necturus

Things were looking significantly worse this morning, so the three of us are going to London tonight on a red-eye.

I may not be reading much, or I may be spamming everyone's reading pages.

I just got off the phone with my brother, and don't need to dash off to London. This is the current situation:

There are treatment options for the cancer, but they know it's not curable: the goal is to get my mother more time, and make her more comfortable for however long that is. Mom definitely wants to fight this.

The immediate problem is that there's fluid around my mother's lungs. The pulmonologist described the problem, and said there are two possibilities for dealing with that, and he will come back tomorrow and ask Mom for a decision. Given the hospital schedule and what the choices are, if the first doesn't work she can have them do the other.

The pulmonologist doesn't think the oncologist will want to start treatment until after the fluid is drained, but the cardiologist will also be back tomorrow.

Given all this, I'm not planning to travel before Saturday [three days from now], and Sunday or Monday might be better in terms of both having my and my brother's visits overlap, and giving Mom company for longer. Mark will call me again once they talk to the specialists, to fill me in and maybe discuss travel plans based on what they learn. and decide, tomorrow. In the short term, knowing we're not traveling immediately is helping the three of ust deal with logistics like what to make for dinner, and Adrian picking up a prescription. It also means Cattitude can try to decompress a little, and wait until tomorrow to do laundry.

The other open question is how long I will want to stay in London. One possibility is that the three of us are all there there for a few days, after which they fly back to Boston and I stay longer.

My feet hurt because I decided to go for a walk with Adrian and Cattitude, even though one hip and my feet were hurting before we started, and even with an NSAID. I went anyway because I didn't think walking would make things much worse, and tomorrow's forecast is less appealing. It was sunny and 69F/20C outside, with a bright blue sky and delightful spring flowers, including two kinds of maple flowers, red and the underappreciated light green of Norway maple flowers.

We went to the supermarket, and bought ingredients for Passover-suitable lunches that we can make ahead of time. This morning/early afternoon was difficult because I slept later than usual, and Adrian and Cattitude got up later than that, and we didn't have plans for lunch, or useful leftovers.

That was on top of worrying about both my mother and the world situation. I was expecting to hear from my mother or brother by this afternoon, and haven't. I realize that bad news would be, and be treated as, more urgent than good or ambiguous, but I still worry. The time zone difference doesn't help any (it's five hours later in London than here).

The advice the GI doctor gave me on Monday seems to have done the job: my gut has been behaving since the visit, which is five days so far:

The doctor told me was to take the imodium (anti-diarrheal) twice a day whether or not I have symptoms, and start taking psyllium (metamucil). I was surprised, because psyllium is generally referred to a laxative; I suspect that's why Carmen didn't think of it. Assuming I'm still fine on Monday, I'll be sending her a MyChart message

I've taken one/day for five days, which seems to be enough. The package instructions are not to take it within two hours before or after other medication, because it can interfere with absorbtion. I'm already taking other medication on something resembling a schedule, which means this one has to be at or a little after 6 o'clock, unless I want to fiddle with the timing on something else. The schedule includes "right after I wake up" and "after breakfast." )

I have done several useful things this afternoon, including two of the three things from today's list. Unfortunately, the one remaining is the one I'm least looking forward to.

I don't usually have a to-do list anymore, but enough things had piled up that I grabbed some scrap paper and wrote a reminder that I would definitely see when I sat down at my desk this morning.

The two list items were to make appointments for the cats to have their annual veterinary exams, and to get an itemized bill for my last couple of dental appointments. The appointments are made, using the veterinarian's app; it's part of a small chain, so the first question was which office I wanted appointments at.

I called the dentist's office this afternoon and explained what I wanted (itemized bills for the last couple of visits, for insurance purposes), and the receptionist said they'd send me the bills. I actually had an itemized bill for one of these, but didn't keep it, because I didn't expect to need it. But Aetna has sent me a patient reimbursement form, and it asks for the date of the visit, what they did, and the amount, which has to match the itemized bill. So, I need an itemized bill, not just "on X date they cleaned my teeth and charged me Y dollars."

After talking to the vet's office, I paused and did some useful things that are routine enough they weren't on the list: taking out trash and recycling, and a little PT.

The remaining item is calling Aetna yo ask about colonoscopy coverage, since Mt. Auburn doesn't appear to be in-network for this. Whether or not it's in-network, I am hoping for some idea of how much I'll be charged. I don't expect to like the answer, but that's partly because the answer may be "we don't know," and is more likely to be that they pay X percent of total, which the hospital won't tell me in advance.

For people living in the United States: Bona Fide Masks has sent out email saying they will not be raising the prices of the Powecom KN95 masks they import from China, and gave a discount code, SPRING25, good for 25% off through April 20th.

Separately, I just ordered a bunch of tea, because I expect the price to go up, and realized after placing the order that while we think of the Formosa oolong as Chinese tea (rather than Indian or Japanese), Formosa is another name for Taiwan, so those ridiculously high tariffs may not apply.