We're not doing great right now, honestly. Everyone's alive and healthy and we'll be okay overall, but the past few weeks have been difficult in a way that culminated in a pretty traumatic way this week and we're all a bit emotionally raw right now. I'll explain the details but there's a long backstory that's necessary to understand them so for now I'll just leave this note.
That sounds really lousy. Sorry to hear that.
1: Really sorry to hear that. That kind of emotional rawness is so hard.
1: Take care.
NickS, hope your wrist is healing nicely.
Barry, since I'm sure you'll be around this thread later, best wishes for rapid recovery.
1: I hope there's some calm and peace headed your all's way.
NickS, hope your wrist is healing nicely.
Thanks for asking. I think it's doing well, and at a slightly less aggressive pace than you took. They had me in a splint for 2 weeks after surgery, so I was mostly off-work for that time. Which was good, I definitely felt like I got tired quickly and that my body was depleted.
On Wednesday I got a follow-up; they said the x-rays looked good and that I would go to a removable splint, with permission to start using the wrist again, but advice to not lift anything heavier than 3-4 pounds with that hand. I worked most of the day Thursday/Friday.
I feel like I already have improvement over the past 3 days; I'll have a PT appointment on Monday and see what they suggest for rate of ramping up activity.
I got my EOB from the insurance for the ER visit and it's all coded as in-network, which is good. The main think I'm curious about now is just making sure that the anesthesiologist also counts as in-network.
At the moment I'm genuinely excited about the improvement, but strength and range of motion are still limited.
Thanks, all. I'll go into the whole story either later tonight or tomorrow.
Thanks ydnew, still in a bit of pain but surprisingly able to put more weight on it than I thought. It hurts mostly when I get up from a regular sitting position.
My sympathies, teo.
After a day of cursing the airlines, my wife reached MO late Tuesday. Since then she's had a very good visit with her family in the south, and is now visiting her family in the north and having a quiet day of laundry and catching up with her step-Dad.
On my end, I'm going pretty well; I've been able to dig into some cleaning and get some things straightened out very well. Unfortunately, in the process of cleaning the louvered bathroom windows, one of the clips holding the window in place released and the glass slid down and broke against the the bathroom counter that I'd just cleaned. Fortunately, it was a pretty clean break, so I was able to tape across it temporarily and get it back in place over the weekend, and a replacement is getting cut to size today. I got out of it only gashing my thumb, which I'll take.
I got to game both days of the weekend -- I joined some friends for an afternoon of boardgaming Saturday, then joined an RPG playtest over zoom on Sunday. Both were very nice - particularly for the interacting. Sunday's participants were almost all new to me, and we didn't have a ton of out of character chitchat, but the little we did get out in parallel chat was nice -- I'd play with them again. It was a pretty heavy scenario - about forgiveness and seeking redemption with very true to life content, but those are great every once in a while. They really stretch your emotions, so it can be exhausting after.
Sending good vibes to all who need them.
Well done and best wishes to everyone whose dodgy joints are healing and teo I hope you recover as quickly and completely as all the dodgy joints.
The Selkie is away this week so Crom and I were able to get up a hill yesterday rather than paintstripping and tiling, which was amazing. I feel reborn.
Had my face repair last week. All's well that ends well but it was not a great experience. Was supposed to be 2-3 hours and ended up being 7 hours under general anesthesia which then required I stay overnight. SPouse was in the waiting area watching the other patients progress across the status board and move off the screen while I just stayed in surgery longer and longer. The only explanation I've gotten so far was "it was a more complicated fracture than expected" which I think involved something with bone fragments being removed, but I have follow up on Thursday to remove stitches and want to get more details.
I got a shitload of different drugs:
Cefazolin (antibiotic)
Dexamethasone (anti-inflammatory)
fentanyl (narcotic)
haloperidol (sedative)
hydromorphone (narcotic)
lidocaine (pain)
midazolam (sedative)
ondansetron (anti-nausea)
propofol (sedative)
rocuronium (anesthesia)
sugammadex (reverse anesthesia)
oxycodone (narcotic)
Acetaminophen (pain)
Augmentin (antibiotic, IV then oral)
Tobramycin (optic antibiotic)
The freakiest part was what happened I got the IV morphine (hydromorphone/dilaudid) while coming out of anesthesia. I wasn't all there at that point and they were asking how bad my pain was on the dumb 0-10 scale and I think I said 6 so they said do you want more and maybe I agreed? So I got a double dose and I remember being in recovery and breathing out and thinking how relaxing it was to not bother breathing in again. I don't know how long I did that but then the machine started screaming and I looked at it and saw my blood oxygen was 82% and thought, "Guess I better breathe in again." It quickly went back up to 98% but having the conscious thought and memory of thinking "should I bother breathing?" left me messed up.
