$15.98 (plus expenses) and Want To Hear What May Be The Funniest Urology Thing Ever? · 9:14pm Sep 23rd, 2020
I didn't misplace a decimal point.
I said the last blog was in no way asking for money. I didn't know what I was up against: there was no total to present, and any such might have been far too high. I only had my own diagnosis of the situation to go on, and that was followed by what everyone else said in the blog comments. So I took all of that into the repair shop, and carefully asked exactly how much a diagnostic would cost. I wanted to know how much I would have to pay in order to find out I couldn't afford the rest of it.
A full diagnostic? That's $124.99. Plus tax.
Getting a code readout from the car's internal computer, however, is free.
All right. I mentioned what I'd seen about the missing drop-panel at the top of the feeder line, then told them I'd had the Check Gas Cap message again on the way in. Sat down to wait, and tried not to scream. It... hasn't been a good day. Her confusion has been high for the last couple of days, to the point where I was worried about leaving her alone for any real period of time. Plus we saw Urology and Cardiology yesterday. All I want to tell you about Cardiology right now is two things:
* There's going to be a Doppler echo of the heart on October 21st. This marks the first day she can be confirmed as healed, and so it's also the day where, if all went well, I could try to start setting up the spinal cement injection again. But even if that surgeon's schedule is fairly open and we just about sail through surgical clearance, it means she's going to be suffering increased pain until early to mid-November. She's barely vertical when she's upright. I caught her almost completely bent over several times today, and she's not supposed to bend like that while the valve is settling...
* The other thing set off the next one-shot story. It'll be Slice Of Life, Comedy, and have Pinkie as the main character. I can try to start on it as soon as two things happen: I come up with a title (and I've been trying for a couple of hours, so at this point, I'm probably frozen until tomorrow), and my stress goes down. So possibly never.
I do want to tell you about Urology after the car part wraps up. I think someone might get a laugh out of it.
So... back to the waiting room.
I waited about twenty minutes, watching through the windows as a repair attendant went to my car's space in the parking lot. He went behind the wheel and... stayed there. Getting the reading, I guess. And I thought about what I could afford, what I couldn't, the potential postponement of so many other things because if there's a medical emergency with my mother, I sort of need a working car...
...and here comes the foreperson. I braced myself.
Turns out my car's 15 year-old computer is rather literal-minded.
What I saw about the missing panel? I was right in one sense: it is in fact missing. It's also likely to be pretty close by: namely, it's probably dropped into the fuel tank. I'm hoping this doesn't cause problems later. (Blocking a line, cutting something with the edge.) However, the foreperson confirmed what so many of you said yesterday: it's not going to affect my fuel efficiency by itself. It also can't be replaced without removing the whole tank and installing a new filler neck, so if I want to have that done... hundreds of dollars there. It is, as y'all also said, an all-day operation.
But when my car uses its one-line green dot matrix text display to say Check Gas Cap?
It means check the gas cap.
The seal went bad. That's the evaporation leak.
I was given an inspection/diagnosis bill for $0.00, then sent out into the world to find a parts store. The gas cap was in stock. Installation was (somehow) within my skill range. So there's the $15.98. I left the parking lot with my head swimming from shock.
...which sort of got worse when I saw the flashing red-and-blue lights in my rear view mirror.
*sigh*
Right. And here we have the expenses. I was in shock. Y'know what you don't pay much attention to when you're in shock? How fast you're going. I got pulled over.
Please don't freak out. I know the current (and international) reputation of American police is on the bad side right now, and I use that as the sort of deliberate understatement which is meant to hopefully cut off a political argument in the Comments section. I got pulled over and in one way, I almost screwed up immediately: I started to get out of the car before common sense kicked back in. But the officer informed me that I'd been speeding.
(I had to take his word for it. I really wasn't looking. This is the time of month when various police departments start racing to meet their fine quotas, and so it's possible that I was just randomly chosen to win the ticket lottery. But as shock was present, I'm guessing that I likely was over the limit. Most American drivers are. At all times.)
I sighed. Said something about kissing a thousand dollars goodbye. He immediately asked me why I would say that, possibly believing that he'd just caught someone with six unpaid tickets and a warrant waiting in the wings. I replied that I didn't quite feel up to being optimistic. Plus I'd just been to the repair shop, somehow gotten away clean, and so of course this was going to wipe out everything I'd saved and then some. The universe laughs.
He told me how fast I'd been going. I dejectedly asked if he was willing to take overwhelm as an excuse.
(My Patreon originally launched because of an unpayable traffic ticket. (The Ko-Fi came in when Patreon temporarily considered charging sponsors an Honor Of Supporting Whoever Fee and everyone told me to get a backup system.) I was starting to feel some degree of déjà vu.)
