Saturday, August 21, 2004
Lots o' news....
Thursday we finally booked our trip. We'll be leaving on October 2nd and returning on the 14th. We got a pretty good deal: two free nights in the condos, a free rental vehicle upgrade (to a Jeep on the big island), discounted airfare for travel between Kona and Waikiki, and a free luau. We'll be going to Kona first and staying five nights in a Spanish-style villa that looks VERY nice. Then we're going to Waikiki and staying six nights in a high-rise condo that will have a view of downtown Honolulu. And we got travel insurance that includes having to cancel due to health problems. I'll start this weekend booking some activities for the trip.
The only little hitch is that the airline I'll be going to Hawaii on doesn't provide gluten-free meals. I went to their website and saw that they had meals for diabetics, so I'm going to e-mail them and explain the need for accommodating celiacs. I'll use their current policy as a guide for suggesting gluten-free meal options. If worst comes to worst, I'll be brown-bagging it.
Got to do some software training at work on Thursday night and once again dozed off during the tutorials. I'm getting so desperate that I bought a case of "energy" drinks (caffeine, B vitamins and amino acids) and will resort to them when I get the sleepies. It's probably not the best thing for me, but then, after the incident I had Friday night, I'm willing to do just about anything to stay awake. Friday night, I nodded off in the middle of copying a piece of art from one ad to the other, inadvertently hit the "Return" key and erased the ad I was working on!! I had to quickly re-build the ad, which took probably half an hour. If a supervisor had witnessed me doing this, I probably would have been suspended for a day.
My return to work has been good for one thing at least...I'm eligible for the raise our department is getting. We're getting less than half the amount the union was negotiating for, but it's better than not getting anything at all, which was the agency's initial offer. The raise is retroactive to January of this year because that's when we were supposed to get it. I'm going to use some of it to update my operating system and financial software on the home computer this weekend. If I can keep working past January of next year, there will be another modest raise. And the union president is still looking into whether I will be eligible for a disability pension after June 2005. If so, I'll try my best to hang in there for 10 more months.
Went to a picnic today with my local fibromyalgia support group. We held it on the grounds of the hospital where we meet. There were probably about 20 of us there. I brought my famous rice pasta salad. One of the ladies there just got approved for her SSDI from a judge and brought her ruling with her. I was curious to see what one looked like and upon what the judge based his approval. Turns out she had lots of documentation from several docs, including a colleague of my rheumatologist and a doc locally famous for his fibromyalgia research. Most of the people in the group who have been approved for disability have had two or more judge hearings with an average of two years between application and approval.
Well, rats, here I am dozing off during this entry, and it's only 6pm. Sad.
Pain level: 7
Fatigue level: 9
The only little hitch is that the airline I'll be going to Hawaii on doesn't provide gluten-free meals. I went to their website and saw that they had meals for diabetics, so I'm going to e-mail them and explain the need for accommodating celiacs. I'll use their current policy as a guide for suggesting gluten-free meal options. If worst comes to worst, I'll be brown-bagging it.
Got to do some software training at work on Thursday night and once again dozed off during the tutorials. I'm getting so desperate that I bought a case of "energy" drinks (caffeine, B vitamins and amino acids) and will resort to them when I get the sleepies. It's probably not the best thing for me, but then, after the incident I had Friday night, I'm willing to do just about anything to stay awake. Friday night, I nodded off in the middle of copying a piece of art from one ad to the other, inadvertently hit the "Return" key and erased the ad I was working on!! I had to quickly re-build the ad, which took probably half an hour. If a supervisor had witnessed me doing this, I probably would have been suspended for a day.
My return to work has been good for one thing at least...I'm eligible for the raise our department is getting. We're getting less than half the amount the union was negotiating for, but it's better than not getting anything at all, which was the agency's initial offer. The raise is retroactive to January of this year because that's when we were supposed to get it. I'm going to use some of it to update my operating system and financial software on the home computer this weekend. If I can keep working past January of next year, there will be another modest raise. And the union president is still looking into whether I will be eligible for a disability pension after June 2005. If so, I'll try my best to hang in there for 10 more months.
Went to a picnic today with my local fibromyalgia support group. We held it on the grounds of the hospital where we meet. There were probably about 20 of us there. I brought my famous rice pasta salad. One of the ladies there just got approved for her SSDI from a judge and brought her ruling with her. I was curious to see what one looked like and upon what the judge based his approval. Turns out she had lots of documentation from several docs, including a colleague of my rheumatologist and a doc locally famous for his fibromyalgia research. Most of the people in the group who have been approved for disability have had two or more judge hearings with an average of two years between application and approval.
Well, rats, here I am dozing off during this entry, and it's only 6pm. Sad.
Pain level: 7
Fatigue level: 9
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