I've made it post op with just the acetaminophen with a half Oxy one night I woke up with a migraine and was wrongly convinced I had bacterial meningitis, and today I've gone 14 hours with no pain meds. My eye isn't fully working yet due to swelling around it which is the only thing I'm still a little concerned about but that should resolve when they remove the sutures holding the eyelid partly closed.
That's sounds horrible. The safe word to remember is "Naloxone".
Jeez, SP, that sounds way worse than my 5-hour operation plus overnight stay. I'm now 20 days out from my procedure and take heart, the swelling does keep going down, even if large portions of my face still have no sensation. For insurance purposes they gave me a detailed report of everything that happened while I was out, the best part being that they packed a bunch of cocaine up my nose.
The bandages came off last week, and allowing for temporary stretching and swelling and Frankenstein stitches, I can't believe how good the results are. It's such a relief. I've been seeing friends and family in ones and twos and everyone seems pretty amazed with the outcome. As am I.
Best wishes to all the medicalized upthread and teo too.
best part being that they packed a bunch of cocaine up my nose
If you had different insurance, could you have freebased it?
Glad the surgery worked.
Okay, I'm ready to tell the story of what's going on. It's long and still ongoing, so I'm going to do this as a series of comments rather than one giant one.
So, there's this Native family we know. The mom (I'll call her "Christina") grew up in rural Alaska but has lived in and around Anchorage for a long time. She has six kids and has been through a long series of misfortunes, abusive relationships, etc. She posts a lot on Facebook and is active in various progressive political causes. Amadea has known her pretty well from that for a while.
I guess their living situation has been unstable off and on for a long time, but when I came into the picture they were stably housed in Anchorage though often short of cash. We would drop off food and so forth at times when they were in particular need but we weren't particularly close.
About a year ago their landlord jacked the rent way up and they were effectively forced out and became homeless. They went into a series of shelters for a while, but they had a dog at the time that they couldn't take with them, so we offered to take the dog until they found more stable housing.
We had the dog for a while, as they moved from shelter to shelter. At one point they found housing with one of the local tribes in the Valley, but could only stay one month for some reason. From time to time they would crash with us for brief periods, but our house isn't big enough to add a whole additional family, obviously.
Three of the kids are older and out of the house, so by this point it was just Christina and the three youngest, who were 15, 13, and 9 at this point. The youngest is autistic and has all sorts of other medical problems that make him very difficult to care for, which only increase their overall problems.
The two youngest kids have been hospitalized for long periods for various reasons, and the youngest eventually ended up going to a facility out of state. The second-youngest was staying with a friend for a while then ended up in a pediatric psych ward for an extended period. That at least lowered Christina's load.
That still left the 15-year-old, who I'll call "Alta." Around May Amadea and Christina talked about it and decided it made the most sense for Alta to move in with us and get services through the nonprofit for LGBTQ+ youth that also helps us with the twins. That would free up Christina to find her own housing for just her. We also took the dog again at this point.
It took a long time to get the various paperwork in place but eventually Christina signed a Power of Attorney allowing us to make medical and educational decisions for Alta, and we signed a host home agreement through the nonprofit.
So Alta began living with us about six months ago, and was thriving. She began going to the local high school (she had been home-schooled before) and made a lot of friends, who she would often have over at our house. That caused some conflicts and needs for boundaries and rule-setting of course, but it was all manageable. She also got a boyfriend, who is very sweet if kind of a typical teenage dumbass.
We were very clear with Christina at the outset that we practice harm-reduction parenting with the teens; we have condoms around and so forth. We recognize that teens are going to experiment with sex and drugs and our focus is on making sure they're safe rather. She indicated that she was fine with all that at the time.
So once Alta got the boyfriend, he started staying over a lot, which his parents were fine with, and they were making extensive use of the condoms. Alta also got a prescription for hormonal birth control to be extra safe. Harm reduction!
So things were going great. Meanwhile, Christina went back to her rural hometown for a while and fell in with a guy who turned out to be abusive, so she came back to Anchorage. Amadea got her a house-sitting gig with another family we know through political circles, which turned into a longer-term stay. So she's not really homeless right now, though she still often presents herself that way online.