The officer looked at me for a while. Just... looked. Waited while I got my registration and proof of insurance out, checked the paperwork, and then informed me that I wasn't wearing a seat belt.
...oh, for... I took it off so I could reach across to the glove compartment! Now I'm going to get ticketed for speeding and --
-- no. Not his point. I have been pulled over. I am not wearing a seat belt. It is possible that my story is true and I just removed it a few minutes ago. However, if I was not wearing it when he turned on his lights, then he can ticket me for that. As opposed to, say, issuing a citation for the speeding.
...almighty @$%^.
He's trying to show me mercy.
A ticket quota may be in play here: he has to write me up for something. But the seat belt fine is just $45, as opposed to the hundreds of dollars invoked by a speeding ticket. A seat belt fine also doesn't add penalty points to my clean license. A police officer is trying to be nice to me...
I wondered how stressed and weary I must have looked. To be offered any degree of mercy at the start of Quota Season.
Roadside plea bargain. I took the proffered deal and tried to thank him. He was already getting back into his car.
So as said, there's the expenses. Forty-five dollars on a traffic ticket: $60.98 altogether. It still came in under a hundred.
And then I got home, was told that my mother's feet were now swollen and painful, had her refuse a hospital trip, tried to open a soda so I could drink something, and had it spray foam all over my face, clothing, carpet scrap, and keyboard. No idea how it got shaken.
I spent ten minutes cleaning the keyboard. Nothing feels sugar-sticky. It seems to be working normally.
..for now.
If it fails, I'll do as much as I can on the tablet until a replacement comes in. Even with paying for a new one, it'll still be keeping the day's bad luck expenses-to-date under a hundred dollars. That's better than I usually do when everything starts to go south.
I feel like I got out of this one semi-alive.
But my stress level isn't going down.
And I still can't think of a story title.
Okay. About Urology.
I'm declaring Vibro-Bladder to have been a failure.
I paid for it. I wouldn't have been able to do so as readily without Ko-Fi tips, because Vibro-Bladder was my set goal for a while. Some people tried to help. One especially-generous soul attempted heavy expense lifting. And that's part of why this hurts so much to say: it didn't work. She had her six sessions. The vibrations were meant to increase her inner muscle strength at the bladder's exit point, lessening incontinence issues. Half an hour in the chair, twice a week, for three weeks, at a hundred dollars per session.
At the time, I made a dark comment about how I could just take her to a mall's massage chair pavilion and hope for the same effects using several handfuls of quarters. If I could find an open mall.
It's been weeks since it wrapped up. She has just as many bathroom emergencies, goes through the same number of sanitary pads. No change. The laser treatment? I feel that did play a part in bringing her urinary tract infection rate down. But this was money flushed down the toilet. Worse: donated money. Completely wasted.
I have guilt.
A lot of it.
So I went into the Urology appointment yesterday waiting to tell her doctor all of it. I wasn't expecting a refund, because Results Not Guaranteed. (During the original sales pitch, he said the failure rate was... it's been a while, but I want to say ten percent or so. Once again, my mother manages to hit the long odds.) But I did want to say it directly to his face: this didn't work and I'm not going to try a second round. When it comes to vibration treatments, we're done. Permanently.
And in order to gain the chance for saying it, I -- sat on a dirty carpet in a narrow hallway for an hour.
Coronavirus restrictions, y'know. Only so many people allowed in the waiting room.
But eventually, he called me in to review what had happened during the appointment. And I hit him with the facts: this was a failure, and don't try to sell me on it twice.
He didn't even blink. Instead, his internal programming auto-loaded Sales Stage Three.
I was (once again) informed that for incontinence medication, my mother is at the practical dosage limit. (I don't want to think about what happens if she stops taking those pills. The presumption is that it involves a lot of laundry.) However, there are -- surprise! -- two procedures which still might help her. And are not a vibration chair.
Remember: so far, we've had Laser Vagina (the hero we both need and deserve) and Vibro-Bladder (not expecting much from the Snyder Cut). So what's next?
Option #1 is a pacemaker. For her bladder.
No, really.
I have a brochure. (He made sure I got a brochure.) It's called InterStim, and here's the website.
Before we go any further: I suspect that Medicaid has categorized this procedure under Elective As @$%^. And it's very obviously surgical. I am not putting her through any more surgery than is strictly necessary -- remember: every use of general anesthesia has a chance to permanently spike the dementia -- plus Elective Surgery directly equals an out-of-pocket payment of Oh Dear Gawds NO. I did not ask him how much this costs. Her next appointment is on January 12th and assuming we all live that long, that gives me a lot of time to not ask him. I didn't ask him about the price of Option #2 either.
