While 2024 brought some relief by eliminating the stress of renting and moving, it was overshadowed by recurring challenges: doctors who failed to properly diagnose my toe problems, offering expensive tests without follow-up or care; a work team that was unnecessarily cliquish; and a mouse (or six) entering our house on several occasions.
Toes
Work
Mice
As you will see from my post on January 2nd, my toes and feet were a mess for most of the year! I had DEBILITATING vasculitis for over 100 days and nobody helped. Since we moved from Missouri, I had to wait months just to get established as a patient with the first doctor. She ordered blood work and a culture, then nobody even explained my results to me!
I thought that dropping the ball like that was not very good care, so I went to a different GP hoping they would follow up better. He ordered more BW and referred me to a vascular specialist. The vascular specialist cost more, barely even looked at me, and called for not one, but two CT scans to see where the source of the “trash foot” was coming from. The trash foot is a symptom, not the cause.
I didn’t want to spend the money. I made known to him and his MA that my insurance wouldn’t cover much of that and I was concerned because I had just bought my first house. Vascular doctor made it sound like if I didn’t do the scans there was nothing else he could do for me.
Oh, and before I left that appointment, the MA was like, you’ll need blood work within a month of the scan so just go right downstairs (in the hospital) and have them draw you real quick. Come to find out you only require BW if you have this, that, or the other condition (none of which I had). Annnnnddd, it was out of network so I got a bill for $256 for labs I’d already had done, and didn’t need again. I was belligerent.
His MA made it sound like I would drop dead suddenly if I didn’t get the scans, and pressured me to schedule them. My mate and my mom worried something might be terribly wrong with me. Begrudgingly, I ordered the CT scans, but did them a month apart to be able to pay over a longer time, and hoping the first one would show whatever so I could cancel the 2nd. The abdominal CT scan showed scar tissue in my left ankle and NOTHING else. Definitely not what was causing my trash foot. Now I had to pay for the chest CT. Afterward, I waited for 13 days to hear from the vascular specialist’s office about the results of my scan. I wrote on the portal, which didn’t show anything yet. Finally, I called, and they sounded annoyed to hear from me, and were of the attitude like, ‘what do you want, it was negative, go away.’ They copy pasted the abdominal result mentioning the ankle right into the chest CT results and called it good. I had paid so much for two CT scans for nothing!
I went to the dermatologist, which is where the first GP had referred me. On the day of my appointment, I waited 55 minutes to see the dermatologist. When he finally breezed in, he rushed the appointment, barely listening to me or looking at my feet, and said he didn’t know-maybe I should see a podiatrist. He saw me for literally 5 min. Total waste of time.
At a loss, I went to a recheck with my 2nd GP who (incorrectly) labeled me "morbidly obese" and said I was dysphoric when I expressed frustration at all the referrals and $$$ spent. He asked me to please go to the rheumatologist and if they didn’t know we wouldn’t worry. We? Except, now that I’d invested so much time and money, and didn’t know what it was, if it would recur, or cause other issues-I was invested.
I went to the rheumatologist and she ordered a very large blood panel. At least five tubes worth. I didn’t hear back about my results. I called two weeks after my visit and asked them to tell me in VM how to access the portal. No word. Weeks later an MA called and left a message (20d after appt) saying BW showed RA? No further info on that. Did NOT share how to access the portal like I asked 😩I had a recheck, so I figured I would know then I guess. After so much silence on their end about MY lab results, their office called four business days early to confirm my appointment. Then called again and threatened to cancel if I didn't call back… When I did I left a message saying I would be there and asking again for info on how to access the portal, or a link to my email. Three days later nobody followed up 😡
For my “recheck” I waited long in reception, I think over a half hour, maybe even close to a full hour. That appt should have been a phone call, or at the very least virtual. She got my BW back, and could rule most everything out, but the autoimmune marker had a very strong positive. She can tell me I have some autoimmune disorder, but not which one. Why she couldn’t look it up, or suggest more tests in order to tell, I’ll never know. Instead, she referred to Indiana University Rheumatology in Indianapolis 😩😡😵 What a waste. PS their portal is only accessible after the receptionist activates “email” in her system, which she should have done when she got my initial paperwork, but didn’t 🙄 I needed an app and a code to access their portal- none of which was done or relayed to me before 🤬🤬🤬
I paid Anthem over $2,000 out of my work checks just to have them carry me. And then I paid nearly $2,000 out of pocket because $700 deductible doesn’t mean they start paying when you reach $700. It means they have a phony-ass, money-grabbing “out of pocket maximum” of $3800 more dollars before they fully cover things. I dropped coverage for 2025 in anger. If I have to pay about $2,000 anyway, I might as well NOT pay Anthem an extra $2,000 to do so.