In fact, things were going so well that we started talking about the other kid, the one in the psych ward, coming to stay with us too when she got out. This would be a bit of a challenge, though, because we don't have any additional bedrooms so the two sisters would have to share a room. Alta wasn't thrilled about that, especially because of her whole boyfriend-staying-over deal. But we agreed that we would just need to all talk it through when the time came.
Then, about a month ago, Alta and Christina were talking and Christina asked about the idea of the younger sister moving in. Alta said we'd have to all discuss that, because of the complications from the boyfriend situation.
At that point Christina absolutely FLIPPED OUT at the idea that we were letting Alta have her boyfriend over. She sent a very nasty text to me and Amadea going on and on about how unconscionable that was and how no responsible parent would allow it and so on and so forth.
Amadea pushed back firmly and reminded her that this was the deal all along and we weren't going to change our policies about how we deal with the teens. Christina got more and more upset and eventually declared that she was revoking the POA and her consent for Alta to stay in the home.
That didn't cause any immediate change for us, since Alta was still physically in the house. Christina demanded that we have no further contact with her (Christina), with the nonprofit case worker serving as an intermediary. We insisted in turn that Christina not set foot on our property.
Things were in a tense equilibrium for a few weeks like that, but Christina continued to escalate the situation wherever she could. Then this past week she reported Alta to the police as a runaway.
Once she did that the writing was on the wall. On Thursday I got a call from the school resource officer saying that Alta wasn't at school and her mom was there to collect her. He asked if she was at our house and reminded me that if she was and we didn't reported we could be charged with harboring a fugitive. I said she wasn't as far as I knew and that she had gone to school as usual that morning.
It turned out that she had gone to the shopping center across the street during lunch and hadn't come back to school afterward. She was sobbing in the bathroom at Kohl's when they tracked her down. Her mom took her to the psych ER for evaluation for some reason. They checked her out and found that she was fine, so she went back with her mom to the house where she's been staying.
Her mom had also checked the other sister out of the psych ward earlier than scheduled a couple days before this. So it's all three of them in the single room there, I guess.
Oh I guess it was Wednesday when the school stuff went down. On Thursday Amadea took off from work and packed up Alta's room in our house, with help from some of the people from the nonprofit. On Saturday Alta came and picked up the stuff. It took multiple trips, and she left some stuff she doesn't immediately need for us to store. That's the last time I saw her. She's still going to school so the twins see her there.
This has all been pretty rough on us, as you can imagine. But today it took another twist. Alta went missing.
It's not clear to us exactly what happened, but this evening Amadea got a call from the police saying Alta had been reported as a runaway again and her mom was claiming we were harboring her. We weren't, of course. But the cops did come by and check out her room to make sure.
Once the police confirmed that we didn't have her, Christina put up a Facebook post reporting her missing and asking people to look out for her. So that's being shared all over our social media, with the most recent picture Christina had: Alta in her homecoming dress, at our house before the dance.
We miss her terribly and it's very hard being in a position where there's so little we can do. The house feels very empty without her.
So anyway, that's the story. I'll update with any new developments.
Good lord, what a terrible situation. Hoping for good news in the morning.
She's a good kid, and we love her so much. We just want to know she's okay.
Oh jesus, Teo, that's so stressful. Also you guys are such wonderful people. I'm in awe.
Nothing to add that heebie and ajay haven't already said, but I hope it all works out for the best.
Nothing to add that heebie and ajay haven't already said, but I hope it all works out for the best.
Teo - That kind of craziness is so overwhelming, especially because you can't *fix* the problem and can just feel helpless. Hugs.
So sorry teo, what everyone else said
Hope that she's ok and that her 16th birthday is soon, so that emancipation becomes a viable option. Can totally understand noping out of a situation where she's sharing a room with her mom as described. Fingers crossed for good-ish news soon.
Wow that's tough. I don't have a sense at all on what the limits are of what you can do for her if she gets in touch -- presumably you could put her in touch with social services even if you can't let her stay at your place? But I have no real idea.
That is rough for you and especially her. Hope she's found somewhere safe.
What a shitty, stressful situation. Much love to you all.
Woof. Fingers crossed for a fast and reassuring resolution.
