alala

Friday the 13th

alala — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:02:47 +0000

I’ve never been superstitious about Fridays or 13s, so I wasn’t real concerned that my Novasure procedure was scheduled for that day, I was just looking forward to getting it over with. And actually, there are all kinds of ways it could have been worse, so I guess I’m still not superstitious, because the Stupid didn’t happen on the actual day, did it, that’s just when I found out about it.

Like everything that happens to you in a foreign country, a little exposition is necessary. A thing I may not have mentioned about the Surgery Process here is that in the interest of efficiency it, too, is broken into tiny steps, each handled by a different department, and is thereby rendered pointless and aggravating yet not at all efficient. To wit: you tell them you need surgery. After a week or so you get a letter naming the date. You don’t get any input on the date. I suppose, if you have anything else going on in your life, then you must not really want the surgery all that much, do you? Or something.

Anyhoo. The letter names a date, and informs you that they will tell you the time of the procedure the day before you’re actually supposed to be there. So not only do you have to keep the entire day free for a 15-minute procedure, because you don’t know which 15 minutes it’ll be – even better, the person who’ll be driving you to the hospital and picking you up also can’t make any plans for that day. Or I guess you could take the bus, if having bits of your insides burned out isn’t enough fun for one day.

As it turns out, there is another reason why this routine is stupid: if there’s a problem, you don’t know about it until the day before your surgery, when you don’t get the call. Which is exactly what happened. I waited long enough to be sure they weren’t going to call that day and then phoned the number in the letter – closed after 5. Gynecology department – closed after 5. General main reception number: I got a person, who tapped around in a computer and said “um, you’re not on the list for surgery tomorrow.” I said I’d sort of figured that part out, but WTF, yo? And she said “I dunno, you’ll have to call the gynecology department. Tomorrow.”

SO the next day I drove out to the hospital in Zeist with my appointment letter (of course you can always call instead, if you like it when a dial-a-robot hangs up on you – another thing I learned that day), showed said letter to a nurse, and said I hadn’t gotten any call. She said “idiots” a few times and then called the Operation Planning department and… didn’t actually call them idiots over the phone, but she implied it pretty clearly. Then she apologized to me, which was nice of her, since it clearly wasn’t her fault.

Now I have an appointment on February 3rd. Well see if that one actually happens.

Song du jour of the day: Skullcrusher Mountain, by Jonathan Coulton. At this point, I’d almost rather put my health in this guy’s hands.

So far, so good

alala — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:34:18 +0000

Well, the operation seems to have gone all right, though I also thought that at this stage after the last one. Another polyp, this one 1-2 cm in size, has been removed, and I am the somewhat unnerved owner of an IUD. You hear so many stories about them, and so few of the stories are happy ones.

Anyway. Still keeping fingers crossed. And look, I can see the Dom from my window!

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it gets better

alala — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:32:21 +0000

On Wednesday the nurse said the gynecologist would call us the next morning, so at 10:30 I called her and said “he hasn’t called, you said he’d call, WHY HASN’T HE CALLED?” She assured me that DrBob’s number was on his to-do list, and DrBob headed off to work with his celephone. He called me a few hours later to say that I could go in on Monday and the doctor (the same gynecologist I’d already seen – that doesn’t happen often, I don’t think) would do an endoscopy (fancy talk for “a look around in there”), remove any polyps, and put in an IUD that should inhibit further polyp growth for at least a few weeks, and then we could schedule the ablation for next year. (Actually, while he was telling me this, the hospital called and told me the same thing. Good thing we have a lot of phones.)

So that’s set up, and I feel much better knowing that something will actually get done (and is my husband a hero or what for being reasonable and persistent and getting this done, because I – exhausted and hysterical – could not have). Quite miraculously better, so much so that I kind of forget that nothing has been done yet, and I’m not actually better. I went to my GP to fill out an insurance form and stopped at the pharmacy* on the way back this morning, and that turned out to be too much. I needed a nap afterward. Gah.

* Why did I go to the pharmacy? To pick up the IUD. That’s right, they don’t have them at the hospital, you have to bring your own.

Song du jour of the day: And Dream of Sheep, by Kate Bush

it gets worse

alala — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 22:57:10 +0000

Right, now that I’ve started this, I should keep it up, eh? So I finally got to see a gynecologist on Tuesday in Zeist, and he was very nice and agreeable so I decided not to open up the can of whoopass I’d brought along. First mistake, I guess. Anyway, I had my first-ever water ultrasound! Um, I do not recommend it, it leaves one feeling distinctly… leaky.

BUT you can see more in a water ultrasound, and what the doc saw was more polyps. He said they can grow back. I thought, “in a month?” but did not say so. Second mistake, perhaps. Anyway, his suggestion was to remove the polyps and then do an endometrial ablation, or NovaSure – burning away the endometrium. I told him about my travel plans, and he noted something in my file and then… passed me over to another bureaucrat! Because that’s what happens here: you just get referred from person to person, and nobody ever does anything. When DrBob came to pick me up we talked to everyone we could get to look at us, emphasizing the fact that we’re flying to Seattle on the 23rd, so it needs to happen before then.