Since I dropped the coverage for 2025 I had hoped someone at the university could look at my labs and history in December so I could get a diagnosis before my coverage ran out. Nope, same story as usual. Didn’t hear from anyone. Called the university and they’d never received any referral. They didn’t know who I was, but they set up my chart for when my records were sent by my local rheumatology office. Surprise! They weren’t sent. Fourteen days after my appointment I called and left messages on several different branches on their phone tree, because guess what else? The portal didn’t show labs or a referral. ON the 16th (day I called) a referral went out (my appt had been on the 2nd). I’m still trying to argue that they CAN post my lab results in their secure portal without success.
Needless to say I never did get a diagnosis for what was causing the vasculitis, so therefore, I couldn’t get any treatment or preventative care either. But since I sat so long in an unventilated area with two coughing people, waiting for that appointment that should have been a phone call, I was exposed to germs. And my toes got some telltale red marks and a swollen spot. Seems like if my immune system is exposed to anything, my toes blow up. So now I’m afraid of them getting as bad as last year, so I’m agoraphobic in order to avoid it.
Toes
Work
Mice
My supervisor (MIA-sup) has an elite group and an out-group, and never treated me like I was even on the team. The elites are arrogant, and condescending, and belittle anyone who's not considered in their elite group. And MIAsup absolutely treats everyone like they’re on a hierarchy, and everyone knows it. MIAsup admittedly assigns easy cherry-picked claims to her favorites and gross long claims to the out group. She even went so far as to remove work that elites didn’t like from their to-do list and add it to MINE. BC, well, we couldn’t have her favorites doing work they don’t like to do… So the vibes are really negative during work. She mostly ghosts, and the end of the year evaluations were rigged so that I could barely get a raise.
My work team leadership ghosts the help chat to fend for themselves. They’ll put me in these chats to assist people helping our team from different markets. But everytime I answer a question, one of the elites will try to help on top/over me. Or they’ll undermine my answer. Or they’ll like, accept it by saying they approve of what I said. It’s really annoying and paints the picture that I don’t know what I’m talking about and nobody should trust me. So I suspect someone said as much. Or someone told the elites to check up on my answers. Something mean like that. EVEN THOUGH I HAVE WORKED AT THIS COMPANY THE LONGEST OF ANYONE ON MY TEAM, I AM THE MOST TRAINED PERSON ON THE TEAM, AND I HAVEN’T GIVEN ANYONE BAD INFORMATION WHEN I’VE HELPED. It’s so frustrating and I feel gaslighted.
This particular incident is where everything came into the open and the cold war became open hostility. I tried to help someone from a different market in the chat. JTL who is absent on questions most times, finds the time to come around behind MY answers and wrote the opposite of what I said. I told her mine was right and I have access to the official government resource that confirmed that. JTL must have tattled on me, because MIAsup found time to schedule a meeting with me, that day, to accuse me of giving wrong answers to the helpers. I showed her why I was right and explained to her how to do something that everyone at the company learns in training (should be known) but MIAsup STILL didn't believe me. Had to check with a higher authority–something that everyone should already know! MIAsup didn’t understand the government resource either, or that it wasn’t GIVING me the answer, just confirming the answer we should already know how to find in our own system. She told me to check answers through her before I helped (even though JTL and her were wrong and I was right) and told me not to use that resource (bc she still doesn't understand what it is, and won’t look into it). I Lost my temper. Mult times. In the end the higher authority MIAsup checked with confirmed I had been right (and the whole team doesn't know a key thing we’re all trained on and should already know in order to do the basics of our job). No apologies for the false accusations. Now not only leadership, but somewhere the entire team was against me. Because I tried to (correctly!) help, when I was put on a chat to…assist.