Hoping this all works out. Much sympathy. I guess this is evidence for that horrible saying, "no good deed goes unpunished"
That sounds really difficult. Growing up we had a somewhat similar relationship to a family (single mom, 4 kids, one autistic, somewhat unstable housing situation, kids who sometimes lived with us). It's really tough, the well of trauma and disfunction runs so deep that it feels bottomless. Of course it being people we knew through church, the kids were all pregnant by 16 and the cycle continued to varying degrees into the next generation. You've done the right thing at every step here. Poor kid, I really hope she's ok. And I know I'm not really old enough to say this, but since you were still so young when you showed up here I'll say it anyway, I'm proud of you. You and Amadea are so generous and supportive, and all the kids in your life are lucky to have you.
That sounds really rough. Hopefully it works out, and Alta is safe, but that is really emotionally taxing.
What an awful situation. Hope it turns out ok.
17- Congrats on the new face! Did you do both cheeks at once? The big numb area is very annoying but I think is slowly shrinking, and it would be so much worse if it was both sides.
Teo sorry for everything that's happening. You're a saint for helping make people's lives better.
Reminder to get a flu shot: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-december-6-2022
66: Both cheeks, nose, jaw, chin, forehead, eye sockets; as I keep telling people, the sheer scope of interventions you need in later life (to the extent intervention is possible) is why puberty blockers for teens matter. It's a very strange gestalt effect of simultaneously still looking like myself, and also like someone rather different. Numb areas for me are scalp and lower lip/chin.
Too, you and Amadea have obviously made such a difference in Alta's life already. Hoping she's somewhere safe and for more news soon.
I feel good that we didn't wait this year and got the flu shot in like September.
68: Did you say something a while back about seeing projected results and realizing how much you looked like your sister, or am I conflating you with someone else I know? And if it was you, did that resemblance show up as strongly as expected?
That was me! And yes, from certain angles I think I look rather like my sister (maybe not quite as much as in the Photoshop projection), also see my mom in there, but the really flattering new resemblance is to my daughter.
teo, that sounds like a lot of heartsickness for you all. All the best.
69: I feel bad about it! Because despite my virtue, I seem to have a cold! Not fair! I guess I'm being punished for my decision to stop wearing masks.
I tested myself for Covid this morning and thankfully that was negative.
Thanks, everyone. No updates so far. Really appreciate all the support.
Can the boyfriend be contacted?
Yeah, we've been in touch with him and he doesn't know where she is either. The police were going to contact him as well; I haven't heard anything further about that, but I presume if they had found her with him we would have heard by now. So I don't think he's involved in whatever is going on.
76: Dammit. I didn't want to jinx it by making a guess, but with her boyfriend seemed like the obvious safe place for her to be holed up.
Hope that she's ok and that her 16th birthday is soon, so that emancipation becomes a viable option.
She actually is 16 now and has talked about emancipation as an option. We're not going to get involved in that process, but we've let her know that if she does do it she can stay with us.
And 63 last from me too -- I never remember to say things like that explicitly, but I'm thinking it.
I didn't want to jinx it by making a guess, but with her boyfriend seemed like the obvious safe place for her to be holed up.
Yeah, a little too obvious I think. If she's trying not to be found, which may or may not be the case. The big question now is whether she shows up at school today.
Wow teo, that sounds terrifying and so stressful. I'm so sorry. At the same, as several people have said above, you and Amadea are wonderful and amazingly open-hearted, and Alta is really fortunate to have you guys as a part of her life.
Speedy healing, SP and lourdes. Lourdes, so happy for you that the surgery came out well!
Yes! Happy faces to you, Lourdes!
Teo, echoing what everyone else has said here but I'll latch onto Lourdes's 68last especially and say that no matter what happens from here out you have given Alta some stability and nurturing at a very important time and I imagine she will carry that with her. Here's hoping she shows up quickly and fine.
Thanks, chill. While this was playing out Amadea reached out to a former employer/quasi-mentor who has taken in a lot of foster kids over the years and he said he's had kids that he only had for a few weeks come back years later and talk about what a difference he made in their lives. That was comforting for her to hear.
Still in recovery, my knee was burning like a motherfucker last night. Tomorrow morning is my post op follow up.
"Trump Organization Found Guilty" - that headline did lift my spirits a bit.
I'm guessing she did not show up at school today?
Which wasn't a big surprise, but not knowing anything is so agonizing.
Yeah, that's Not Being Found 101. I'm sorry about the uncertainty.
Apparently Christina went to the school today and told the boyfriend and our twins that Alta is no longer enrolled there. It's not clear if she's been found.
