after being on hold with a free/sliding scale clinic for 90mins.. to be told they dont accept patients w/o insurance

and told to call cover oregon, which i have been doing every other weekday.. and have not been able to talk to a human yet...

but there is a free clinic in NE.. sob

ive been having periodic debilitating pain, with increasing frequency and magnitude for the past three months

to the point where it was so bad on friday that i wanted to die.. and it lasted 7 hours

oh no... D: I'm sorry to hear that!!

and have been terrified of feeling it again, of being alone.. having trouble eating :/

weh

it just all over or is it localized somewhere...

it's stabbing pain in my lower ribs and between my shoulder blades, comes on suddenly and nothing like painkillers or heat/ice etc changes how it feels :T

i don't wanna self diagnose decisively but it sounds a lot like a gallstone attack

yikes. Yeah that sounds super painful. Definitely glad you're getting in to see a doc!!

me too idk why im even blabbing here, i guess ive felt isolated and i remember i have a plurk

oh man yeah I've had gallstones and that sounds a lot like my attacks

fyi something that was very effective for me was taking a couple tablespoons of apple cider vingar (mixed in some apple juice if you want) right at the start of the attack

if it works, awesome, and if not it won't hurt you

You can always come to plurk if you need to vent It's good for that

oh yeah? i'll try that next time

i know i can't leave it untreated if it is infact that

but anything to mitigate the pain would be a godsend

yeah ACV was helpful for me

the main thing I did to manage attacks was just maintain a really strict diet, though

anything with more than a few grams of dietary fat, any caffeine, anything high acid, or spicy was out until I got rid of my gallstones :/

btw if it's your gallbladder they will want to just take it out immediately. it's up to you if that's your best option, but what they won't tell you is that a LOT of people have lifelong side effects from that

and you can take a drug called Ursodial to dissolve the stones instead

if it's a thing where you're going to keep getting gallstones forever then it's prob better to have it out, but for me I was pretty sure they wouldn't recur, so I used the drug

yeah i read a bit about the options, if it is the case. and the bad attack recently was def after some spicy food

thx for your insight tho! im keeping my diet strict when i manage to eat until i can get diagnosed

ive been having attacks all fall.. once a month but now it's 2-3 times a week for 3-7 hours at a time.. which is something i really can't live with

oh christ, yeah, you need treatment ASAP. ugh man you have all my sympathies :/

oh also fyi (and then I'll stop like... monopolizing your plurk), lemme know if you need help/info about the whole Cover Oregon/Oregon Health Plan thing

I just spent a couple months figuring out how the whole thing works after qualifying for OHP through Cover Oregon

aha i've been wrestling w cover oregon all year

i applied in december, was told the application was received.. and then again a few weeks ago. also told the application was received.. but i just can't get through to anyone on the phone

... wow they should definitely have processed it by now, that's insane

i had insurance up to my birthday on jan 22nd, so maybe that fucked with my position in line

yeah it's really stressing me out :T

liz applied at the exact same time and has had her materials since like.. early jan too

hm, well she also was probably fast-tracked because she has food benefits I think? anyone with gov't aid already gets fast-tracked

and i was okay with waiting (and paying 10x for my prescription) until this got too serious to ignore..

ah yeah that's possible.. im not on any kind of government aide..

ugh oh man i'm really glad you got an appointment

fyi you may have done this math already but it looks like if they didn't start processing your app until Jan 22nd, you should hear back by March 8

oh god I hope you're able to get treatment soon D:

i didn't know there was a timeframe

yeah check out this page, the section near the bottom that says "When will I find out if I qualify for the Oregon Health Plan?​​"

45 days is the turnaround time

i applied december.. 2nd? the first time

yeah if they started processing it 12/2 then they're definitely way over. but if they did decide not to count it until your insurance ran out... could be counting from that date

that would be a shitty thing to do but this is the government

yeah.. and i've called the customer service number on that page, and they told me it's been received lmao

and nothing else

christ. well I hope they can get you a diagnosis at this clinic. in the meantime do you have pain pills? tbh vicodin was the most effective thing for my attacks

i've read news stories that they've thrown out applications that have typos :/

i've tried ibuprofren with no luck.. just gives me nausea

how many do you take? if you're taking like a handful, that could be the issue. I have some ibuprofen 600mg pills that I can bring over, b/c it's all in one pill (w/ no coating) it tends to work better

also I have some extra vikes (I think, I can check when I get home) that I can bring over to you and you can just pay me back from whatever they prescribe you

ahh thanks, but i wanna wait and see what they say.. and pain killers tend to give me nausea in general...

