Last month I mentioned going to hospital and then being on medical leave. Here’s a link for that issue if you forgot:
Like a Hole in My Head
Hey all! You’re getting the newsletter a few days early, because tomorrow I’m going to hospital, due to the fact that my middle ear is a bastard.
The surgery went well, apart from the Tube being delayed for an hour and then having the wrong address, all of which conspired to make me intensely late. After that, it was smooth sailing, and I was able to go home that same evening. I’ve been healing well since, and the doctor is happy with the results and thinks it was a good call to do it.
Recovery was another matter. I said at the time:
I’ll be in bed for a few days, and then I’ll be recovering for a couple of weeks. If I had a normal job, I would be completely out of work for those weeks, but because my job involves moving from my bed to my desk and not actually leaving the house, my doctor said I can do a little work once I’m able to sit upright for more than a few minutes at a time. In all reality I expect I’ll be sleeping a lot the first chunk of February….
All that was true, but as I was getting past that rough patch in early February, my whole family came down with a nasty head cold. I tell you, having your sinuses stuffed up when you’ve had a hole cut into your head is not a great combination. It’s really only been the past week or so that I’ve been anything close to 100%, but I’m finally here!
Anyhow, last month I mentioned ranting about the differences between the US and UK healthcare systems. I actually went private instead of using the NHS, so the usual debate of “it’s free” isn’t as valid, but in just about every respect my experience with the UK private healthcare system has been far superior than the US.
Yes, I spent a fraught week arguing with insurance about the procedure, and it sucked and I don’t want to have to do that again. But I had the ability to argue it. See, in the US, insurance is after the fact: You get it done, you get billed, and then insurance decides how little of the bill it’ll cover before you get stuck with the rest. In the UK, insurance gets sorted before the procedure. If I hadn’t gotten my insurance sorted out, the procedure would have been rescheduled until it was, or I could decide to cancel it or pay out of pocket. Shockingly, I had a choice on my own health, which is both a pathetic thing to be excited about and a clear indication of how traumatised I’ve become by the US healthcare system.
Secondly, my doctor is my advocate. He talked to me frankly about what my options were, and gave me suggestions on how to phrase my insurance request so I had the best chance of success. At any point where I would have to spend money, he would ask me if I wanted to proceed, and told me an estimate of any costs. This led to a moment where he warned me some medication he wanted to prescribe would cost me money, only to reveal it would be £15 (about $19 US), at which point I laughed so hard I started to cry.
Is it a perfect system? Absolutely not. The NHS in particular has some serious problems, including being so slammed with appointments that it’s a scramble at 8am to even book an appointment with the GP, although there has been a recent deal to address that. Shockingly, the US still offers free COVID boosters, but unless you’re over 60 or immunocompromised, you have to pay £100 for one here (which I do twice a year). Doctors here are in some cases dramatically underpaid compared to other countries. But all in all, I am utterly and completely thankful I had this handled in London instead of Atlanta.
All that said, it does lead me to the unfortunate note that…
News
… there isn’t much in the way of news this month, because I lost an entire month of work. That’s not entirely true — I did do some work in February — but a lot of it was maintenance work, the kinds of things that help keep my workload from building up too high, rather than actually getting ahead on things.
Since I don’t have much to officially announce or talk about this month, I want to take a moment to thank all of you for supporting me over the years. I always wanted this newsletter to be half professional, half personal, and I appreciate that many of you get that vibe, and don’t get upset or offended that I need to put out an issue where I mainly just complain about my medical problems. As a disabled person, I will always have medical problems, so it’s heartening to know that people don’t judge me as lesser or inferior because once in a while I need to focus on those instead of sacrificing everything for the Lord of Content, Praise Be Their Name. I have a few things that should be hitting the streets this month to talk about, but until then, the twin demons of Medical Drama and Non-Disclosure Agreements make this a thin month.
(Yes, I Like Capital Letters once in a while. It’s a small treat for myself.)
My Media
One of the advantages of not being able to do much without falling over or falling asleep is that I had a perfect chance to catch up on some of my media. So naturally I ignored all of that to instead binge Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (which I hadn’t seen after the first few episodes) and ask my colleagues in the video game industry for something new to play. One of them recommended The Thaumaturge, and I’m glad they did.
A quick digression: I have a complicated relationship with computer RPGs these days. I used to love them — hell, they were often the only kind of computer game I played. As I get older, though, I find I don’t have the time or patience for sprawling, fifty-hour epics of reading tiny text and clicking on things until they die.
So when someone recommended an RPG to me, I was reluctant. It was described to me as an extremely detailed historical fantasy set in early 20th century Warsaw, and lasting around twenty to thirty hours. That ticked so many of my personal boxes, and it was about half off on Steam when I looked it up, so it was an easy purchase, and I burned through it in about a week. It was the perfect game for the state I was in.
Now, to be fair, that’s a little bit of damning with faint praise. The game is a bit slow to start, but I was in a position where I didn’t want a game that was too demanding on me, and also I could spend several hours with it at a stretch (not a typical situation for me to be in). It’s also not quite an RPG, but something between a turn-based RPG and a mystery-adventure game, because a lot of the time you’re walking around rooms and clicking on things or people to get clues. However, I’m a sucker for mystery games, so finding one shoved into my RPG was a positive for me. Finally, combat is a bit thin and gets a little tedious near the end, but when you’re on pain pills, “thin and tedious” is immensely subjective.
Honestly, I think I would have liked the game even if I was fully healthy, but recovering from surgery put me in a place where I ended up loving it. Even looking back at it now, I think it’s still a 7/10 game, and we should praise such games.
Anyhow, sorry for the short newsletter this month. I should have more for you in April. See you then!