Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff

[silverfox]

@ganymede

[Macha]

@derp It's really just me staring at the email, going "...the FUCK?" And laughing.

So want job I interviewed for yesterday.

[silverfox]

A PSA for all parents, guardians, or anyone else.

If your child has an IEP, 504, READ plan, or any other kind of formal accommodation plan please please please don't assume that it'll get into the right hands. There are SO MANY hands that care for your child at school. Make sure you always have a copy and personally hand/email it to EVERY teacher that they are in contact with.

11 weeks at school and it was just TODAY I realized that one of my kids has a severe vision issue. It just.. never came up. Usually in my class they're not looking at stuff on a board so seeing any amount of distance is not an issue. Today they did. As soon as the kid brought up vision as an issue I emailed mom.

Mom says there is a plan in place.

I don't have this plan.

We fucked up.

This is on us.

So please - please - please. In this one thing, don't trust us. Get us all of these things.

[kk]

@silverfox

I am blessed to have a case manager who truly cares for my son. The help she gave my son especially last year through covid was immense, beyond words, but it wasn't always like that.

Still a good teacher who cares means the world to a special needs child.

And a lack of care (sometimes because educators are over worked) is heartbreaking.

I will always remember when as a child who couldn't read or write getting a teacher who cared finally. I loved her more than words can say for caring, but also for seeing beyond my word stunted silence.

My son was abandoned at times. I will never forget a school leaving him and the other autistic kids out of grade pictures because it was too much trouble to include them and then still trying to sell me the picture

Or the teacher who said they were never even told my profoundly autistic son with an IEP was special needs at all after they piled him up with hours of homework beyond his ability. They thought he was just quiet and shy!

But a teacher who cares matters so much and makes such a difference and I can tell you care.

[Prism]

Had a really bad ear infection earlier this year, so bad that I went to the ER about it. I was given medication and after another MONTH of pain (this infection did not want to peace out) I finally felt normal again.

I have a pain in my ear again, the same ear, and when I called the doctor they told me that they can't keep treating it with antibiotics or I will build an immunity, and as long as it's not making me scream in pain, I should endure and be kind to my ear for a while.

I just got a new job, where I wear a headset, and my sore ear hates that a lot.

I'm on week two of this infection and I'm trying so hard to do all of these home remedies to attempt to get this shit sorted out, but it hurts so bad sometimes, and I really hate having ears right now. .

[faraday]

@prism said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I have a pain in my ear again, the same ear, and when I called the doctor they told me that they can't keep treating it with antibiotics or I will build an immunity, and as long as it's not making me scream in pain, I should endure and be kind to my ear for a while.

Had a family member who had an untreated ear infection that got so bad their eardrum burst, which can lead to permanent hearing damage. Also have had my kids need multiple rounds of antibiotics to get rid of stubborn ear infections.

So, I am not a doctor, but this seems like unsound medical advice. May be worth seeking a second opinion--possibly from an Ear, Nose and Throat ENT specialist.

Hope you feel better soon.

[Wizz]

Worst part of single parenting: getting sick at the same time as your kiddo.

It's just game over, man. Everything takes so much more effort and requires so much more attention, and before you know it there goes an entire week spent mostly exhausted, frustrated, and behind in nearly everything. I hate it so much.

[Grayson]

@faraday said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@prism said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I have a pain in my ear again, the same ear, and when I called the doctor they told me that they can't keep treating it with antibiotics or I will build an immunity, and as long as it's not making me scream in pain, I should endure and be kind to my ear for a while.

Had a family member who had an untreated ear infection that got so bad their eardrum burst, which can lead to permanent hearing damage. Also have had my kids need multiple rounds of antibiotics to get rid of stubborn ear infections.

So, I am not a doctor, but this seems like unsound medical advice. May be worth seeking a second opinion--possibly from an Ear, Nose and Throat ENT specialist.

Hope you feel better soon.

A burst eardrum in a child, once, is not likely to cause long-term problems. The pain is horrendous - ask me how I know! - but the hearing usually repairs itself with the eardrum. The problem comes when the eardrum keeps perforating. My Grandad went deaf that way, which is why my father kicked the health service every way he could until they operated on me. I spent a good deal of my childhood on antibiotics. It ain't great, but it's better than perforated eardrums.

I don't know much about perforated eardrums in adults. I grew out of the problem, but I know plenty of people who had a perforated eardrum once and didn't have a hearing problem once it healed. However, anything that opens up the eustacian tubes is helpful, so hot food, menthol, chillis, etc. A good curry often helps (and is frequently something you can taste when all else is cardboard). Also, anything that makes you swallow; boiled sweets are grand. Do not try holding your nose and blowing to even out the pressure. What perforates the eardrum is a pressure differential between the inside and outside of the eardrum, and trying to clear out the path your body uses to equalise the pressure with more pressure just forces the blockage higher and makes it harder to deal with. Talk to someone in ENT if you can, but menthol and hot food are generally a lot easier to access while you're trying to get through to an expert.