Oh, right. Option #2.
(This is the good one.)
(Not good as in 'a good medical treatment'. Good as in 'Wait for it...')
He wants to inject botulinum toxin into her bladder.
...I'm going to give everyone a few seconds, and then I'm going to repeat that.
He wants to inject botulinum toxin into her bladder.
Botox! It tightens your face and so causes a form of temporary plastic surgery! It occasionally shows up in active form among the population and starts killing people! And now it's the latest very temporary treatment for bladder incontinence, because the front page of that website says that even when it works (which isn't always), you have to repeat it about every nine months! I'm guessing that at the end of the cycle, you give birth to the world's newest superhero.
We've had Laser Vagina.
This was followed by Vibro Bladder. (That cad.)
And now I want to introduce everyone to the Sensational Find Of 2020.
.
.
.
.
.
The Toxic Urinator.
With the occasionally-working power to make you not bring a mop!
...
My life is the punchline to somebody else's failed comedy routine.
A few months ago, I spent a lot of Amazon survey credit on a book. It's something I've wanted to read for a long time, and I felt it was worth the sacrifice of answering several hundred cumulative political, economic, university study, and New Product-related questions in order to put the credit together. (The economic are the worst.) I picked it up from my P.O. Box this afternoon. Pure coincidence of timing.
I know what the real subject of this graphic novel is. But at the instant I opened the box and saw the title in person from a few inches away...
Your Guide To The Origin Point For The Year 2020.
Huh. Well, glad to see the repairs were cheap and easy, and that the cop was willing to give you a little break!
And please don't feel guilty about the donated money. It was a worthwhile try, and it's not your fault that things didn't work.
Appreciating the little things helps keep the big ones from tearing you down. Or the other little ones. (On an amusing note, I actually work for a company that has Allergan as a client, so I feel like I should apologize for the Bo-ladder-tox by proxy.)
And hey, if you're still coming up blank on the Pinkie story, you can always crowdsource the title.
Hazah! It's not all bad news!
Well least the cop was understanding, coulda been a wedgie and a backhand moment
About being bent over...
Some time ago, my wife had a laser procedure done to the back of her eyeball where they drain out part of the fluid and inject an air bubble so the retina remains dry-ish while it's being zapped and while it heals. Thing is you have to keep your nose pointed to the floor for *two weeks* after the procedure so the zapping lines can heal up without inner eyeball fluid getting in them.
So for two weeks, she faced the floor while eating, while sleeping, while watching TV, while in the car as a passenger (never a driver, thank God) I got to be supportive as a husband during the whole thing, including paying for two weeks rent in a series of pillows and braces with mirrors so she could watch TV. I feel for ya man, I really do.
i knew it. i knew alan moore, possibly of such things as this (please do not actually look it up or it may kill you) would kill us all.
on a much more serious note, at the very least it's not as bad as it could have been, in more ways than one.
5362582
I'll put it this way:
I am just familiar enough with Crossed to never, ever read it.
You know, I wondered if it was the gas cap, but there are actual people with car knowledge here, instead of me who has just watched some of Scotty Kilmer's videos on YouTube.
5362572
We already knew you weren't from New York.
I'm guessing the next medical appointment was for back and neck pain.
And you haven't read it before, you say? That's actually very apropos for all sorts of reasons beyond the obvious.
But for all the rest... yikes and condolences and well-wishes all around, and I'm sorry I can't say anything that will actually help.
So for the sake of privacy, I won't identify who, but I have someone in my close family with an Interstim. If you have questions on how it worked, let me know. I will say she is likely younger than your mother, but I could offer experiences on it.
5362625
Please. I could also use some advice on cost (and whether the procedure was covered), risks, and recovery time.
Botox bladder. Wrinkle free and comically unable to display emotion! Less of a superhero, and more of a TV news anchor.
Nice to hear that a horrible day was not financially disastrous at least.
5362585
I've read Crossed.
Don't read Crossed.
5362585
I loathe to ask... but why?
(never heard of it before and now I'm afraid)
5362591 Well, I work in Manhattan.
I had a cop do the exact same thing for me. Pulled me over for speeding. He flat out said he didn't want to give me a ticket but he had to write me up for something after pulling me over. Like you I had taken off my belt, and when he noticed he said he could write me up for that. Only $25 fine and no points. I think he was being nice maybe because I didn't try to talk my way out of it or give him some BS excuse. I wonder now how common that is?
I once ran a stop sign and hit a truck. Totalled my car. I even admitted it to the cop— no ticket.
5362673
Once again reminding everyone and probably getting eviscerated for it that ticket quotas aren't a real thing
5362648
it's an american comic filled with some of the vilest........ spew....... that's ever been produced. i've read it.
i wish i hadn't.
