I told my son that I was going to try to take this week relatively off. He’s skeptical, since I’m a workaholic.

I told him I wanted to binge more, to read more, and to walk more.

“Well, there’s only so much walking you can do,” he said, acknowledging both my back and the epic heat we’re in for this week.

Yesterday, I got up early, started a podcast, and headed out. My back has been tolerating about 35 minutes of walking lately, but I decided to add on another 10.

This morning, I woke up with two new blisters on the ball of my left foot.

I still went for my walk, but it was slower, and I’m back down to 35 minutes.

The universe is clear: it wants me to die early, fat, and hypertensive.

Last weekend, I finished grading my SCC lit class, which leaves me with just three courses for the next three weeks. And then I’ll get a whole week off before my summer courses start. (My goal, in addition to finishing my three courses successfully, is to prep my June course well enough that I can actually take that week off from work.)

The end of the SCC lit class could have gone better. One struggling student cheated on both her last paper and the final. Another, who needed an A+ on every remaining assignment to pass, skipped assignments, turned in a research paper without any research in it, and then turned in an incomplete final AFTER I’d turned in the grades.

(Did he tell me he needed another day? Of course not. That would entail communicating with me.)

My comedy students’ final is soon, so I need to write my routine, since I’m the MC.

A beloved colleague brought my attention to a temporary fix the DOE might have for people like me, who paid an incredible amount of money to the “wrong” plans. So I’m filing for that. Do they want ink signatures from UCD to prove I have worked there all this time? They do. Is the website confusing, because it says I’m not eligible since I, like everyone else, is in automatic Covid deferment, but then also have a paragraph about how I should ignore the giant warning on every singe page about that, since they’re the ones who deferred me? Yes.

I tried Jupiter Rising, but didn’t like it. Tried Invincible. Might like it. Tried Hacks with Jean Smart. Fucking loved it. Started Ted Lasso. Will binge more soon. Couldn’t quite get through Army of the Dead last night. Started and finished this season of Shrill, which is awesome. Watched Jason Alexander et al in The Sisters Rosensweig via Zoom and The ABCS of Love via the Sacramento French Film Festival.

I’m mourning Paul Mooney and Charles Grodin.

My upper division students are struggling, because I’m making them write a grown up argument (one in which the thesis is actually debatable (for reasonable people) and defendable, and one that works to inform and persuade its intended audience, and one that fully and fairly engages with counter-argument).

You’d be surprised how many draft theses are unconstitutional, EVEN AFTER I SAID IN THE VIDEO ABOUT THIS THAT THEY SHOULD NOT MAKE UNCONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENTS.

I spent 9 straight hours giving feedback on drafts on Thursday. Then, I tried to join some high school friends for a Zoom reunion, but I felt so sick with exhaustion that I had to go lie down.

The most stressful thing this week, though, was another visit with my TMJ dentist.

I told his assistant that I wanted to talk about getting a lower night guard and/or a dental device for mild apnea (since the dentist is convinced my tongue is in the wrong place when I sleep). The dentist was dismissive of anyone who’s vouched for lower guards. (“Well, I guess your friends have made literally thousands of upper night guards like I have, right?”) But he agreed to let me have a lower one and “run [my] own little experiment.”

But, I said. If you think I need that apnea dental device, shouldn’t I get that and not use any type of guard?

We came to consensus on trying that first. I have to do a sleep study for insurance to approve it.

Then he brought up all the other things he wants to do: the frenectomy, sawing down some of the protruding bones in my mouth, braces, etc.

I said I’d like to go in stages since I have other doctors who want to do things to my body that are also extreme.

We left that conversation with him knowing nothing more about me, but with me knowing about all of his surgeries. Sigh.

He said to get the sleep study done and then we’d do a scan for the device.

When I was alone again with the assistant, who had been in the room the whole time, he tried to schedule me for a scan for a lower night guard.

“That’s not where we landed,” I explained. “We need to schedule a scan.”

“For braces?”

No.

Once I got him to realize we were trying for the apnea device, he wanted to get the device going right away.

“Don’t I have to get the sleep study first?”

“I don’t think so. They’ll want to study you with it in.”

“But the doctor said I needed the study before insurance would authorize the device.”

“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”

He scheduled me for a scan next week, saying we can do the scan without authorization, but I don’t trust him, so I’m calling tomorrow to talk to someone who can parse conversations better.

Overall, though, it was a good week.

My son and I celebrated the end of his first year in grad school with a sushi feast.

A beloved friend got me an amazing gift:

And I am celebrating that, as of last night, it’s no longer been a year and seven months since I’ve had sex with another person.

Yay vaccines!