my apt's tonight, and i haven't had an attack since friday

oh okay good, I'm glad the appt is tonight

oh derp i thought i'd mentioned that

managing anxiety is my main goal right now aha

yeah dude I feel you, I used to have full blown panic attacks just from thinking I could feel an attack coming on, even if it was just... gas or something lol

ugh yeah that's been my weekend

that is so shitty I'm sorry /curls around protectively

but really, thanks.. and i'm sorry you've had to deal with all these ailments in your life D:

oh ty, tbh I'm just grateful that I've never dealt with anything that wasn't treatable

yeah i guess there is always 'at least i'm not like this guy'

Let us know how it goes, aye?

ahh well she thinks it's def either a special kind of heartburn or gallstones, but not severe enough right now to be an emergency. i just have to get a few ultrasounds when i can get my hands on insurance

well I'm glad she doesn't think it's an emergency! sucks that you need to wait for insurance for the ultrasounds though. did she write you a scrip for anything to control the pain?

i mean i don't NEED to wait if i wanted to pay $300 bucks for each ultrasound, plus doctors fees. and I can go to a sliding scale ER if there is an emergency

she instructed me to get OTC heart prilosec and try a month of that to see what happens... she didn't seem to be convinced about gallstones bc i didn't have symptoms other than the pain

lmao not heart prilosec, but it should come in heart shapes

i'm gonna avoid spicy food cuz i feel like all the attacks i've had recently was following some kind of hot sauce etc.. sigh. no attacks since friday though!!

and i just spent 90 mins on hold w cover oregon again.. managed to get an email address through their twitter and sent a message that way lmao

oh I have some generic prilosec from India if you wanna try that. it's very slightly less effective than the American stuff but prob fine if you aren't already addicted to the US version

pain between shoulder blades doesn't sound like heartburn though...

fyi though the apple cider vinegar thing is good for both gallbladder attacks and heartburn. it seems counter-intuitive to take vinegar for heartburn but it actually balances your stomach's pH levels

yeah it's not like heartburn i've felt before, but she said it's like a side effect of heartburn? that makes all the organs around the esophagus spasm.

and is wrongly diagnosed as gallstones because the pain is so similar

but yes i've got the ACV from the last time i had lactose-related heartburn, as per your suggestion. i'll try it the next time i have an attack

huh that's really interesting, I had not heard of that happening before

god that would make sense though b/c I also have GERD and used to have what I thought of a "phantom" gallbladder attacks after my stones were gone, maybe that was just the GERD

GERD?

Yep: What Is GERD? Pain, Symptoms, Causes, Remedies, and More

yeah i haven't heard of it either, but when i told me dad he said he knew a guy who got his gallbladder out but actually had this type of heartburn. AND YOU KNOW ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE IS ALWAYS TRUE SO

did you ever get checked for gallstones, or did they just line up the symptoms, ori?

yeah dude I'd believe that, when I had gallstones every doctor was SO EAGER to take my gallbladder out, it was so creepy

oh no I had many ultrasounds

I def had stones

did they like.. test if they were the cause of the attacks? cuz this clinic def wants me to get an ultrasound and/or other tests during/after an attack

well for me I ended up in the ER twice after attacks and got ultrasounds right then and there. they could clearly see the stones and my super inflamed gallbladder

ohh so sounds like you pretty decisively had gallstone attacks haha

yeah it was pretty straightforward for me

i misread your original comment about after your stones were gone

how many attacks did you have, do you remember?

hm... I'd say over a dozen all told maybe? possibly a few more than that. I had a bunch right in a row before I knew what was causing it and stopped eating anything dangerous

ohh yeah i've def had around a dozen. and like 5/5 for pain level for some of them

yeah I remember those real bad ones, the first one I had was like that and I was pretty sure I was dying

at the time I had all my Arabic vocab posters up on my bedroom walls and I'd just lay there for hours trying to breathe and forcing myself to read the vocab over and over to focus on something else

Whoo!!

Wow sorry that is so the wrong thing IM SORRY

lmao

im not used to the update on my phone

Instead of going right to the text message I was intending to answer it went to my open windows in safari...

sigh

NOT WHOO. Though kind of whoo for prelim Dx??

haha no i got it

at least u didn't paste in ur steamy RP

haha shiitt

all my gross monster porn