Oh dear. The way your luck goes, you have used up your quota of Good Luck for months and months.
5362636
WAY back when (1954) Dr. Frederick Wertham wrote a book called Seduction Of The Innocent. He claimed that comic books were destroying the minds & morality of American children. (This led to the Comics Code.) He cited EC comics.
I've seen some of the "worst" of those comics. 65+ years later, they are NOTHING.
Some good ideas, some bad ideas in that book. He claimed that they promoted a culture where women were depicted as being either victims or the reward to the hero for being successfully violent. He also said that the characters implicitly endorsed the advertised products & that the publishers ought to police them
On the other hand, he said that Wonder Woman was a lesbian & the hero/sidekick relationship was implicitly homosexual. IMO, this was one of the sources of Ace & Gary, the Ambiguous Duo.
5362707
Ya, but that's not enough detail man. Are we talking about a nonsensical plot that's just used to give us a lot of gorn, are we talking about something that's very, very, very racist/sexist/homophobic, are we talking about something with explicit rape scenes, some combination of these, what?
That’s good news on the gas cap!
I also had a similar experience with a cop. Rolled through a stop sign in town on my way to work, and he pulled me over for it. Decided not to give me a ticket for that, instead gave me one for my broken windshield (which was fair, especially since it was really broken)
(I don’t have any actual pictures of it, but it was about this bad:)
cdn.website.thryv.com/5259c5c005e84bf8b918804398b1a8e8/dms3rep/multi/1533227-blog.jpg
I’d bought that van for $600 with a busted windshield (along with the other issues you’d expect for a $600 van) and decided I wasn’t gonna pony up the bits to replace the windshield until I got a ticket for it.
No, no. Not even close. The funniest urology thing ever was the infamous presentation of Sir Giles Brindley at a 1983 conference. https://bjui-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2005.05797.x
"Klotz noticed that Brindley was sporting loose track pants (foreshadowing!) and some snapshots unfit for everyday scrapbooking. '[I could] vaguely make out the content of the slides, which appeared to be a series of pictures of penile erection [and] his dress seemed inappropriately casual,' Klotz noted."
Search for: Story titles
Working... working... working...
*Dingdingdingdingding* We have a winner!
I think I had the gas cap thing happen to me once (lifelong GM product driver/buyer here). Sometimes you do get lucky and it's a cheap part you can replace yourself.
Pardon me for doubting your mother's urologist, but does he operate out of a former Claire's store in the mall and do cosmetic surgery on the side?
If I had a four-leaf clover, I'd send it to you. You need it far more than I.
5362686
Presumably, he figured that you were already out a car.
Glad the reapir was cheap! From Hell is worth reading, if extremely Alan Moore (all the good and bad that entails).
Had a cop encounter last year for an expired registration sticker, my driver side window didn't work so I had to yell that I was opening the door as the cop yelled at me with his hand on his gun. Fun times. ACAB.
5362773
are you SURE you want to know?
5362773
I only read a little but nonsensical plot with gorn and rape scenes pretty much describes what I saw.
5362844
Well if Kirtai's anywhere near the mark (which I assume they are), then no, not really. Though honestly I'm a little impressed, in a kind of removed, disappointed way, because this is probably the first piece of fiction I've heard of that the SCOTUS would say "yep, go ahead and ban this."
...Well. That could have gone... substantially worse. A little good luck, at least. Two pieces, even! Sorry you mostly still seem to be getting the other kind; I hope that changes, or, at least, that the good luck is at the most important points.
And on the medical front...
Yeah.
What can one say?
$45 for seatbelt... I wish... You pay €140 here. Atleast some luck went your way. Which I deem well earned.
So.
At this point, I'm guessing your hands were shaking as an after-effect of the overwhelmence... but that's a pretty bad shake of the hands.
But I'm glad to hear that your car part wasn't anywhere near as expensive as you feared.
Glad to hear the car issue was a nice simple and cheap fix... not so happy for the fine but at least the constabulary took pity on your stressed person. Over here a seat belt infringement is $330 and 3 demerit points (12 points over 3 years will suspend your licence). On that note, it may give you a laugh to know that my state is the only one that lets you play ‘double or nothing’ with your licence. If you total exactly 12 points then you can choose to roll the dice instead of starting your mandatory 6 month driving ban. If you choose to, you can try to go 12 months without loosing any more points. If you do this successfully, then your total is cleared and you keep on rolling. If you get penalised any points then your licence is suspended for 12 months instead of 6... somewhat crazy, eh?
Uh.... I have to say that the US medical situation looks scary as hell... I mean it managed to overshoot my expectations...