Jnoying always DMs me for help. Started the day talking about how JTL always answers questions wrong. And how I tried to help another girl but she didn't want to listen bc I'm not leadership. Even though I was provably correct, and she got the same answer when she asked leadership. Jnoying asked me the same question for the 20th time. She never said, OK thanks and dropped it. She left me on the hook, asking a follow up question, or bringing something else up about that same subject for 3hr 20min! She was asking more, arguing, bringing things up... Little did I know she was shopping around for the answer she wanted to hear. JTL made a proclamation (of the answer Jnoying had wanted) which went against our reference document. That isn't how it works-we go by that document or what the authority emails. MIAsup, JTL, & Argual had arguments, condescending, shady comments to ME when I was asking questions, clarifying, and explaining. I told Jnoying off for wasting so much of my time. I helped out of necessity and empathy, but my team doesn't appreciate, want, or trust my help. So I stopped engaging at all. Fuck those assholes. Jnoying never apologized bc I guess she had been using me for answers the whole time and felt entitled to my time. I can't believe people just take advantage like that. PS the discrepancy STILL hasn't been resolved by the authority or in the document.
I was also disillusioned because the main document we look at for every single thing we do at work was wrong. But the authority that could fix it just didn’t? Meaning every piece of work we send out is going out wrong if we follow the documents like we’re supposed to. But we’re open for audit for not following that document (processing the claim incorrectly). In the core values meeting MIAsup said do it by the (wrong) document bc we can't get audit & and it's better to get wrong work out then be fined for being late. So that undermined the core values and told me it was all a sham. What the company actually cares about was just getting any old wrong work out quickly.
Then came the accusations. I do more work that is set fourth in our goals. And that’s because I’m good at it, and fast NOT because I’m cheating. But suddenly, my screens would snip black at exact intervals on the minute for days at a time. I’m certain work is taking screen grabs, collecting documentation on me. They think I’m cheating to get my numbers. Which I’m not. So they spied on me which made me super-anxious and paranoid. PS, MIAsup? For the same month I was getting accused and micromanaged because they assumed I was cheating to get such high numbers–she got employee of the month. Partially for reducing fines (ie getting the work out fast). So I got $hit and she got awards based on MY work.
Toes
Work
Mice
I’ve never lived anywhere that had rodents getting into people’s houses. It was a shock to me when during the winter, right after my feet were all messed up so I could barely hobble to the bathroom, and my toes were so swollen that I couldn’t even wear slippers, we had a mouse. One day there was just one dead mouse in the middle of the dining room. The cats must have killed it. But it had never entered my mind that they could be in the house. Where did it come from? What had it made dirty? If there’s one mouse there’s usually more. I was paranoid. Now, I couldn’t walk anywhere in the dark, because what if?! And what if I was barefoot somewhere and one ran over my feet, or UP my pant leg???? I was paralyzed with anxiety. The kitchen was dead to me. What if they got into the dishes? The cat food?
They could be under anything, or in anything. I hadn’t unpacked thinking creatures could crawl into things. We got some mouse traps that looked like a tube, but snapped in the middle. I slowly picked anything up off the floor, even though we were still unpacking. The cats wildly scratched at the shelf upstairs. HOW could mice get upstairs??? Another day, I picked up the vacuum handle to clean up there and a mouse flew out of the hose. The cats had killed a second one up there and I had nearly stepped on its dead body. Now I had to be afraid in the entire house, and also of picking anything up.
I couldn’t sleep. What if the cats brought one up on the bed? What if one was under the covers and I didn’t know? What if in the night one of the cats brought one to me in the bed? What if the mice crawled up into the bed? I was paranoid and frozen in the house. Nowhere was safe. Choco-Luv was freaked about the refrigerator and gave it a wide birth. A mouse was living under it! One day at 10AM I went from the office to the stairs by the kitchen, and on my way to the bathroom saw a mouse in the tunnel trap. OK, I have to work up the nerve to pick up the trap and throw the mouse away. I went up the stairs, to the bathroom, then came loudly down the stairs. I stood on the second stair and worked up my nerve. But wait, what if it was alive? That’s silly. I gave a sharp clap, just to make sure. AND THE MOUSE RAN THROUGH THE TRAP, ESCAPING DEATH AND BACK UNDER THE FRIDGE. Grossssss!!! The tunnel traps didn’t work for whatever reason. It was awful. We bought traps that humanely electrocutes the mouse when it steps in. We caught four mice that way.
I had to move the refrigerator to clean. I had my N95 mask, chemistry goggles, and YMCA gloves on to avoid disease and grossness. It took hours to clean that mouse slur. Was that the first and only mouse that lived under there? It looked BAD, so I wondered if the prior owners had some sort of infestation. Once I was sure all the mice were gone, I used the chemical the YMCA uses to sanitize the locker rooms on the counters, inside the cabinets, and on the kitchen floor. I used steel wool in and around holes and pipes and hoses, put shelf liners in, and spent hours and hours finagling magnets to keep all the cabinet doors shut tightly.
