Weekly Update 03/14/26 – 03/20/26 (Work Progress, Hearing Loss, Healthcare Navigation, Personal Reflections)
Weekly Update 03/14/26 – 03/20/26 (Work Progress, Hearing Loss, Healthcare Navigation, Personal Reflections)
This week’s update covers progress at work, ongoing medical recovery, hearing changes and next steps, navigating primary care access, and a few reflections tied to personal history and current events as part of the ongoing Weekly Update series.
This has been a good week. Things at work are
going well. I’m learning a lot. We have a new person, what they call a Product
Owner, for FACTS. From what I’ve seen, this is the person responsible for
handling our project. But I still report to James.
Medically, my foot is continuing to heal. I’m
taking it easy on it, constantly. OK, I take it off for showering and changing
clothes; otherwise, even when I sleep, it’s on. I’m wearing a special shoe to
protect the foot after surgery, though my foot is just broken. It’s a little
awkward as the special shoe is shorter than the normal shoe on the other foot.
Also, now when I walk, it sounds like I have a peg leg. One of the ways that
the shoe protects me is that it has a hard sole, so the foot will not bend, and
when it hits the hardwood in my house, it makes that sound.
This week I had my hearing checked. When I was 12
years old, I started working in my father's studio running a 16mm film
processing machine. I worked there for nearly 8 years. This meant spending
hours in almost darkness, dealing with many nasty chemicals, and having to be
constantly battered by the sound of the machine running, water jets spraying,
and the sound of KFWB news radio playing as loud as it could go to be heard
over the other sounds. Well, now over 40 years later, I’m paying the price for
that.
Mary and Dawn have both complained that I cannot
hear them. I have noticed that on Zoom calls, I have a problem understanding
women speaking. I have been tested several times for hearing loss, and over the
years, I have slowly watched my hearing decline. Well, finally, it has gotten
to the point where I need hearing aids. My hearing in the bass range is OK, but
my ability to hear in the high range has gotten much worse.
I have hearing aids on order and will have them
fitted in a few weeks. I told you I was getting old. I think I’m going to feel
a little like Lobot, the guy in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the one
with earpieces mounted to his head. My aides will not be that visible or
connected to my head, but they will have Bluetooth, so I will be able to
connect to my iPhone and my computer. I’m glad of that because they will not
only process the sounds around me, but they will also correct the sound coming
from Bluetooth, so I will be able to hear things better, such as Zoom meetings
and music played over them.
After my doctor's appointment last week, I was
told that my current PCP was leaving PeaceHealth and that I would need to get a
new PCP. I was very frustrated by that. Before I lost my last job, I was with
the Vancouver Clinic and was satisfied with the care I received there. But when
I lost my insurance, I had to go on Medicaid, and the Vancouver Clinic would
not take that coverage. So I moved to Seamar but was not thrilled. Last June,
when I was hospitalized with diabetic ketoacidosis, I wanted to get an appointment
to go over treatment with my PCP and was told by Seamar that the next available
appointment was in January and that they did not have a waiting list I could be
put on. In fact, according to them, my best option was simply to come to the
office and wait for a cancellation.
So I decided to move to PeaceHealth. It took some
doing, but I finally got an appointment for a new PCP in September, but that
was with a Physician Assistant, not an MD or even a Nurse Practitioner. I saw
my new PCP in September, December, and March. The office I met her at was quite
some distance from my home, but at least I was getting seen.
Well, I’m now back at work with good insurance
again. So I contacted the Vancouver Clinic to see if I could be put back with
my original PCP from there. Unfortunately, I have been gone from the Vancouver
Clinic for 3 years and 3 months. Because I was gone for more than 3 years and
my old PCP had a full roster of patients, I could not return to her. But I was
able to see a new doctor there, an MD at an office that is a long walking
distance from my house, in 6 weeks. I was pleased by that.
I was also impressed this week when I received an
email from Vancouver Clinic letting me know that I had an appointment with my
PCP in a few weeks, but that if I needed to be seen sooner, they could arrange
a virtual appointment.
Last Sunday was the annual farce known as the
Oscars. I have not watched the Oscars in years, not since 2003, when I watched
the ceremony from the VIP suite of my local hospital, helping to keep my dear
wife Linda calm while she was suffering from a nervous breakdown. We were in
the VIP suite because it was the only private room available, and since Linda
spent a lot of time crying, singing, or yelling, she needed that privacy, as
there was no space in the psychiatric ward. I do remember being surprised by how
politically correct they were when the announcer said “the Oscar goes to”
instead of “the winner is.”
I must admit I have very little respect for the
Oscars or the Emmys. My father was a member of the Academy of Television Arts
& Sciences, and because of the work I did in his studio, I could have been
as well. Each year, he would receive his Emmy ballot and promptly hand it over
to us kids, and we would vote. That experience did not leave me with much
confidence in such awards. After my father, Jay, died, my brother, James, simply continued using his membership. He kept voting for the Emmys even after my
father had been listed among those who had died that year, and he continued
receiving the free videos sent to members so they could evaluate what they were
voting on.
"Crack to Kitty Litter" most often
refers to a first-person memoir titled "From Crack to Kitty Litter"
by Odell Sneeden Hathaway III. The book explores addiction in ordinary,
middle-class life and how it can remain hidden within daily routines.
As I mentioned, I have been walking around
sounding like a peg-legged pirate, sailing the Caribbean. That reminded me of one of my favorite songs
that also reminds me of what white privilege is. The fact that it is easy to take things for
granted, things that other people, not as privileged as I am, will never know! You
see, not everyone knows of a little place like Kokomo.
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Weekly Update 03/07/26 – 03/13/26
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