I didn’t write a wrap up last week, because I was down. I’m not great this week, but I’m not actively depressed anymore. It actually took me a while to realize I that I was–why do I keep staring off into space? Why does my face and body crumple the second I end a zoom call with a student? Why do I just want to sleep?

Luckily, my depression didn’t lie to me–it didn’t tell me that I didn’t deserve to be happy or that no one cared about me or that I would feel depressed forever.

Instead, it told me that my pain was going to keep getting worse.

And that’s probably true.

We’re dealing with a lot at my house. Anubis keeps getting blocked, even though we’re holding him down and cleaning his urethra, which is every bit as awful as it sounds. He’s been to the vet every week for the past month; Dante is literally there with him now as I type this.

Dante’s also had two flat tires in the past three weeks and will have oral surgery next week. And it’s heavy exam time for his Masters program.

I’m dealing with a couple of really difficult students, and that takes up more mental space than it should. My massage therapist is encouraging me to do a meditation throughout the day to clear the pressure of making all students happy all the time.

But what’s really causing problems right now is my physical health.

My TMJ dentist made me a night guard a couple of months ago. I had told him that I stopped wearing the one I got almost twenty years ago, because it made me grind more, and thus caused more pain. I told him my TMJ physical therapist a lower one would work better for me.

He told me he knew best and made a top one.

And I grind more.

And I wake up in pain more.

I met with him a couple of weeks ago, and we didn’t really talk about the guard because we had to go over the most intensive scans I’ve ever seen–down to the blood vessels. Apparently, not only do I have TMJ problems and arthritis and neck problems, which I knew already, but my airflow is constricted and my mouth didn’t form properly when I was a child and my tongue is in the wrong place. And apparently my tongue being in the wrong place maybe means I can’t breathe at night, and that would explain why I’m overweight and hypertensive (I would love to blame it completely on my tongue, and not on my stupid back making it hard to walk and my job being so sedentary and the food I cook being so good). And surely I’ve noticed these deformities, like how my upper lip is too thin, right?

I had not noticed that.

So he wants to cut my frenum and the tissue that connects my upper lip to my gums and put braces on me.

And I worked very hard not to cry, because having braces when I was a kid is when my daily headaches started, and moving my bones and teeth will hurt, and I have fibromyalgia, which means I will feel that hurt more than normal people, because my body is oversensitive and whiny.

And I think he said something about the braces closing the gap between my front teeth, but I don’t actually want that, because I’ve got this whole multiple-husbands, lusty wife of Bath thing going on.

And then, as I was working through this information and the depression that came with it, I started to bleed again, heavily.

Regular readers will remember that for several months last year, I had unexplained, constant heavy menstrual bleeding, which resulted in agonizing tests like a uterine scraping. We ended up fighting this by adding a second form of birth control–so now I’m on two different kinds, both of which are supposed to keep me from having periods all together.

It’s day 14 of this particular period, and it’s awful. I have some blood tests to do Wednesday.

I’ve been talking to some of my team members about what the TMJ doc wants to do, and their reaction reassures me that I’m not insane. They were all trained that lower night guards were best, and they have reservations about moving things in my skull around. My chiropractor stressed that this was a lot to add to all of the other body problems I’m working with right now and how if these procedures didn’t work–or made things worse–there would be no way to undo them.

I emailed the TMJ doc’s medical assistant a week ago with questions. If my tongue is in the wrong place, where is it supposed to be? Do I need a frenum cut to get it there? Can we try a lower guard? etc.

She hasn’t written back.

Today I head into Sacramento, to UCD’s genetics people, for a physical exam, to see if Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is likely.

I’m all cramped up because I walked for thirty whole minutes outside.

It’s just a lot.

And it’s been a lot for a long time, and usually I can handle that. And I don’t have unrealistic expectations. I’m a chronic pain patient. My goal is to manage, to keep going, not to erase what is unerasable.

But the dentist just threw me for a loop. I thought I knew what was wrong, and I did.

I just wasn’t prepared to learn my whole upper body was completely wrong and that it has been since the beginning of me.

And now I can’t stop thinking about my tongue.

Last week definitely had more ups than downs. This week, not so much.

The bad:

Both the boy and I had to deal with medical b.s. Mine included driving all the way to Sacramento with a migraine, to see my TMJ specialist, only to be told that my appointment had completely disappeared from their system.

I’m also prepping for some facet injections in my back. The pain clinic and I are sort of at a stand-still. I don’t respond well enough to the treatments we’re trying, and they’re also a little dangerous (since I’m so young, I shouldn’t have frequent disc injections). They want to burn the nerves in my lumbar spine, but I’m unconvinced, both because nerve pain isn’t the only thing going on and because I’ve had a nerve burn done in my neck, and it backfired. Instead of my brain saying, “we’re not getting pain signals from her neck anymore, so let’s not make her feel pain,” my brain said, “holy fucking shit! They BURNED HER NERVES! Let’s send the regular pain signals and the pain one should feel after being burned!”