Good luck. Painful ears is a horrible thing, and it's guaranteed to send me into panic mode.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@grayson This is literally how I lost hearing in my right ear at age three. Untreated ear infection, burst eardrum, and then more untreated infection.

If it had been treated I'd still have my hearing, though.

[faraday]

@l-b-heuschkel Yeah it may not be super common but it can happen. I’m absolutely in favor of trying less invasive remedies first. If you can get through it with honey and Tylenol instead of antibiotics, great. But if the pain is that bad and persistent, that sounds concerning.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@faraday My parents weren't exactly role models of caring much why the kids were crying. Today, I suspect, a raging ear infection would not go untreated for months or CPS would get involved.

[Too Old For This]

@l-b-heuschkel You are not incorrect. CPS came to visit me once when my youngest was maybe 3-4? A neighbor had seen him in his room crying, the door closed, and assumed that I had just... locked him in there. In reality, his door had a tendency to stick before latching, but he was a fan of closing his door when he was playing in his room. So he closed himself in, then started crying when he couldn't get out. I finished doing the dishes before going to 'free him' because silly me, I assumed 5-10 minutes more of him being in his room wouldn't kill him.

[Derp]

@too-old-for-this said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I finished doing the dishes before going to 'free him' because silly me, I assumed 5-10 minutes more of him being in his room wouldn't kill him.

[Too Old For This]

@derp Yup.

Really, I couldn't even be mad at the neighbor. Had it been a situation of abuse or neglect, I would have wanted the neighbor to call that in, and they had no context to use other than what they could see. So I get it. It still sucked at the time, though.

[Arkandel]

@too-old-for-this I remember reading on Reddit about this dude who had the police called on him when he was out with his toddler daughter. They didn't look alike (he was a big black dude, she was a blonde girl) so someone assumed the worst.

I remember him saying he was quite conflicted at the time because aside from the racist element in this, wouldn't he want someone reporting his kid being with someone that felt... wrong, in case she had been taken from her parents?

[Too Old For This]

@arkandel YES. Exactly. On the one hand, you feel affronted that anyone thinks you could be 'that person'. But on the other.. man.. yeah, I would absolutely want someone to report something that looked or felt wrong. Because you never when it IS the abusive caregiver, and predators like that thrive on us questioning ourselves and not wanting to 'make waves'.

So yeah. It sucked. But we got a few extra resources we could use, my son got a backpack full of awesome coloring books and a nice windbreaker, and CPS was very understanding about what happened.

Side note: It still took another couple months for maintenance to get around to fixing my son's door.

[Ganymede]

@arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I remember him saying he was quite conflicted at the time because aside from the racist element in this, wouldn't he want someone reporting his kid being with someone that felt... wrong, in case she had been taken from her parents?

If there's something that I've learned in the last 15 years it is that calling the cops on black men is a very bad idea, no matter the situation.

[Prism]

I went to the emergency room because the pain got a lot worse. I have an abscess, and now I have medicine. Here is hoping it clears up quickly, this pain is ridiculous.

[Tributary]

@too-old-for-this When my friends' son was young, still in diapers and nonverbal, he escaped one morning around 5 am. He'd disabled the lock on their sliding glass door, then closed it behind him. He'd slid open the lock on the back gate and closed that behind him. Then he trotted about two and a half blocks to play on the playground wearing nothing but a diaper.

The neighbors called CPS, of course.

And when his parents' alarm went off at 5:30 am, they had no idea what happened. He was just gone. The front door was locked. There was no sign of forced entry. It took a bit to realize how exactly he'd escaped, at which point they started canvassing the neighborhood in a panic, trying to find him. They asked the neighbors if they'd seen him, and the neighbors refused to answer. His mother still holds a grudge on that.

CPS eventually did show up with him, and he was blissfully unaware of how upset he'd made all of the adults. His father installed a lock on the sliding glass door at the top, and within a week, the kid was pushing over a chair to stand on to disable it. Eventually they did have to lock him in his bedroom at night.

[Too Old For This]

@tributary I will be forever grateful that neither of my children showed any interest in disabling locks. Both of them, however, had a disturbing tendency to WANDER. I had to keep an eye on them at all times in public, and my youngest's godfather actually lost him in an airport once when he was like.. 10. Found him in the bar around the corner and down the hall, sitting at the bar, eating a cheeseburger, drinking milk, and watching Spongebob.