So this morning Janneke from operation-planning calls me up and offers me an appointment on the 23rd! And is all surprised when I object. And I just lost it, really. I’ve been nice, I’ve been good, I’ve been smiley and understanding and cooperative as I was passed from person to person and postponed and delayed and ignored and forgotten, but this is way past unacceptable.

So we went back out to Zeist to talk to the gynecologist again, but he wasn’t there, he was in Utrecht. DrBob asked the nurse to ask the gynecologist to call him tomorrow, so we’ll see if that happens. Meanwhile, I’ve done some googling and found out that NovaSure is a 5-minute procedure that could have been done in the time it took him to do the water ultrasound. If he didn’t have to put ten layers of bureaucracy between himself and any potentially useful action.

Argh. Instead of a song du jour of the day, howbout a quick video on endometrial ablation? Don’t worry, it’s not too icky.

Arg. Bleh.

alala — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:51:53 +0000

It seems I can do One Thing per day. Friday I did the shopping and made dinner, which sounds like two things but they’re so closely related that they only count as one. It worked. I felt triumphant, and totally let it go to my head.

On Saturday, I took the Sniglet to Taekwondo and sat dozing in a chair for 40 minutes before taking him home. THEN I got a wild hair and went to knitting – that’s right, I sat at a table in a cafe and knitted with other people. I know, crazy, right? Must have been, because immediately afterward I went home and slept for five hours.

On Sunday I did nothing. At all. Seriously, my major exertion of the day was phoning for pizza. And at the end of the day I felt almost normal! Which must be why I thought I could go to work today. That? Was a Very Bad Idea. Now I’ve gone and volunteered to go shopping and cook dinner again, which clearly shows that I am insane. But I said it, so I’m going to do it. Any minute now. Really. Aaaaaany minute… now…

Song du jour of the day: Imitation of Life, by R.E.M. All those people, doing things. It’s kind of amazing.

In which it gets icky

alala — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:42:04 +0000

Apparently I have something Medical going on, and I’ve been posting cryptic status updates on Facebook – not because I want to be cryptic, but because I want to be brief. But people are getting all WTF on me, so here is the whole thing, except I still want to be brief so I keep editing out the editorializing.

So yeah, that. Back in August, I had a scary bleeding episode so I went to see my doctor, only it’s a teaching practice so very often I get to see some studenty, interny person instead. This one gave me a painkiller that inhibits blood loss and referred me to the gynecology clinic at the hospital. They did an ultrasound that found a gray blur where no gray blur should be, so they scheduled surgery to get it out. That happened in mid-October, the surgeon told me she’d taken out a big polyp, and in early November they phoned to tell me that the biopsy showed no malignant anything, so that was fine.

A week after the phone call, I started bleeding again. It wasn’t a lot, at least not at first, so I didn’t worry about it. Though it was annoying, especially as it went on and on. Whatever, I was busy at work, we had our annual sales & marketing conference at the end of the month in Monte Carlo, I might have called my doctor after that. Except at the conference I had a doozy of a migraine and started bleeding a lot, so I asked the hotel concierge to send me a doctor. I hoped he’d give me something to control the bleeding, as my doctor had, so I could finish out the conference and seek treatment at home, but he felt the emergency room was a better idea, so I did that. The ER doc did another ultrasound but couldn’t see anything because of all the blood, so he put me on an IV for the night, something to slow down the blood loss. So that was my night in a Monte Carlo hospital. The next day we were all due to fly home, and the doctors and insurance people wanted me to stay the weekend and do another ultrasound on Monday but I opted to fly home with my colleagues. Because

A weekend in Monte Carlo is only fun under certain circumstances. Bed-bound and bleeding is not one of those.
I wanted to be with people I knew so that if I did have any problems, I’d have help.

So. Home. Weekend. Bleedy. Doctor on Monday, she told me that I could call the clinic for an ultrasound without a referral from her, which surprised me, but okay. I called, got an appointment for Tuesday, the ultrasound tech said ooo, whoa, that’s… really kind of a lot of blood, you should see a gynecologist. Soon. So she takes me over to the teenager responsible for making appointments, tells her I need to see a gynecologist soon, and wanders off, and the teenager offers me something in two weeks. I say hel-lo, I’ve already been bleeding for three weeks, how much more blood do you think I can spare? So she offered me something in one week in Zeist, the chi-chi treeful suburb where all the people who are too rich for Utrecht live.

Fine, that’s where I had my surgery, I know it’s clean and the staff were nice. They also seemed competent, but here I am bleeding again, so maybe they weren’t after all.
Not fine, because I still have to wait a whole week. I shall speak very firmly with the gynecologist about this. If I can stay awake through the whole appointment.

