Positive/Negative things that have come out of Covid in My Life

I’m starting out with something negative that enrages me! I noticed on google and on people’s websites there have been no changes made as to whether companies are open/closed during the covid era. I understand that this is the first global pandemic and it’s new for everyone. Maybe making changes on google about your hours etc and you website is more difficult that I realized,, But you can’t update you damn voicemail to inform us whether your’e open during covid, closed during covid and if you ARE open what your new hours of operation are!! How fricken hard is that? You can change your voicemail remotely from home. Incredibly inconsiderate and unprofessional. Then you go to a store and it says it’s open until 9pm.. You get there and see that it close at 5pm. The only reason I know that is because I went to the physical location and saw the typed sign in the window. Why can’t you put that in your voicemail?? My friend has since told me that people are updating things like that on their instagram. How the heck was I supposed to know that??

Spoke to a relative in Ghana and she said the government reluctantly lifted the lockdown. She said they had to because people were dying of hunger. I asked her if she was being literal. She said yes because there are many people who work in order to have food for that day. If they don’t work they don’t have money for food for that day. The lockdown was 3 weeks so people died because they had not food during this time. The government tried to get food to some people but couldn’t reach everyone.. This was so tragic and horrifying. I was even more grateful for the things I’ve had. The only times I don’t it is if I forget or I have no appetite. It’s never due to a lack of food. In Toronto even if you can’t get healthy food, you can still get food. Food banks don’t have the healthiest food but it’s food. Even those 1 dollar soups you can buy. Riddled with sodium but it’s still food. Wow. I’m here ordering food from uber eats.. I can’t really cook right now because it’s very painful to stand.

So a positive thing that happened today which may seem like a negative. I was having “serious” side effects from an antidepressant. For these effects it advises you to contact your doctor as soon as possible. The effects that were the most concerning were issues with my eyes. I have blurred and double vision. One of the issues with the vision problems is that some can cause permanent damage.

My psychiatrist told me to discontinue the medication and some of the other side effects stopped. The pain in my eye drastically decreased but I still have the blurred and double vision. My psychiatrist said it would probably be difficult to get into an eye doctor. I mentioned it to my family doctor and he said he does not have the equipment to check the health of my eye and that I should go to a optometrist. Called mine and of course they hadn’t changed their voicemail and it did not give me the option of leaving a message. I checked his facebook business page. He had tons of youtube videos where he discussed social commentary.. Even footage of him using what seemed like expensive sound equipment. He had the time to do all that and couldn’t post 2 sentences that the clinic is closed??.. Annoying. I hate when things are avoidable and unnecessary I was already tired of his clinic because it basically became an assembly line. Sometimes I had to wait for an hour or more. He no longer had the time to see every person so randomly some other person you hadn’t met would come and check you eyes.. No introduction or explanation or anything. I was thoroughly annoyed.

So I went to Ontario College of Optometrist. That’s their regulatory body that governs everything they do and puts together protocol for Covid. So I checked for all of Toronto and Pickering. There were very few open during covid and it was only for urgent/emergency care. Most were only seeing existing patients. There was one I found that was taking non patients. It was in the next city over but only a 15 minute drive. I assumed he would have been very busy. He called me back the same day and scheduled me for the next day. Very kind and caring man. I like It because it’s a very small practice. He told me to get a form from my family doctor so that I wouldn’t have to pay. I really appreciated that. I was probably there for 2 hours he did every test in the book just to be thorough. I really appreciated that. He said my eyes were drastically out out of alignment. He ofsuspected it was the medication but not necessarily from the medication that was just discontinued. He said it could have been from one of the medications I’ve been on for longer.. or the combination of the 3 medications I”m on at once. He said I should wait a couple of months to see if it resolves itself once the medication is out of my system. If it does not go back to normal he will have to make a new prescription for my glasses including prisms. This fixes the problem. He had some prism lenses and tested them on me and it worked perfectly .

The good think about that clinic is it’s right by the lake. The customer service was amazing. The receptionist really knew what she was doing and warmed up out of her “work mode” once I made her laugh a couple of times. It was very important for the optometrist to be sure that I understood everything he said and the concepts he was presenting. Kept asking if I had any other questions. He does not know me!! I always have questions! He does not know what he was getting himself into lol, Very kind, caring, gentle, professional and knowledgeable man. So after covid I’m going to switch to him as my treating optometrist. So that was the positive that came out of covid today. Even though I ended up with a diagnosis I was treated like a human being. He did not make any ignorant comments about by having bipolar. You’d be surprised how many insensitive and ignorant things specialists say once they know I’m on lithium. Most people know lithium usually equals bipolar disorder.

All in all a good day.

Ultrasound for my thyroid tomorrow and an X-ray for my foot that his been consistently painful fo rover 2 weeks. My body is falling apart,

Have a wonderful week my lovelies. Stay safe. Practice social distancing yada yada.

Peace & Blessings,

AQ