Weaver's Web

I was about to jettison them when we moved to the lake, but Verizon was inordinately more expensive for what we were get and the other carrier I the area with better service could not port over our long ago assigned phone numbers.  So we stayed.

Then my sister gave mom her iPhone 6 when her work updated her to an XR. That 6 wasn’t compatible with her Verizon CDMA network, so I added mom to my family plan, cementing us to AT&T for a while longer.   My other sister upgraded mom’s couple of months ago & added her to my sister's Verizon account, so no longer was I stuck with what we had.   Finding out recently about AT&T’s behind the scenes sponsorship of OAN was the last straw. I’m done with them.  

Research began.  

Then our internet went down for six hours recently and along with it our phones. Did I mention because our AT&T signal here, without wifi at the house we’re dead in the water? Well when Xfinity went down, and our power didn’t, we lost phone. Enough is enough.

I looked over the MVNOs that run off of Verizon towers, since anyone visiting who has Verizon has service here, to see what was available. The best deal was to bundle with our already present Xfinity service.   I looked at 1/2 a dozen different companies and given our data usage is minimal (less than a gig a month between the two of us), our new plan includes 2 lines with 2 gigs of data that’s shared, plus a new iPhone 13 for me, for $56/month. We’ll bring over my iPhone XR, which gets as a $200 gift card, ditch my husband’s 6Splus which needed upgrading, all for less than 1/2 of what AT&T was costing.  When the iPhone13 is paid off in 24 months, assuming the data plan is sufficient for us, it will drop to $30 a month.

Now I have no illusions that Xfinity is a politically blameless company, certainly not as long as Fox is bundled to our service, but at least the will be getting less of my cash proportionally, leaving me with an extra $66 each month, money I can use for supporting things I believe in and that’s a damned good thing.

I still had to deal with my abject rage. 

While I waited outside the ER, I watched folks sitting outside with things I’m pretty certain were not Covid. There was one young woman I suspect was passing a kidney stone, intermittently writhing in pain, intermittently vomiting.  She was there when I got there, and still sitting outside when they brought me in 6 hours later.   This in a county with good vaccine acceptance & still the ER was awash in mostly unvaccinated Covid cases. That poor woman was miserable.  She shouldn’t have had to wait that long to be evaluated.   However, my greatest rage isn’t about her as awful as that is.

I found out 2 days after I was seen that the only reason I had gotten the monoclonals, were 2 colleagues who had gone to bat for me.   My pcp and a second doc on staff had argued with the ER doc.   The ER guy was disinclined to medicate me; I’d had the vaccines. I wasn’t that sick.   He’d wanted to save that dose of monoclonals for someone who might present sicker than I. What galls me, is that most people who would have been sicker would likely be someone who’d chosen not to vaccinate.

Before I go any further, let me stress while I was not on death’s door, I met all the criteria for the monoclonals. I’m older, underlying medical issues that put me at significantly greater risk to do poorly.   I was only 36 hours into symptoms and the monoclonals work best when given early. And yes, statistics were in my favor to do well, but there are no guarantees.   In 36 hours I had the chest cold from hell; what would have happened in another week?  The ER doc was willing to throw those dice. My PCP was not. 

I had someone willing to go to bat for me, willing to look out for my best interests. How many folks don’t?  I could easily have fallen through that crack, without the protection I met the criteria for.   Angry doesn’t even begin to explain how I feel, when I contemplate the factors in play. The idiots that made this pandemic a political issue, & have without shame fueled the carnage this virus has wrought on our community, our health care system and our national psyche, are both unconscionable and unforgivable. 

I am in Las Vegas. This would not have been my choice of destinations, but my mother and sister are driving cross country and this was the easiest place to rendezvous with them. 

As I sit here writing this I realize that all three of my Las Vegas trips have been to rendezvous with my mother. iMessage does my parents hear of the early 90s & my husband and I joined all of my siblings here a decade ago to celebrate mom’s 80th.

So I am struck by the sheer chutzpah our species is capable of, every time I am here. This is a town is excess. Ginormous water fountains in the heart of the desert. Throngs of humanity. Never mind that there is a pandemic going on, the hordes need entertainment. There are signs everywhere indicating that there is a mandatory mask mandate in every last hotel here on the strip. Tons of people are wearing masks, but plenty are flouting the requirement.  In almost every casino and every hotel lobby an employee is handing out masks what is tongs. Last night I saw plenty of scantily clad revelers stumbling past those employees many too drunk or too stoned to notice, or too indifferent to care.