Because GAWD I’m tired. I sleep all the time, I worked from home all week but did a crap job of it because I can’t concentrate, and I cannot fucking BELIEVE that a patient can go in and say “I’ve been bleeding for three weeks” and they think a reasonable response is “Meh, you can bleed for another week.” What the hell, people? This is not efficient, it’s third-world.

Song du jour of the day: Lime in the Coconut, by the Muppets.

think of it as a gap year

alala — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 23:58:35 +0000

Hey! Didja miss me? Egad, I don’t even know where to start after so long. I have this job, see, which requires communicating with people a LOT, and so I’ve been putting all my writing-fu in there, for over a year. I know, real writers have unlimited fu. That is why I am not a real writer. But, you know, stuff happens, and as I get more and more people on Facebook, maybe some of that stuff isn’t… maybe some things shouldn’t… oh all right. Maybe my co-workers don’t want to hear about my uterus, is what I’m getting at. Besides, my Facebook status updates keep getting longer and longer.

So I’m back. To vent, to muse, to offer half-thought-out political opinions with all the sense edited out of them in the interest of brevity, to complain bitterly about a country that is gracious enough to let me live here and shower me with decent weather even in December – whoa, shower: that was a wholly unintentional pun, sorry. I’ll try to check in at least once a week, and try to keep each entry about One Thing.

Song du jour of the day: Redemption Song, by Playing for Change. Happy Third Advent, y’all. It’s not really a Christmas tune I suppose, but the whole Christian story is about redemption, so maybe it should be.

ain’t all bad

alala — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:10:23 +0000

Yesterday we rode our bikes to Zeist! About 18 km in all, just me and the Sniglet. It was the first really nice day this year, and we stopped for french fries and salad and saw lots and lots of countryside. Um, and some freeway…

Actually, Jack, the Sniglet doesn’t usually cry at school, that was new. Usually he gets red and growls and clenches his fists and makes threats, and if you push him too far he opens up a serious can of whoopass. And I’m not defending the whoopass, I’m just saying it’s not a spontaneous event. It is triggered by behavior that I think is also unacceptable. So from the teacher’s side, you know, yay, he didn’t beat the soup out of someone this time. But the behavior that makes him want to, continues unabated.

I haven’t heard back from the teacher yet. She emails a lot less often since I called her a Liar McFlamey-pants to her face.

What? The Dutch are supposed to be plain-spoken. I didn’t think she’d be that upset…

Song du jour of the day: Holiday in Spain, by Bløf & Counting Crows

overview

alala — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:29:26 +0000

It’s a really long story, which is why I haven’t tackled it, and every time something else happens, the story gets longer. Basically, this Taalschool (language-school) was established to help foreign children learn Dutch and adapt to Dutch society so they can fit into regular Dutch schools, is what I was told. I was also told – by the director – that students can’t switch to their new at any old time, only at Christmas and summer. When I thought the Sniglet would start in September and transfer to a real school in January, I was okay with it. But this is his second full year at what is basically a separate-but-equal school for icky foreigners, and they told us lie after lie to convince us to keep him there, and to put him in a class that we knew was the wrong choice but they led us to believe we had no other choice and now they want him to go into therapy because he reacts badly to being picked on by the kids in his class, who are all 12. Or 13. And he’s 10. I hate. This school. I hate the lies they tell us, and the lies they tell themselves so they can continue to believe they are good people while screwing over little kids.

There will be more detail later, but it’s after midnight and writing that paragraph has made me unutterably weary.

Song du jour of the day: Miniature Disasters, but K.T. Tunstall

an email to a teacher

alala — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:17:32 +0000

Hi Ms Teacher,

I’m sorry it took so long to respond to your message, but I had to think about what I wanted to say. I understand that from your point of view, it is better for the Sniglet to react with tears rather than explosions when his classmates try to provoke him. I’m not sure I agree, but let’s leave that for now.

Of greater concern to me is that his classmates are still trying to provoke him. I won’t say these confrontations are never his fault, but I don’t think they’re always his fault either. As I understand it, part of the Taalschool’s mission is to teach children proper social behavior – not just how best to react to being goaded, but also that goading people is wrong. As the youngest member of the Schakelklas[*] he is both less able to handle this kind of attention from the other children, and more likely to attract it. So, while I appreciate the [anger-management] coaching for the Sniglet, and I am happy to concede that he needs it, I would also like to know whether you are taking steps to stop the other children picking on him, or whether you are placing the entire burden of responsibility on the smallest pair of shoulders in the class.

To summarize: until he can be with children his own age, I think the Sniglet deserves a little extra protection. I’d like to know what specific steps you are taking in this direction.

I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Alala Mamabear

* Schakelklas = transition class for secondary school, so usually 12-year-olds.