A Little Bit About My World Lately...

I have a severe lack of pictures lately.  I am not sure why that is, but I will try to remedy it.  

It's very hard for me to write these days.  The ECT treatments that I continue to have weekly affect my memory and cognitive abilities dramatically, but the payoff of the dramatic affect they have also had on my mood is, for me, well worth it.  It has not been easy at all, but it has been quite humorous at times, too.  Kyle and I have a good laugh over my absurdity and ignorance many times. I'm learning to leave myself very detailed notes and post-it notes are becoming my very best friends.  Bear with my writing - it's a little off and requires a lot of me looking up words in the dictionary and thesaurus to get a blog written these days.  But I'm determined to get back to my old self, especially once these treatments end.

I adore the television series NCIS, and we own every season of it on DVD.  Kyle and I have watched them all, but the ECT obliterated many details of the series from my memory, so we are enjoying watching several of the episodes again.  It's like the first time all over again for many of my favorite episodes! Such fun!

Kyle and I were in a fairly serious car accident Sunday and to be honest, it's made me a bit gun-shy about driving lately.  No one was hurt, thankfully.  The other driver was cited, but we are still waiting to hear whether she has valid insurance.  If she doesn't, our insurance - Allstate, will cover us for a deductible, so we're covered one way or another, but I still hope that in the end hers comes through and our Escape is repaired without costing us.  We were taking Kyle's father out to dinner, headed down Dell Range at about 40 mph, the speed limit.  A woman turned in front of us, the oncoming traffic, and though Kyle tried valiantly to slam on the brakes, he couldn't keep from hitting her.  Because Kyle's Dad is hard of hearing I always have him sit in the seat next to Kyle so they can chat and so he can hear Kyle more easily.  Because I am so short and because I was in the backseat, I didn't have even a hint of what was about to happen, and the accident took me by total surprise.  Shocked me, would be more accurate, and as my dad joked, isn't the kind of shock therapy I am accustomed to.  The glasses flew off of Kyle's face and he couldn't find them, nor could he open his door (due to the damage) to step out and look for them.  Once I had myself pulled together, I got out of the Escape and jerked a very damaged driver door open.  I felt around on the floor and found Kyle's glasses and handed them to him.  He was very rattled. 

"Baby, we're all okay.  Everybody is okay.  It wasn't your fault."  I had my hands on both sides of his face, reassuring him that everything and everyone was okay and that we knew that he had done his best to keep us from getting hurt.  Fortunately there had been four witnesses; one of whom was already on the phone with the police.  They all stayed until the police got there.  We wanted to drive our Escape home but the police said it was too damaged for that and would have to be towed, so he dispatched a wrecker.  My sister-in-law came and picked my father-in-law, Kyle and me up and took us back to my father-in-law's house.  

During the earlier phases of my ECT treatment I was not permitted to drive.  This is not unusual.  To quote the guidelines:  "You may NOT drive a car during the entire course of the ECT treatment phase.  You must have a release from your ECT doctor to begin driving again.  This will be considered 2 weeks following the completion of ECT or when your response to maintenance ECT (ECT frequency of once per week or less) has been established.  S0, since my driving privileges had been curtailed, my car had not been maintained as well as it might normally have, thus its battery was in sketchy condition and so my father-in-law had to take Kyle and me to get a new battery because my car was dead, and a jump start wasn't enough to keep it going for long.  So we got a new battery, took that to the house, and then we all finally went to dinner.

It took a couple of days for the paperwork to get through from Allstate to Enterprise but it finally did and we got our replacement vehicle midweek - a Subaru Forester.  I was super ecstatic to discover the heated seats and may never return the rental for this reason.  

I went to pick up my prescription for Lunesta (to help me sleep) today.  Kyle dropped it off for me last Friday, so almost a week ago.  I had some problems getting it filled.  I'm not sure what those were, but it was finally ready for me, so I went to get it today and brought it home.  Should have checked it before doing so, because I get it home, and I notice a slight problem.    The directions on the bottle and the printout that came with the prescription says TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH EVERY NIGHT AT BEDTIME.  It also says QTY: 15  and right beneath that it says Days Supply: 30.  

Now, I am really horrible at math, but the last time I checked, if I was supposed to take one tablet every night, I'd need thirty for a month's worth.  When I called the pharmacy back, they explained that my insurance will only cover 15, not the full 30 and that the other 15 must be covered at my own expense out of pocket, which:
a) I wouldn't pay over $100 a month for a sleeping pill even if I did have the budget for it
and 
b)I would really appreciate having been told all of this when I was at the pharmacy the first time around.  I find it slightly important for them to have let me know.

So this blog post is really about all the craziness that is my life lately.  None of it really amounts to anything, but it keeps affecting me nonetheless.  I could get really worn down by it and either depressed, angered or otherwise ill-affected by it.  However, I'm just grateful that the craziness continues to appear to be of little consequence.  No one was harmed in the accident.  Insurance is covering at least SOME of my prescription.  My mind is compensating somehow to cope with the ECT treatments (to a degree).  My husband continues to be an amazing support.   Life isn't the same as it was six months or even four months ago, but I'm learning to measure successes and failures differently lately.