The facet injections are a compromise, basically. They’re hoping to show me, through it, that a nerve burn would work there.

Anubis decided that two family members having health problems wasn’t enough, so his urethra got blocked. Now we’re monitoring his pee, and Dante has to help him keep is clean (Anubis’s surgery to widen his urethra has helped, but not quite enough.)

We didn’t get to really celebrate St. Urho’s Day, due to the chaos.

In other news, I took a break from celebrating getting out of medical and consumer debt to check on how those student loans were coming.

Borrowed: 133,733

Paid back so far: 88,744

With interest, what I owed Tuesday: $154,213

My laptop’s keyboard is starting to have sticky keys. Apparently, it’s a known issue, and they should fix it for free, but the fixers say I have to be prepared to be without it for a couple of weeks. My desktop can’t yet do Zoom, so I’ve had to order a web cam with mic before I can get the laptop into the shop.

The meh:

My 300th college course began this week! It’s an intro to lit class at SCC; unfortunately, it’s an 8 week class. And while I got rid of a few units (postmodernism, the Southern Gothic, and fairy tales), it’s still a challenge to do a semester course in half a semester.

5 of the 26 enrolled students didn’t respond to emails or log on to Canvas the first week. Half of the rest are already failing because they haven’t turned in the homework. I’ve reached out to everyone, and most are telling me they just didn’t think the course would be time consuming. When I explain that they would have physically been in a room with me for 6 hours and 40 minutes each week if we were in person, and that they should therefore be prepared to do at least that much (which is much less than the Carnegie expectation of 20 hours/week for this class), they are shocked.

I’m not shocked that they’re shocked, but I’m disheartened.

Many of my students are working full time and also taking a full load of courses, which an 8-week course isn’t compatible with.

Half of the students hated “Hills Like White Elephants,” and I had fun reading their interpretations of what the “operation” was. The most creative was that the American wanted Jig to join a prostitution ring. I also included “Bullet Points” by Jericho Brown in this first week, to show them that poetry isn’t just dead white guys writing about daffodils. Most of the students loved it; the one who wants to be a cop found it offensive.

Next week, we do plays: Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune and Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play. It’s my first time teaching the latter; I’m cautiously optimistic. Am I having them watch the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons first? Of course!

I finished my four Winter courses, and I got the syllabi and Canvas pages up for my three Davis Spring courses, which was quite a feat. There were a couple of days, including yesterday, when my brain broke.

The good:

I got to see the Sklar Brothers and Grep Proops perform virtual shows.

Spring came.

I took The New Yorker‘s recommendation to watch The Bureau, which is excellent.

I had many students thank me for my work last quarter. A few of them realizing how much time I spend writing to them and talking to them is the only thing that makes it worth it. One student wrote this:

“I have never had another teacher like you before. You terrified me for all of the right reasons. I kept feeling called out in the beginning. I used to write papers for the grader instead of the purpose because of their biased writing styles. In fact, I used to do everything to please other people because I thought that is how life works. I know now how incorrect that way of living is. Maybe this wasn’t your intention, but I understand how I want to live my life from now on. You taught the class with humor, honesty, and empathy: three characteristics I strive to perfect one day. There was never any bullshit, and for that, I am so thankful. You taught the class not only how to become better writers, but also how to be better people.”

I’m pretty sure “[terrifying] for all of the right reasons” should be on my tombstone.

Last year, I changed health insurance plans. I’ve been happy with my decision–my copays are lower, as is my out of pocket maximum.

In fact, I met my out of pocket maximum last June.

It took a while to figure out what to do about that–I got conflicting information when I messaged my insurance company. When I finally called them, though, they were able to start an audit to confirm that I had, in fact, met the obligation.

They did so in October. They sent a letter to my pharmacy and UCD health.

That’s what they say, anyway.

In the meantime, I was still being billed every time I showed up at a doctor’s appointment, and for every prescription I picked up.

I called again. And again.

The pharmacy finally acknowledged what happened in late December, after a bunch of calls, though I haven’t gotten any of the extra money I paid back.

UCD refuses to acknowledge anything.

January saw me calling HealthNet again, so they could contact UCD again.

I waited a month, giving UCD time to respond to the letter that had been resent again.

That didn’t happen, so I called HealthNet Monday. The agent called UCD, which claimed they’d never ever heard from HealthNet (HealthNet says they say that a lot). The letter was sent. Again.

