My son developed a really bad cough and a fever two nights ago. He still has the cough, and it’s gotten worse, to the point he’s struggling to breathe at night. The fever is low grade, but keeps coming back. During the day, he is acting fine; he still has the cough but it’s not so bad, and a sore throat.
I think we have to go to urgent care tomorrow at this rate. He is waking up crying out in pain for help, and I am losing sleep not only because his trundle bed is uncomfortable, but because I have these horrible, nervous thoughts fighting for air time.
Why do we have 3 trips planned next summer? Will our cats be ok? Will we have jobs and money to pay for them? What if I am super busy and can’t leave work? I don’t like being gone that long?
Just ruminated on this for over an hour yesterday. Why? Because anxiety.
It starting as a barking, dry cough. Now it’s a raspy, wet one. He’s very wheezy, especially at night. It sounds productive, but it’s hard to really tell.
I think I need to make a trip to my Ortho-Neuro provider’s walk-in urgent care tomorrow morning for my neck. While the pain is better now than it was over the weekend, my right hand is tingly, like it’s falling asleep, I’m getting a lot of back and arm muscle twitches, but the most concerning part is that I couldn’t lift my frying pan tonight when I was making dinner, my grip was too weak.
I’m keeping this company profitable this year; they’ve already gotten most of my deductible.
I get to have another MRI, more physical therapy (just finished PT for my other shoulder this week), muscle relaxers and more pain meds, and I got several steroid injections in my neck.
The effects of aging are really coming at me fast. I was not at all prepared for this year.
I got an MRI this morning, going to the spine surgeon today to discuss results.
When I did my PT evaluation last week, the therapist had me put my arm straight in front of me, palm facing to the side, like your arm is a knife about to chop something. My left side I could go all the way up over my head, and my left arm has the rotator cuff injury so that’s not even a good baseline. My right side only made it to about 11 o’clock.
I tried again this morning, same thing. And when I place my palm facing up, I can only get to maybe 10 o’clock. I can go all the way up on my left side.
So there’s definitely something going on with me and I’m not delusional. I was starting to feel maybe a little delusional after my PT appointments this week, where none of the exercises were changing any of my symptoms. Traction was the only thing that helped even a little, but it didn’t do a ton.
I have a moderately herniated disk and likely some permanent nerve damage. I need spine surgery. I’m very anxious about it, but it sounds like I’ll be off work for about a month and the recovery shouldn’t be too bad at my age.
Our adult daughter has been living with us for more than 7 months now after living and working in a different state for over 3 years. She went to the ER last night with severe abdominal pain. She was back home after about 4 hours (my wife also there the whole time). Their conclusion: gallbladder problems. They recommend that she see her PCP and a specialist within 2 days, and that the specialist may recommend its removal. (At the moment, she is feeling much better, fortunately).
The big complication: we have a 2 week family vacation scheduled for the second half of March. She has no additional PTO available now (even got permission to take PTO to be “earned” later in the year for it). If she can take whatever time necessary now without pay, OK, but that’s not a certainty. Beyond the time considerations, surgery before the trip would severely impact trip activities. No surgery before the trip and a severe attack in a foreign country would also be a big problem.
TBD, and we’ll know more after she talks to the doctors.
One slightly good thing: her job is phone customer service, service provided 7 days a week, so pretty good chance she can trade a weekday for a weekend day to accommodate a doctor visit.
Hopefully there is a short term disability policy that will limit the number of days she’ll have to take off - my mother had that when she got her gall bladder removed. Hopefully it’s nothing more serious. PTO policy sucks - how many days does she get in total? Our company gives a generous amount of sick time, and 50% of whatever we don’t use translates to extra vacation for the following year.
I got my gallbladder out on a Monday and started a new job on that Tuesday. I don’t recommend it, it was pretty painful and I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t really need the benefits of the new job. The procedure is usually laparoscopic and recovery time is around 2 weeks to return to “normal” activities - may not want to go bungee jumping for a while, though.
You may want to think ahead about postponing the trip, as sucky as that is. It’s really awful for a person to feel like they have to choose between their health and their family, and it sounds like she may not have the PTO to do both. And not to scare you, but I started getting extremely jaundiced quite suddenly when I had my gallbladder removed, and it became an emergency situation. Definitely not something you want to be dealing with overseas.
Funny you mention bungee jumping. The vacation would involve a mild form of that. “bouncing off a vertical wall on an elastic cord” is more like it. doing some flips in the process is more like it. Also some flips and similar on an elastic cord above a flat surface, and some unattached trampoline. All of those are important to both daughters and my wife will do some. For me, maybe once or twice bouncing off the vertical wall. Lots of other things to do at this place, and that’s all of the “circus” activity I’ve done in prior years.
But it does suggest that the trip would need to be postponed (at least of her) if she had the surgery first.
As to the PTO, I’m not sure of the situation. She would be OK if she could take it an unpaid time off, but that might not be OK either. As to PTO during recovery from surgery, likely not necessary based on what you said. Almost all is work from home, sitting down. She is expected to work in person 3 (I think) days a month (non-consecutive), but what they do in person is really no different, so maybe the company would waive that.
No idea, but fortunately in her case, living in our home, the cost will not be a huge issue as long as she can be off for whatever time she needs. She has worked there less than 12 months so far, so if there’s a waiting period for some benefits she may not have met it. (If 12 months is the cutoff, she would have that by early June, maybe June 1, if any surgery could wait that long.) She has no individual disability insurance.
