Howdy, howdy! How’s everyone doing this wonderful first Wednesday of October? Things here are about the same as always. I don’t have much to talk about. Everything is monotonous. I don’t have much in the way of options to do things until I can use the new chair. I can’t trust the one I’m using to keep a charge if we leave the house, plus it’s missing the headrest, so being in the van is weird and I feel super unstable and I don’t want to go anywhere without it. Yes, Dad can transfer it back to this chair, but I don’t need need it at home so I just keep waiting. Anyway. Life is boring. So, I thought I’d just list a few random updates and let you go back about your business.
1. Wheelchair Saga mini update: After some radio silence and a few Karen-ish emails insisting on an update, Mohamed has passed me onto someone named Arnav who is supposed to be the manager of the department. I got a little snippy because I also found out they already charged Medicare for the chair despite the fact that I can’t fecking use it yet. Arnav replied promptly to assure me that I can still refuse the chair if they can’t get it to work for me. But they’re getting different armrests and mounting gear for the joystick. Then, they’re going to make Gustavo (their most experienced tech) schlep all the way out here from Florida to work on the chair. He’s also supposed to “adjust the footrests” which means he’ll make the tiny adjustment possible with these footplates and it will do nothing, but at least he will be able to see if he can figure out different hangers or something that they can order. Anyway, who wants to start a betting pool? Will the new chair be useable by Thanksgiving? Christmas? My birthday? Will I just give up and refuse it and find a different chair that I’ll secretly loathe because it’s so slow? Who knows!
2. Writing: I missed a few days in September because Dad and I got our Covid and Flu vaccines. They always kick my immune system into overdrive for a day or two, so I feel like crap then need another day or two to recover from lack of sleep and general blahs. But otherwise, I’ve written every day since August 1st. I haven’t been going for a specific word count, but usually do between 150 to 250 a day. It’s not a lot, but it’s slowly adding up. I’m about 30 pages away from the midpoint of my book.
3. Reading: I’m barely on track with the review book for October. I like to be a little ahead by now, but I’m a few percent behind (yes, I track review books by percentage, like I need to read 5% five days a week aka 25% a week to finish in time to write the review of this one). And I’m even struggling with my “for fun” book right now.
4. Getting Universal to do their job, respiratory division: I recently got a new breathing therapy machine and it’s annoying. But there’s supposed to be an app I can put on my phone to make it less annoying. The problem is my machine doesn’t mention anything about the app. I contacted the manufacturer directly and they said I need a software upgrade. I told Ursula (a respiratory therapist at Universal who we love and who is absolutely the only reason I stay with this company) what was going on. She tried to get Universal to get the upgrade for about two weeks before she decided we needed to pull out the big guns (Dr. Lucifer’s (not her real name), my pulmonologist, office). Since then, I got instructions on how to set up the app, which still don’t work because my machine doesn’t mention the app at all. When I pointed that out to whoever emailed me, I didn’t hear back. So, I told Ursula because nobody keeps her in the loop. She pushed the people at Universal, and the next day I got another email saying they were working with a rep from the manufacturer on figuring out how to get the software upgrade for me. We’ll see how that goes.
I could keep rambling about stuff no one cares about, but it’s late. I think I’m just going to finish this up and watch tv or play games depending on what Dad’s doing. See you next week!
