Ugh - Answers Delayed

Gary got the call from the urgent care yesterday morning — and they put him off until Monday. He says he’s fine, but of course on top of his angry protestations that he’s fine, he lists his symptoms.

I’M FINE I’M JUST CONFUSED

I’M FINE I’M JUST DIZZY

I’M FINE I’M JUST FEVERISH 

NO DON’T TAKE MY TEMPERATURE

I AM FINE

And then on Monday ... all he gets is a chest X-Ray. After that then we get to have the debate about getting swabbed. I’m compiling my arguments already. I plan to tell him he has an obligation to be another statistic that makes the President look bad. 

Comments

[KC]

That is really annoying, but if they're swamped, it's better to have a quick visit on Monday than a "this is taking forever" visit today, so there is that?

In my world, if someone says they are feverish, then you have entered a Your Temperature Will Be Taken zone (unless the thermometer has already determined that you are feverish but not worryingly so, and as long as you are not saying you are *more* feverish or *less* feverish). But worlds vary...

My opinion is that you should probably both be swabbed (because if you *do* have a low-level/asymptomatic case, then that would be really very helpful to know for the whole not-living-in-fear-for-the-next-year sort of thing, but what do I know?)(and it sounds like they are pretty short on tests, if someone who can't breathe when they are lying down flat does not automatically merit a test!).

[Arlene]

Actually, feeling fine five to seven days after becoming ill can be followed by rapidly getting much worse. (Common from what I read.) It's good that Gary is going to get some medical attention. And I agree with KC, you should get a test too.

Such a weird virus. It seems to behave so different in different people.
Good luck to you both.
Arlene

[theQueen]

KC - my current worry is that he won’t be patient with the wait and will stomp off. Then there will be no test of any kind and Gary can present his lower-class belief that doctors / plumbers / experts of any kind doesn’t know as much as he does. Makes me crazy.
Arlene - oh, believe me, I know it. He felt totally fine last Thursday. That’s when I really started to worry.

[KC]

Are there any Gary-entertaining devices/games that you can do to make the wait less annoying to him? Or bait you can hold out, like "if you do get the nose swab, then we can upgrade to [fancier type of peanuts?] for the Wildlife Camera"?

I mean, I guess, if he gets sicker and has to have treatment, then he will get sicker and have to have treatment either way, but... it'd be nice to know what you're dealing with? And to have as much of an already-been-cleared-to-occupy-a-COVID-ward-bed as is possible?

(okay, also, if I were you, I would order in a pulse oximeter. It's not taking a temperature, see!)(if you can't get ahold of one, let me know; I have a cheapo one that I use for basic HRV testing, but Making Sure Gary Gets Shipped To Hospital If He Needs It is worth a hiatus in HRV measurements, I think!)

[TheQueen]

KC - Gary bought his Dad a pulse oximeter which his Dad rejected. So happily it was in our house. Garys been posting his blood oxygen on Facebook. Usually it’s about 95-97.
[edited to add - nope, that pulse oxygen reading is high. He had a legit reading on one at a medical office and it was 93.]

[KC]

Hooray for having one in the house! If you ever get him into a medical office again and they do a pulse-ox reading on him again, do one with the portable one at the same time (either while the room is empty after the nurse leaves after getting vitals, or, if you have moxie, you can clip it onto his other hand at the same time and explain you want to check how far off it is). It's easy for pulse oxygen to change with movement and how efficient (or inefficient) your lungs are being and how much of that oxygen you're burning. (although, also, home equipment is not as well-tested or rigorous as the Proper Stuff is, so it could easily be that your device reads high. Sigh.)

At any rate: I hope his blood oxygen reading improves! And that he gets all the way better soon!

(when I was told to take blood pressure readings multiple times daily during a diagnosis process but to calibrate it against an "official" medical one [we were looking most for relative changes, but knowing how much to subtract from or add to each reading would be useful anyway], I bought a blood pressure cuff and hauled it in to the health center, and the nurse [who was not the doctor who told me to buy it and use it] told me that those things were worse than useless and the readings were never anywhere *near* right, but I asked if we could check the numbers anyway, since the doctor had asked me to do this and... the readings between the "official" medical one and the Omron wrist cuff critter were basically identical. She was confused, tried again, and yep, still basically the same. I'm sure quality varies, and obviously with a home device, there's a lot more manufacturer screw-up wiggle room than the stuff they make for doctors, but... yeah. Sometimes it works? That said, you may have a dud pulse-ox.)

[TheQueen]

KC - Gary read that they stretch after a time and become useless. Gary has a habit of turning on technology at two times: when it is unboxed “this is a piece of crap” and then the same again after six months. Week 2 to 6 months in the tech is wonderful.