But today, I found myself spending more time I didn’t have on the phone with a collection agency. UCD is apparently desperate for $9.66 they say I owe from an appointment last August. The collection agency said HealthNet had to fax them, so I stayed on hold while HealthNet called them and then faxed them.

I’m inclined to believe, for once, my insurance company. They give me reference numbers and actual help when I call. They were able to resolve this same issue with my physical therapist right away. UCD, on the other hand, is curt in their answers and, of course, sent me to a bill collector.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which one of them is lying.

Either way, UCD will probably be able to keep some of the extra money I paid them. (And the interest.) Either way, I’m being squeezed. Either way, I’m lucky that I have language skills, the ability to read contracts, the self-confidence to advocate for myself, and the ability to make long calls during regular work hours. This is a major hassle for me that could end up hurting my credit score, though I’m not at fault.

Imagine someone who doesn’t know this system, or who isn’t good with this language, or who can’t make calls during working hours trying to navigate all of this.

Our system is irretrievably broken.

December was a long month, at the end of a long year. My plan today was to finish getting everything ready for my first two weeks of classes. That way, I could take two whole days off from school work before Winter term.

Things were going well. I got my classes prepped, answered some emails, wrote my first postcard of 2021, and sent off a letter of rec.

Then, I headed upstairs to put my bedding in the laundry, so I could start my weekend with fresh sheets. I was going to come back downstairs to do my yoga, take a walk, try to clean off the pile of post its on my desk, and get ready for dinner and to put tomorrow’s lunch in the crock pot.

Except before I could come back downstairs, I felt a twinge in my mid-back. And then a big twinge–one that made me cry out. The muscles all around the bra strap area are seizing. It’s better than when my low back is out–I can bend at the waist at least. But it hurts the band of muscles when I breathe deeply.

So here I am, on New Year’s Day, unhappily drugged, with a still-messy desk and an unmade bed.

Trying to stay positive, though. I have kittens, a son who can feed me, a beautiful Christmas tree beside me, and a relatively comfortable couch.

As Americans die in increasing numbers, my anxiety is ramping back up to late March and April levels.

I can’t sleep.

I miss seeing people. I miss eating out. I miss in-person classes. I miss sex. I miss touching people and animals that don’t live with me. I miss only being worried about what has brought me to the doctor’s office that day, instead of how the visit itself could hurt me.

And I’m terrified.

Terrified of my fellow Americans: the cousins and brothers-in-law and college friends in our feeds, at our grocery stores, masklessly delivering our food because we’re scared to go to the grocery store, who tell us this isn’t real, or that it is but it’s only going to kill off the weak (like me), or that masks don’t work 100% so why bother, or that most of those quarter of a million dead Americans probably actually just died of heart attacks and strokes (it’s just a coincidence that they were intubated at the time), or that they’re safe because they take baths, or that Jesus will protect them, or that all the doctors are lying to make more money . . . .

Prove us wrong, assholes.

Let’s do an experiment.

Put on the masks, wash your hands, practice social distancing. Do it for a month.

If the numbers don’t change, even though we all did it, then you were right. My mask was always a useless piece of fabric, like a tie.

This is just a short blog to recommend an episode of This American Life, “Something Only I Can See.”

It’s about a woman who first is convinced her family has a rare genetic condition.

And who then is convinced she has a second one.

The doctors don’t believe her either time.

I’m lucky, at this point in my life, to has a GP who believes me. I have lots of rare things, and I’m that person who has the rare side effect–the one that isn’t listed in the commercial.

When I go to the ER for abdominal migraines, I have to educate everyone about it. Since I’m never asking for pain killers, they don’t fight me. God help me if I did need some to fight this, though.

This story reminded me to keep explaining and to keep pushing. Lightening does strike twice for some of us.

This post isn’t about how I taught straight through the summer. About how next week, my 4 UCD classes start or about how my Los Rios classes are in their 5th week.

This post is about literal blood draining out of me.

Last month, I had a really heavy, long period, which I didn’t enjoy, since I’m not even supposed to have periods on my current birth control.

But then, two weeks after it ended, on 9/3, I started bleeding again. The first week was really light. The last two weeks have been excessively heavy.

Like bleeding through my clothes heavy.

Like I’m going to need to do a GoFundMe for new underwear if and when it ever stops heavy.

Like the bathroom turning into a crime scene heavy.

Like the doctor’s assistant telling me that if the clots get to “small lemon” sized, I need to head to the ER heavy.

Meanwhile, my gyno can’t see me until the very end of October.

We’ve determined that my blood work is normal, and she’s ordered a vaginal ultrasound to check for fibroids.

I’m exhausted, crampy, and cranky.

Unlike Dave Foley, I do not have a good attitude towards menstruation.