Two months later another set of mice must have gotten in somewhere (I don’t know where) and there was mouse poop in the kitchen drawers. Luckily, the kitchen was largely still in boxes and not unpacked, so they were not drawers in use. But I was disgusted and devastated. I don’t think they had been anywhere that we were using yet, but I was paranoid and soaked everything in the entire kitchen in chemicals just the same. I hadn’t known mice could climb, and I certainly didn’t know they would come back. Traps. Cats. And now poison packs thrown behind the cabinets (where the cat’s don’t have access). Another couple of mice killed.
Before that crop of mice was gone we had some drama. In the night, Bison was howling, and I figured why and jumped out of bed. He had a mouse in his mouth, but dropped it on the floor and it ran. Heart attack! Of course it ran in the closet. And we couldn’t find it. Now the closet and everything in it was dead to me. We let Bison in the closet and he found it. But didn’t kill it. He ran around the house excitedly caterwaling. It’s an open floorplan and had he let the mouse go it could get ANYWHERE-stress!!!! I said his name, but when I did he ran (with it hanging in his mouth) toward me. Noooooooo. I was shutting doors. What to do?! I got a rubbermaid shoebox. He wouldn’t drop the mouse. Cool had an old mason jar or something like that. When Bison dropped the poor, disoriented, slobbery mouse, it ran for under the fridge-not that again!!! But it was a little slower (like, a tiny amount slower) so she could almost catch the mouse by putting the glass upsidedown over it. Except, this is really horrible, and I hate it. The mouse was only half under the circle opening. The top of the jar was like squishing/cutting half of the poor mouse. I felt really bad and gross and sorry and disgusted, but at this point it the him or me. I tried to put him out of his misery by trying to slice him in half. And this is so bad–spines are really, really strong, and it did NOT work. I’m a mouse-torture-murderer. But out of necessity, none of this was cool at all. He was alive but slowed down a lot now so I put him in an empty paint can and hammered the lid shut hoping he would run out of oxygen very quickly before he suffered any more. I still have visions and nightmares about it, and even though I’m anxious about mice, I hope that one passed out or whatever, and I’m really sorry it happened like that.
Angus heard a mouse inside a wall, and sure enough there were small holes in the entryway side and in the closet side. I stuffed them with steel wool and caulk to shut that down. Then there was a mouse on the sticky paper that I left in the garage to get the crickets. And 5 mice on the sticky paper in the basement where water trickles in. Out of nowhere, the electricution trap under the kitchen sink flashed green signaling a dead mouse. But how did it get in when I’d sealed everything off? I was afraid to open cabinets. We emptied the trap and put it back in. Next day, green again. How big of a problem is this??? Would it ever end? There was a tiny pen-sized hole in the back of the kitchen cabinet that I hadn’t seen because of the pipes and hoses. I filled it with steel wool. Cool sprayed FlexSeal in the basement, and not only did the water stop coming in when it rained, the sticky paper was clear! I redoubled my efforts and also made sure nothing was on the floor except rubbermaid containers. Which is really tricky, by the way.
The cats were all weird in the kitchen and I KNEW why. For three days they tried to open the cabinet. I put 3 electrocution traps around the kitchen. I think what happened is that one mouse must have come in the basement to scout it out, then Cool put the flexseal and actually trapped in IN the house. Because it took 3 days and it finally ventured out where the waiting cats were right there. When I walked to the bathroom on night three, the two nightlights that now illuminate the kitchen and dining room floors shone on one dead mouse. I think Angus must have killed it. I cleaned under the kitchen sink really good, but the kitchen is still dead to me unless I’m wearing boots. So far so good, but I’m still paranoid that mice could come in.
While 2024 began with the promise of a fresh start and relief from the stress of renting and moving, it was soon overshadowed by a series of frustrating and draining challenges. From the ongoing health struggles with my toes, which no doctor seemed to properly address, to the toxic work environment filled with cliques, gaslighting, and micromanagement, the year was riddled with obstacles. The mouse situation in our new home only added to the anxiety, as I became increasingly paranoid about the cleanliness of our space. Despite my best efforts to manage each issue, it often felt like I was fighting an uphill battle, and the lack of support or resolution from both the medical professionals and my workplace made it all the more overwhelming. I’m left reflecting on how the combination of poor healthcare, toxic work dynamics, and unsettling household issues took a significant toll, and I want to leave that all behind, which is why I’m writing such a long “bad times of 2024” post. Looking ahead I am determined to find peace and stability for 2025.
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