Healthcare dragging ass
Oct. 15th, 2021 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
disappointed_lesbianI tried to go to bed a tiny bit early last night again and failed again. Was awake literally all night again. Tried to sneak in some sleep by staying in bed later than I normally do but failed despite a delicious drowse. So frustrating.
On the bright side, my nervous system is such that I can recover from my workouts well enough to develop muscle and continue working out regularly despite the lack of sleep.
Today I emailed the sleep psychologist about shifting my bedtime. She responded with a sleep diary for me to fill out for the next week. These goddamned sleep diaries. I don't think it'll be helpful. Keeping a sleep diary seems like it promotes insomnia because patients have to keep track of when we fall asleep and how much time we spend lying in bed awake. How will I know the time at which I fall asleep unless I keep an eye on the clock as I'm waiting to fall asleep? Such a stupid tool.
I'm not going to make my insomnia worse by trying to be precise with the more intrusive metrics. I can check the clock for my wake-up time, but I'm going to estimate falling-asleep time, and, given my poor sense of time, it'll probably be off a bit more than is acceptable. Oh well.
I had a four-hour bus trip today just to go get some more bloodwork done (I also gave a urine sample). I'd just gone to the VA for blood work maybe ten days ago. My doctor apparently wants to rule out problems with my kidneys. There isn't a damned thing wrong with my kidneys. I already know this is a waste of time. And the waste of my time and energy and health doesn't stop with trips for blood work; she wants me to come in for a goddamned ultrasound as well. And I have to be fasted for the goddamned ultrasound. Fasting is awful for me because I have hypoglycemia; if I don't eat every 3-5 hours, my blood sugar drops and I feel like shit.
I tried to call the ultrasound department to ask about alternatives to the fasting, but whoever answered the phone apparently didn't understand my admittedly poorly worded question and transferred me to a completely different VA facility. I'd spent so much time on hold at that point that I gave up.
The goddamned music that plays while I'm on hold (not just with the VA but with many large organizations) is disturbing. Here's some more background info: I'm sensitive to noise and have an auditory processing issue. Having music piped directly into my ear from the telephone receiver is so physiologically disturbing that it sometimes gives me tremors. Now that I think about it, I wonder why I don't experience the same thing when I use earphones or earbuds. The sound from the phone receiver seems sharper somehow, more piercing.
On the bright side, my nervous system is such that I can recover from my workouts well enough to develop muscle and continue working out regularly despite the lack of sleep.
Today I emailed the sleep psychologist about shifting my bedtime. She responded with a sleep diary for me to fill out for the next week. These goddamned sleep diaries. I don't think it'll be helpful. Keeping a sleep diary seems like it promotes insomnia because patients have to keep track of when we fall asleep and how much time we spend lying in bed awake. How will I know the time at which I fall asleep unless I keep an eye on the clock as I'm waiting to fall asleep? Such a stupid tool.
I'm not going to make my insomnia worse by trying to be precise with the more intrusive metrics. I can check the clock for my wake-up time, but I'm going to estimate falling-asleep time, and, given my poor sense of time, it'll probably be off a bit more than is acceptable. Oh well.
I had a four-hour bus trip today just to go get some more bloodwork done (I also gave a urine sample). I'd just gone to the VA for blood work maybe ten days ago. My doctor apparently wants to rule out problems with my kidneys. There isn't a damned thing wrong with my kidneys. I already know this is a waste of time. And the waste of my time and energy and health doesn't stop with trips for blood work; she wants me to come in for a goddamned ultrasound as well. And I have to be fasted for the goddamned ultrasound. Fasting is awful for me because I have hypoglycemia; if I don't eat every 3-5 hours, my blood sugar drops and I feel like shit.
I tried to call the ultrasound department to ask about alternatives to the fasting, but whoever answered the phone apparently didn't understand my admittedly poorly worded question and transferred me to a completely different VA facility. I'd spent so much time on hold at that point that I gave up.
The goddamned music that plays while I'm on hold (not just with the VA but with many large organizations) is disturbing. Here's some more background info: I'm sensitive to noise and have an auditory processing issue. Having music piped directly into my ear from the telephone receiver is so physiologically disturbing that it sometimes gives me tremors. Now that I think about it, I wonder why I don't experience the same thing when I use earphones or earbuds. The sound from the phone receiver seems sharper somehow, more piercing.
