The Old Folks Home

[superchemicalgirl]

@superchemicalgirl Right now Texas where I'm at is overcast, on/off drizzle, and cool (48F). Since the past 2 days were "open the house", mid 70s, sun shining, light breezes, this is slightly depressing. It's been a pretty wet 2017 so far. No drought here. I had to turn the heat back on as I was getting chilled. How's Vacationland?

You got tomatoes ripening yet?

Here... ice, ice, ice, snow, ice, ice. Almost no chance of getting above freezing in the extended 14 day forecast.

 

[microchick]

I just told DH today that I freakin hate the month of February. One day a week, it's totally nice, 50ish sunny, geese and ducks are flying to the west and slightly to the south, just enough to tease you about winter thinking about winding down, and then the next day, lows in the teens, highs barely reaching 30. Wind chill to the very bones. Chickens don't want to come outside and I can't blame them.....except the extra roosters. Hope blooms eternal there. They stand by the fence like teen age girls backstage at a Justin Bieber concert, only they are hoping the girls come out. I tell em to dream on, those little prima donnas ain't budging from their roost spots except to gobble down food, gulp down water and stick their pretty little tails up at the nesting boxes. Little ungrateful freeloaders.

I hate February. Stupid new insurance company told my doctor that they didn't like the way he was prescribing my GERD medicine. Never mind that the way I take it works for me. So he had to prescribe it the way they recommended.....now I have the mother of all upset stomachs and enough heart burn to light up New York City. The only good news from it is that I have some medicine on hand that I can take the old way and they told me if this didn't work, and they doubted if it would, they could get the old RX reinstated. Since when did Insurance companies become primary care physicians?

February sux. The only bright spot in the day is that I'm trying to figure out what to do. Get Black OEGB eggs from a local breeder and stick them in my incubator, wait for one of my lazy, freeloading ingrate hens to go broody.....probably sometime in July, they way they are going.....or buy chicks from the same source that I plan to get my eggs from.

I need peeps. Something to make me think spring. Question is do I want to get them out of the shell or in the shell. So far, I'm leaning towards out of the shell. Especially since our Amish neighbor is going to have eggs for me in 2 weeks.

Rant over.....

back to your regularly scheduled thread.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

I hate February. Stupid new insurance company told my doctor that they didn't like the way he was prescribing my GERD medicine. Never mind that the way I take it works for me. So he had to prescribe it the way they recommended.....now I have the mother of all upset stomachs and enough heart burn to light up New York City. The only good news from it is that I have some medicine on hand that I can take the old way and they told me if this didn't work, and they doubted if it would, they could get the old RX reinstated. Since when did Insurance companies become primary care physicians?

So I will try not to offer medical advice, but generally you'll want to very gradually taper the PPIs to avoid the rebound acid attacks.

Long term PPIs have been shown to increase the risk of other diseases - bone disease, pneumonia, certain bowel infections, so in a way it is the business of the insurance company to try to reduce the risk to their insured population. Many people are on meds chronically that they don't need to be.

I'm certainly not siding with the insurance company, just trying to offer some perspective.

 

[microchick]

Oh yeah, I know that, Superchemicalgirl. It's a matter of potatoes and PO TA TOES. Doc had me taking it 20 mg twice a day and they want me to take 40 mg once a day. It's like HuH? It isn't time released. I have a bad case of GERD/probable Hiatal hernia , family predisposition from both my mom and dad and was under great control until they said they wouldn't pay for the BID dose but would pay for the double dose Qday. The evening dose got me through the night without breakthrough. If they were saying, no, you can't take it TID, because kidney, liver, bone, whatever potential side effects, that would all be well and good but they aren't saying that. Same dosage, different S.I.G. Would there be any reason that they would want it only given once a day at a higher dosage over twice a day at a lower dosage? I did fine for the first week then last night it hit me again. This afternoon has been terrible. I can't even bend over without killer heartburn occurring. It seems as though the AM dosage has worn off by 3pm for me.

I dealt with this a lot when I worked in the rehabilitation/nursing home industry. We were always putting our heads together with the doctors trying to out think the insurance companies because they thought they knew our patients better than we did. We generally won.