[KC]

That is intriguing; what exactly in a pulse-ox stretches? Mine is a dead-cheap one and still going pretty strong on its second battery set, and I think it has been over a year since I bought it?

(the blood pressure cuff performs beautifully, daily, until it doesn't anymore - 8 years or so? with multiple uses per day? So: pretty good, I think - and then you buy a replacement in the same line from the same brand and deal with the "improvements" that make it slightly more inconvenient for you to use. So it goes. But with Omron [in my admittedly-limited experience] the blood pressure readings remain as accurate as they're taken [so: if you hold your arm up in the air or you yell or reach for a drink while it's trying to read, the readings are not good] until it is Kaput Time, so far as I've been able to ascertain.)

[TheQueen]

KC - 8 years is an eternity in technology time. His is a ring style one, not a clip style one. The reviews were very good. I don’t see where he read that it stretches: it doesn’t look like the metal could stretch.

[KC]

Interesting! I haven't seen the ring style and have no idea on its relative merits/demerits. I could see the "spring" part of the clip-style ones, whatever that's made out of, dying over time [if rubber, simply with time and accelerated by heat/sunlight, as per normal; if a spring, then... uh, it should last quite a while, but yes, springs do *eventually* die probably].

Yeah, our devices tend to live long and prosper (aside from some macguyvering of them when they glitch a bit and things like replacing fans when they perish) and we tend to not replace devices until they are fairly dead or are only having zombie not-consistently-acceptable-function life. (cell phones: somewhere around 13 and 8 years old, respectively; laptops 4-5 years old - but we use our laptops heavily and tend to buy cheap-for-the-specs laptops, so I don't know how that compares to "normal")

Of course, now that I say that, things will probably All Die All At Once. And once in a while we do get something that rapidly fails (the ballast on our plant light died the *second* time it was plugged in). But generally, our tech and home appliances are quirky but mostly-cooperative?

[TheQueen]

KC - I hear you. My laptop is eight years old.

[KC]

Birthday confetti for your laptop! (but not over the keyboard) :-)

Ours die faster than that, but I do think that's fairly reasonable given the workload they're put through; if the letters wear off a substantial number of the keyboard keys before the laptop dies, it's probably a good sign for value?

(I also get cranky about them being *built* to be disposable rather than fixed; we don't actually disposable stuff, for the most part? We'd rather be able to replace it a component at a time - including the battery - as needed? But so this global capitalist system goes.)

[TheQueen]

KC - I am outraged we will still have our 1980s Amanda garage refrigerator after this current fridge dies.

[KC]

Yeah, large appliances are a special brand of crazy. I'm kind of surprised that no one has yet just started making really durable large appliances and *NOT CHANGING ANYTHING* about the manufacture or components for several decades, because I know a lot of people who would buy that even if it *was* expensive, if it would just last and not die off and require the whole song-and-dance (and pile of cash) again.

(and I am sad that RevereWare, after decades of making the same, durable saucepans, swapped to making them thinner and thus less durable [they get bent out of shape pretty easily, and a saucepan that is not flat-bottomed is fine for boiling eggs as long as you don't have a flattop stove where it will dance itself off the burner, but a saucepan that is not flat-bottomed is pretty much useless for making, you know, sauces]. So now, when buying used RevereWare, you have to determine whether it's the old kind or the new kind to get the kind you *literally can't kill* without taking actual shop tools to it.)

(also: have you seen the FairPhone? I am not excited about smartphones, but *am* excited about a phone whose battery is actually *made* to be replaced. I mean, I am also excited about the lack of worker exploitation, etc. - that is what attracted me to the phone in the first place - but when I saw that it was designed so that users could replace the battery [and other parts, for that matter], I was so incredibly excited. :-) )

[TheQueen]

KC - well, it’s planned obsolescence. Smart business strategy. Now you’ve got me looking at the FairPhone. Interesting. Hope it works as well as the competition.

[KC]

Obviously, anything produced by fair labor practices without planned obsolescence and without user-as-advertising-product is unlikely to hit the same "value for money" marks as products that use exploitative labor, etc. - and due to the replaceable parts, it's somewhat bulkier than its equal-runners as well. In terms of function and processing power, I've heard it's quite good; but I'd assume its camera is nowhere near the Pixel & co. and things like phone skins, etc. are not as widely available for it.

I guess: whether it works as well for a specific person is going to depend somewhat on what, exactly, they want out of a phone. But I've heard good things. :-)

[TheQueen]

KC - I hope they are still around as an option when this phone dies.

[KC]

Maybe they'll finally be fully-available in the US by then! :-)