Mom and my sister are staying at the cosmopolitan, one of the more expensive destinations on the strip.  somehow, I heads up with a price tag the clientele would be also more upscale. Since when is a bikini appropriate evening attire in a casino? That was at 10 o’clock last night long after the pool and spa were closed. Not that I am someone who indulges in fat shaming, but at least that young woman has a bikini body. I have seen in the past 15 hours more pairs of leopard print stretch pants than I ever knew existed. Personal opinion? I don’t think those things look good on someone who’s a size 2. Now imagine them on someone who is a size 24. Call me a curmudgeon, but I have seen more square inches of exposed flesh wandering thru the lobbies, restaurants and casinos than at the pool.  I’ve never seen so many short skirts and dresses in my life.  
Mind you, I’m not going out of my way to wander through the casinos. You cannot get anywhere from hotel to hotel resort without wandering through their gaming areas. On the lower legends of the hotels they are everywhere. Given my own concerns about the pandemic, I am doing my best to steer clear of things.  

At least my mother, my sister and I are all up on our vaccines, and likely soon to be bolstered.
More later.

Talk to Brionna Taylor.  Talk to Eric Garner.  Talk to Philando Castile. 

Talk to George Floyd.  

Oh. Right.  You can’t. They’re all dead.

Tim, how many traffic stops have you endured?    How many times have you had to breathe slowly, zen-like, hands on the wheel at 10 & 2, no sudden moves.   Really, Tim, how many times?  Did your mother have the ‘talk’ with you, a talk no white mother has to (unless her kid was of color)?  

Tim, was Jim Crow not racist?  During WWII, when we interned Japanese Americans, but not Italian or German Americans, was that not racist? When Latino families seeking asylum here had their children taken from them, was that not racist? When Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, & Black Baptists are shot inside their houses of worship in this country, I suppose that’s not racist either. 

What planet are you on?   If you can say this is not a racist country, it sure isn’t this one.

I picked up his chewable tablet and offered it to him. He took it and dropped it.   I repeated, as did he. I went to pick it up again and this time, he chomped down on me, opening a gash on the back of my hand.   

I screamed, as much out of surprise, as pain.  He let go, seeming as startled as I was. I looked down, seeing exposed tendons before blood obscured my view.  Not good.

First pressure, then hydrogen peroxide to flush things clean, and finally two major bandaids to cover.  Finger were able to move, & sensation, other than the searing burn where I was flayed open, was normal.  That was a reasonably good sign.  It was 7:30 pm.  A fast check of my brand new Medicare advantage plan sent me to the same institution I practiced in until I retired 3 years ago.   I drove myself cross county.

I left my husband at home.  Look up squeamish in the Oxford. You’ll find his picture. Besides, I want him nowhere near a medical setting until both of us have been vaccinated.   The other thought in my mind, was if I needed a tendon repair,I did not want him waiting there.  So I drove by myself.

I left the house at 8, walked into the ER at 8:45, & finished my paperwork to be seen right at 9.  At a quarter to midnight, I was taken into a patient room. 

By 2, I had been seen, numbed, irrigated, x-rayed, sewn closed and re-vaccinated for tetanus.   The extensor tendons to my 4th & 5th fingers had been exposed, but not torn.   I had arrived ready to argue if the doc had wanted me to leave without antibiotics.   My medical history is just too risky for me to forego that intervention. Unfortunately, it took almost another hour for the pharmacy to cough up one dose of pain meds and my first two doses of antibiotics.   I got home at 3:45, had some supper; did I mention I got chomped before having any dinner & then ate nothing just in case I needed a surgical tendon repair.

I woke up at 8 am, clear that my hope my regular anti inflammatory would be enough for pain relief.   Before going to sleep, I took one half of the Norco I’d been given. The epivicaine was just wearing off. The half got me to sleep.  The second half when added to a Celebrex helped.

I'm now not quite 48 hours out.   My hand feels achy and tight.   It’s hard to flex and extend my rings and pinky fingers. It hurts to move them, yet simultaneously doing so feels good.   It hurts to the touch, and I see some bruising at the edges of my bandage.  My second bandage actually.   I showered last night, and despite the plastic bag covering my hand and rubber banded in place, I still got wet and needs to redo it.

I’m going to have along week. LJ will do the dishes for the time being, but the kitchen remains my bailiwick. It hurts to hold a knife when prepping, food, so it’ll  be in my other hand for now.   Time for some more pain relief. It’s been 10 hours.