In my case they just aren't wanting to pay for it unless it is at "Their" recommended dose but as one of my doctor's nurses said, it makes no sense. It's basically the same mg dosage, just broken into two doses. No problem really, I can get it OTC without the insurance company getting involved and take it at my usual RX. Unfortunately, trying to satisfy their demands so they will pay for it has caused me pain and discomfort that I haven't had for years. Back pain, rib pain, chronic sinus infection...no thanks, I can live without a flair in my GERD on top of it making me further miserable. Like the nurse told me. It's a matter of principal. There is no reason they shouldn't pay for the BID dosage as it is the same total daily mg dose.

My husband deals with the same nonsense through the VA. The hoops the doctors have to jump through to get medications for patients that aren't listed on their prescribed list of drugs are ridiculous and he dealt with it as a professional trying to get insurances to pay for expensive drugs for his patients when they really needed the medication that he was prescribing for them...and I was usually the one on the phone with both the pharmacy and the insurance companies.

I can only imagine what you have to deal with in a hospital setting. My sympathies. Think I'm going to go chug some Pepto or Mylanta, or whatever I can find in the old Medicine cabinet.

 

[drumstick diva]

Microchick could you split the 40 mg pills and then continue to take one(half) twice a day? The insurance company wouldn't know that.

 

[microchick]

Microchick could you split the 40 mg pills and then continue to take one(half) twice a day? The insurance company wouldn't know that.

I thought of that. Unfortunately they are capsules. Now I could use my husband's scales, head down to the Amish store and buy some empty gelatin capsules (they sell herbs for homeopathic medicine) and work it out....hmmmm. DH said that was doable. Thanks for the idea DSD!

Skipped the Pepto and went right to the gallon of milk.

 

[drumstick diva]

That is so time consuming and you hope to be accurate. I don't want anything bad happening to you. I had to do that with meds too but they were scored tablets - even then they didn't spit evenly. My doctor said I should use the same halves in one day incase one split had more than the other. That would be good for splitting amounts into 2 capsules too.

PS we're friends, you can call me just dd

 

[microchick]

That is so time consuming and you hope to be accurate. I don't want anything bad happening to you. I had to do that with meds too but they were scored tablets - even then they didn't spit evenly. My doctor said I should use the same halves in one day incase one split had more than the other. That would be good for splitting amounts into 2 capsules too.

PS we're friends, you can call me just dd

I would never do that!

It's been too many years since I took my pharmacology course. I'm sure Superchemicalgirl will know the word I searching for. There are medicines, especially scored ones that are made to be snapped in two and you can get a pretty equal dosage between the two halves. DH takes meds like that that and yep, better to take them the same day. If a scale is sensitive enough, and I think the one DH has is, I could conceivably open a capsule and split the contents into two equal doses. He is always using his little scale to miter out doses of medicine for our animals. I look at the number and just grab my head in pain and proclaim that they make my brains hurt. He just looks at the numbers, does some calculations, weighs the medicine up for me and hands me the dose for my birds. When I ask him how he does it, he just says it's simple math.

Those two words are oxymorons to me. Simple and Math never went together.

 

[pennyJo1960]

@microchick simple is math or use to be lucky to add 2 + 2 now... Been all day sold eggs then
chicks to a gal that has become a good friend and spent the prepping a coop to accept them

 

[microchick]

I emailed a lady about getting some Black OEGB chicks from her next month. I was going to try to hatch my own but our Amish neighbor is going to have some of his eggs for me in a couple of weeks, I hope and they are going to go into the incubator. My hens are just barely starting to lay again so when I ask any of them if they want to go broody they just look at me and say "Got treats?" If I can get chicks from the breeder about the same time the Amish eggs hatch I'm hoping to brood the whole group together. We have friends who have Silver Duck Wing OEGBs and their little rooster died a couple of months back. She wants a few more but can't make contact with the man she bought hers from 8 years ago. These are super nice older folks (talking 80ish) and gave me enough metal siding to recover my new shed conversion coop and enough chain link fencing to build a cockerel and bantam run. They want OEGBs so my plan is to raise the ones I can hopefully get to fledglings and give them six of them. I've batted my brains out trying to find SDW's within driving distance and have struck out completely. I'm hoping they will like these. The eggs I'm getting from our Amish neighbor are OEGB/cochin and OGK (only God knows) what other type of bantam mix. I have 4 that survived my first time broody's poop fest that occurred during her Sept. hatching and they are just dolls. I'm going to get 10 eggs from him and hope I can do better. I don't plan to let my standards set any of their own eggs this year. I have 22 layers right now and that's plenty for the time being for us, but I want littles! My plan is to hatch only bantams this year. I might be able to get my hands on some Serama eggs later on.

Wondering how they will get along with OEGBs.