Doctor joy

Finally, I think that Honey and I have found another doctor who's as good for us as Dr. Steve. Yesterday, we spent all afternoon with Dr. B, who's qualified both in Neurology and Psychiatry. He listens! And he tells all about our conditions and the medications, including side effects and how well they play together.

So, he's going to be taking over Honey's pain management and mental health treatment for both of us (it turns out that instead of being just depressed, we have bipolar depression). He's also figured out that my tremors are probably being exacerbated by the combination of meds I've been on, so we're changing those. This is great news, considering that I stayed home most of this past week because the tremors had shifted to spasms on a seizure-like scale. I started one of the new meds last night, and got the first decent night's sleep I've had in what seems like ages!

Rats!

Friday turned out not to be the day, after all. See, Honey has epilepsy, although it's been mostly dormant for several years. Anyway, Friday afternoon she started having seizures - with convulsions and all. Needless to say, I called up to cancel the procedure, and to make some arrangement for getting her prescriptions. Sadly, that's not quite what happened. Her pain doctor fired her - something about going against his beliefs.

On Monday, we'll be talking with the doctor whose office he uses, both to get her prescriptions and to get a referral (we hope) to a pain clinic that's closer to home.

Wish us luck.

Today's the day!

Honey's going in for the nerve-block procedure later this afternoon. She had it done last summer, and it knocked her pain levels way down. That pain stayed gone for over two months. We're hoping that this time it will work even better and longer. I'll post later to tell you how it went.

Guess who I heard from last night!

My daughter (who'll be 21 this summer) called me last night, for the first time in about six months. The last time we had talked, I got angry with her because it seemed that she only called to ask for money. Since I was trying to fend off eviction and still cover Honey's medical expenses, I didn't have it to spare, so I told her to call me back when she had something to talk about besides asking for money. That was it; I didn't hear another peep from her until last night. I had snippets about her by way of one of her local friends, but only scraps.

I'm not going to tell you all of what's happening in her life right now, except that she's finally becoming an adult and getting a handle on her life. I'm so glad that although she's made many of the same mistakes I did (isn't that traditional?), she also learned from my example how to correct them. I was never very good at the whole mommy thing, but I did try to teach her how to be a decent, responsible person. I'm glad to see that at least some of it took.

Anyway, you can go to her MySpace page to see what she's willing to tell about her life.