That's disturbing on so many levels. We've already contacted the school to make sure they're aware. Since her daughter is no longer enrolled she has no reason to be there and will be trespassed if she shows up again.
Is there some kind of loop-closure where someone figures out if she was duly enrolled in a school elsewhere?
I'm sure there's some process but I'm not sure how it works. Most likely Christina enrolled her back in the homeschool program through the district at the same time, but there's no way to check that AFAIK.
I had a friend who ran away from college (like running away from home, but more unusual...) and spent several days in a shelter in the furthest city you could get a direct bus to. If she's already familiar with some of the local shelters maybe she's safe at one of them.
Teo, so sorry you're going through this, and huge respect for all you've done and are doing. One hopefully obvious bit of advice, prompted by your mentioning the cops checking out your house and her room: be careful with law enforcement. Many years ago we made the mistake of treating them as allies who were there to help in a mental health situation. They weren't and they're not.
97: Yeah, shelter is a possibility, but I feel like the cops would have checked out the shelters by now.
98: Thanks. We are very aware of the risks with involving the cops, and our general policy is that they can't come into our house without a warrant. In this case we decided to voluntarily let them look for her to rule us out since we were very sure she wasn't there. The officer we worked with was very respectful and professional throughout the brief process.
Lol I just saw the "list price" bill for the surgery which I'm sure insurance negotiates down by about 80%.
$144987.11
100: That extra eleven cents is just cruel.
100 - I had a septoplasty at MEEI in 2020. My deductible is $200, and then I owe 10% co-insurance, and that bill was over $1000. MA healthcare surgery prices are high. I've seen that surgery quoted as $2-5k elsewhere.
99.1: I really have no idea what the law or typical policy is around that kind of scenario. I mean I get why you didn't make the cops get a warrant at your house, but I wouldn't be surprised if shelters by policy require warrants to reveal who is staying there. Especially with domestic violence scenarios it seems like they'd want to be very careful about not releasing info. But I really I just don't know.
103: Yeah, I don't really know how that typically works either. There are definitely confidentiality issues around shelters, but there are also valid reasons that various entities including the police have for knowing who's staying where. Shelters that are specifically for DV victims typically don't even publicize their locations.
(No updates, in case anyone was wondering. She's still missing with no new information available to us at least.)
I spoke too soon! Amadea reports that someone sent her photos of Alta from Instagram, from the day she went missing but later in the day than the last time she had been seen. They're at a mall and a grocery store with friends Amadea doesn't recognize.
She sent the pictures to the police. Our twins asked if they could see them to see if they recognize any of the people, but Amadea is unsure if she wants them involved at that level in this.
Update: She did send the pictures to the twins. They possibly recognized one of the people by first name but weren't totally sure. I don't recognize any of them, so they're definitely not from the group of friends that hung out at our house all the time.
I guess IG means geotags are unlikely?
Amadea could tell which mall it was just from the pictures. It's way on the other side of town, but it's a big one that brings in people from all over so not very dispositive. She sent the pictures to the police anyway just in case they help.
Teo, I'm thinking of you all and wishing for the best, and I respect you and Amadea for reaching out and finding new ways to get your hearts broken, much as Thorn has done. I'm sorry it's so, so hard to protect people. I can't imagine Alta tagged her friends with their insta accounts in the photo? Too easy.
Thanks, lk. I'm not on Instagram myself but I don't think the photos are tagged. The account that posted them does seem to be a kid that goes to the same high school and may be one of the friends in the pictures, so that's some kind of lead, but the account doesn't seem to indicate their full name or any other information AFAICT.
Update! Amadea reports that Alta talked to her cousin and says she's safe and that her mom knows she's safe. She doesn't know any details though. Apparently there's a screenshot of something? She's been reaching out to people on all sorts of apps so I don't know how exactly she learned this. It's a big relief in any case. Hopefully we'll learn more soon.
Oh right, I guess the parser wouldn't like emoticon hearts. Relieved and hopeful.
100: I think my list price cracked $200k. A lot of that is facility and anesthesia fees, which are fictional since they're in network, but the surgeon himself was an out-of-network superstar and I emptied our savings to pay him out of pocket in advance. I've been petitioning Anthem Blue Cross for reimbursement which, due to benefit caps, I expect to be fractional, and due to general administrative incompetence, to happen around the time this country elects its first trans president.
Thanks, everyone. Still a lot of questions (in fact an increasing number) about exactly what is going on but it's a relief to know that she's safe and communicating with someone.