a result of my frenzied efforts to remove the contact lens. He prescribed some drops for me and I have to go back for a re-check on Tuesday. He told me not to wear my contacts in the meantime, which is fine with me. I’m not sure I ever want to wear them again after that experience.

Gripe of the day

The health care industry in the United States is out of control. We have all of these promising new drugs for a variety of serious diseases, but they aren't going to do anybody any good because nobody can afford them. I read this New York Times article today and it just left me fuming:

By GINA KOLATA
Published: April 14, 2008

Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.

No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.

Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year.

But the result is that patients may have to spend more for a drug than they pay for their mortgages, more, in some cases, than their monthly incomes.

The system, often called Tier 4, began in earnest with Medicare drug plans and spread rapidly. It is now incorporated into 86 percent of those plans. Some have even higher co-payments for certain drugs, a Tier 5.

Now Tier 4 is also showing up in insurance that people buy on their own or acquire through employers, said Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health, a research organization in Washington. It is the fastest-growing segment in private insurance, Mr. Mendelson said. Five years ago it was virtually nonexistent in private plans, he said. Now 10 percent of them have Tier 4 drug categories.

Private insurers began offering Tier 4 plans in response to employers who were looking for ways to keep costs down, said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents most of the nation’s health insurers. When people who need Tier 4 drugs pay more for them, other subscribers in the plan pay less for their coverage.

But the new system sticks seriously ill people with huge bills, said James Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is very unfortunate social policy,” Dr. Robinson said. “The more the sick person pays, the less the healthy person pays.”

Traditionally, the idea of insurance was to spread the costs of paying for the sick.

“This is an erosion of the traditional concept of insurance,” Mr. Mendelson said. “Those beneficiaries who bear the burden of illness are also bearing the burden of cost.”

The article goes on to discuss individuals with multiple sclerosis, leukemia, and breast cancer who can no longer afford to pay for the medications they need to keep them alive. This is completely unacceptable. We're going to let people die because they can't afford to pay exorbitant prices for the drugs they need? How does that happen in a country as prosperous and advanced as the USA?

My RA medication is one of the "Tier 4" drugs they are talking about. If my insurance company starts making me pay 33% for it, it will cost me over $500 per month. Why do I have medical insurance, again?

The Lilith Fund

Thursday evening after dropping Punkin off at the vet, I attended The Lilith Fund's 5th Annual Reproductive Equity Awards. This year's honoree was Texas State Representative Jessica Farrar, and it was a great event. It always feels so good just to be in a room full of pro-choicers.

Unfortunately, my camera battery died right after I got there, but I did manage to get one photo of myself arriving at the event:

Punkin

Punkin had his surgery yesterday and is doing well. They put him first on the schedule for the day since they had bumped him last week. The doctor called me at 9:30 a.m. to tell me he was out of surgery and doing fine. I picked him up at 3 p.m. and the first thing we did was take a nap together.

He looks a little worse for the wear -- his neck is shaved and there is a huge incision on it, his leg is shaved where they put his IV, and he's very groggy from his pain meds. His eyes have that drugged-up look. And he's still SO thin. But his appetite is good, he's getting up and moving around very well in between naps, and he has been very lovey and just thrilled to be home. I just can't wait to see him start gaining weight again!

What is up with that?

(Note: I've already emailed this story to a few people and posted it on my poor, neglected myspace blog, so if you've seen it before -- well, bear with me. I really do want to know what's up with that.)

As I was walking across the street from my office to Starbucks this afternoon, I heard someone whistle at me. At least, I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that it was directed at me since there was no one else in the crosswalk, and I did look pretty good today if I do say so myself. God bless the pencil skirt.

Anyway, that was fine. It made me smile and feel like, "Hey, I do look good today, don't I?"

Then I got to the other side of the street and started walking past the bus stop on that corner, which consists of several benches that each had a couple of people on them at the time. As I passed the third bench, this guy said, in what I am guessing was his best "hey baby hey baby" voice, "Hellooooooooooooo." I said, "Hi." He said, "Have a nice daaaaaaaaaay." I said, "You, too."

After I'd passed him, he really got going. Dude started yelling as loud as he could, "Woooooohoooooooooo! Damn girl, you look gooooooooooood! Oooooooooow! Yeah! Gotta get me summa that!"

Seriously? What is up with that? What is the point? What was he hoping to accomplish? I mean, the whistle was nice. The yelling was ridiculous. It was so ridiculous that I couldn't stop laughing, yet it made me feel extremely uncomfortable.

So why do guys do that? I know that not all guys do, obviously, but for those who do, why do they do it? Has any woman ever been yelled at like that and gone, "Hey! Now that's a guy I wanna date!" I mean, really. What does the guy get out of it? If it's just a power thing, and the goal is to make the woman feel uncomfortable, well then, congratulations, bus stop man. Mission accomplished.

And speaking of surgery...

I am scheduled for foot surgery on April 21st to remove a neuroma that has been bothering me for the past couple of years. I'd been putting off surgery for as long as I could stand it, but with the latest RA flare-up, my feet were so badly affected that the neuroma really became a major issue. I had this same surgery on the other foot back in April of 2000, so I pretty much know what to expect. It's a fairly easy surgery and the recovery isn't bad. My surgeon wants me on crutches for two weeks afterwards, and in one of those lovely post-surgical shoes for six weeks. I don't really see the crutches thing happening. I hate being on crutches. I'll use 'em if I really have to, though.

Punkin Update

On Tuesday morning, I noticed that Punkin's face looked very swollen and puffy, and that the skin around his eyes and ears was bright pink and his ears were all flaky inside. I decided not to give him his thyroid medication that morning and I called the vet when I got to work to ask if he might be allergic to the medication. She didn't think so, but asked me to bring him in so she could have a look. Sure enough, he is allergic to the medication. The vet said that he had a very rare reaction to it, seen in only about 1% of cats who take it.

Needless to say, he can't take the medication any more, so now he is going to have to have a thyroidectomy. (Without treatment, he would die from the hyperthyroidism in eight or nine months of slowly starving to death.) His surgery was supposed to happen yesterday, but due to a brief power outage at the animal hospital and then a dog who had some complications during surgery, they called me to reschedule. After boarding Punkin at the vet Thursday night and then worrying about him all morning yesterday, I am not looking forward to doing it all over again, but his surgery is now rescheduled for next Friday. Poor thing had already been prepped for surgery and they had started to put him under when they decided they needed to reschedule. He has no idea what is going on. I feel so bad for him. But he was very happy to be home last night, and I was thrilled to have him back. He always sleeps on my pillow with me at night, and I really, really missed him Thursday night.