OMG it’s socialized medicine! gaspshockhorror

Sorry, all, but this is aimed at anyone who wants to slam “socialized medicine”. No knitting content (for reasons that will soon be clear…)

In late October of last year, I went to my GP with severe shortness of breath, also an annoying dry cough that pre-dates covid. When I say severe, I mean, “get out of bed and stand beside the bed for a couple minutes to catch my breath” severe. I mean “can’t walk from the living room to the bathroom in my 60m2/645ft2 apartment without stopping halfway to gasp for air” severe. The GP didn’t tell me what her thinking was, but sent me for bloodwork. That was on a Wednesday, the blood draw was in the early afternoon so I knew I wouldn’t get the results until the following day. They weren’t available, weren’t available, weren’t available, so finally Friday afternoon I called the lab and they did something, and suddenly the results were available. Reader, they were bad. The only phone number the GP had for me was a phone number I no longer use, but that is still taking voicemail messages – she apparently left me a message, once she got the results, thinking I would get it.

The following Monday was a bank holiday, and the first appointment with the GP was early afternoon on Weds 3 November. I spent the weekend assuming I was in heart failure and might not outlive my parents. I left home for the GP’s office with a backpack containing a nearly-done sweater project – I had sewn the fronts and back together, and picked up and started the neckband, and had the sleeves also in the project bag – and my handbag, but no other handwork. I got to the office in plenty of time, only to find out that she was running an hour late, but hey, gives me plenty of knitting time! I got several rows done on the neckband. When she finally called me into her office, her first question was, “why are you here, did you not go to the ER like I left a message for you to, I’m amazed you’re not dead.”

Now, GP appointments in France, as in the US, are 15 minutes long. She was already running an hour behind. I have no idea how long I was in there, as I don’t usually wear a watch, but I know for sure it was more than 15 minutes! She gave me a very complete work-up, then had her med student give me a very complete work-up. Then she sat me down and had a very frank talk with me, which ended with her calling a blue-lights ambulance on me. She printed out all her notes, my bloodwork, and etc., and sat me in her waiting room to wait for the ambulance while she tried to get her afternoon schedule even slightly repaired.

The ambulance showed up with three paramedics, who were not impressed to find me sitting in the waiting room clutching an envelope, and weren’t really convinced I actually needed them, especially as I said that I could walk out to the rig myself as long as we walked slowly, they didn’t need to go back and get the gurney tyvm. One of them hovered at my elbow the entire way out, and when I climbed onto the rig and had to lean against the wall to catch my breath before sitting down on the gurney, they were willing to accept that I wasn’t wasting their time. A few checks, oxygen mask on my face, I lay down and they belted me to the gurney, called the hospital with an initial report, and we were off on lights and sirens. They called in an update at least twice on the way to the hospital.

In the ER, I had several vials of blood taken, an EKG, and an up-the-nose covid swab. Bloods they were running included arterial blood gas, potassium, and D-dimer, as well as at least a partial hematology panel. I waited for a while, then was wheeled off for a pulmonary CT scan with contrast. Waited for a while more, and then was visited by the on-call hospitalist who said yes, I had a pulmonary embolism and would be admitted to the cardiology ward as soon as they had a bed available, they were discharging a couple patients and had also had an even more urgent case than mine come in. In the meantime, here’s your first dose of Xarelto, here’s a horse pill of potassium to treat the hypokalemia, now lie down and try to relax.

The next day I had another EKG and a cardiac echo, and another CT scan, again with contrast but this time of the abdomino-pelvic region. Friday morning I had ultrasound exam of both legs, and gastroscopy, and in the afternoon I was taken off to OB-gyn. All of this was aimed at trying to figure out where the clot had come from – we never did find it, but as I’d had shortness of breath for over two weeks it might have been too late. Friday afternoon I had a bag of iron sucrose added to my IV, and that evening I got a unit of packed cells because the hematology had showed moderate iron-deficient anemia. Saturday another unit of packed cells, and Sunday and Monday another bag of iron sucrose. I was on oxygen for I think three days. Because the cough continued this whole time, I had several ventolin treatments – they didn’t help, I actually kept coughing even while inhaling the nasty stuff! I had horse pills of potassium I think three days in a row, twice a day I think? I had Xarelto twice a day. When my recurrent corneal erosion recurred, fortunately I had the scrip for those meds still in my handbag, and the pharmacy dispensed the eye drops and ointment needed.

I had three meals a day – and good meals, more than I could eat and I’m a gourmand; roast pork with onion gravy and broccoli, roll, cheese, fresh fruit; cold roast beef with seasoned rice, spinach, and something else, plus roll, cheese, and fresh fruit; breakfast was portion of a baguette with butter and jam on the side, plus yogurt and fruit.

There were on-call nurses and nurse’s aides 24 hours a day.

I was finally released on Wednesday, a full week later. SO MUCH knitting time, and me with no knitting! I finished the neckband on the first full day I was there, and had nothing to do. Fortunately, they had a very few English-language books that had been left behind by anglophone patients, and I forced myself to read slowly. I have to admit, if it had been only French books in their “lending library” I probably would have begged for the loan of a textbook or reference book or something – French fiction writing is just not my taste.

So, if you’re keeping track:

• Admission via the ER department
• covid test
• two EKGs
• cardiac echo
• two CT scans with contrast
• gastroscopy
• OB-gyn visit with ultrasound
• detailed leg vein ultrasound
• Xarelto 2x/day, 7 days
• oxygen, 3 days
• several (3-5) ventolin inhalable treatments
• potassium, I think 2x/day, 3 days
• IV fluids, 7 days
• 3 bags iron sucrose
• 2 units packed cells, plus all the blood-testing and cross-matching and surveillance to make sure I wasn’t getting the wrong blood and wasn’t reacting during the transfusion
• repeated blood draws for hematology and clinchem
• 3 good meals a day
• constant nursing care
• eye drops and ointment for an unrelated condition that needed treatment.
• daily drive-bys from the cardiologist

I shudder to think how much it would have cost for all of this in the US. Because I’m outside the French health system, this came out of my pocket. I have to admit, I did spend some time fretting about how much it was all going to cost me. And in the end, it cost me…

Just north of 6100 euro. Let me say that again, in words because you might think I had missed a zero somewhere. Just north of six thousand, one hundred euro.

In today’s conversion rates, that would be about 6500 USD. The day I was released, I think it was about 7000 USD. There was no itemized bill, they did not count every scan and every pill and every meal and every everything else. There was simply a bill saying “you were admitted on this day at this time, you were discharged on this day at this time, at a rate of X per day that makes your bill this much.”

So don’t talk to me about how terrible socialized medicine is, because I don’t want to hear it. Yes, the tax rates here in Europe are high, and I paid into the French system for ages. The hospital was there when I needed it, and gave me good care at a decent price. I didn’t have to worry about declaring bankruptcy, I didn’t have to sell a car to pay the bills, I didn’t have to stiff the landlord because I couldn’t pay rent and the medical bill. If I’m going to be sick enough to need a hospital, I’d far rather have it happen in a country with “socialized medicine”.

Mash-up to end all mash-ups…

My normal sweater knitting is bottom-up, in pieces – cast on the back, knit to the top, and cast off. Cast on one front, knit to the top, and cast off, and do it again for the second front. Same with the sleeves. It’s easier for traveling (I used to do a lot of traveling), it’s easier for allowing one or more cats to sit in my lap while I knitted, and the rows are shorter than if I’m knitting everything all in one swell foop.

But, last year there was a bit of a panic when it seemed that my favorite pattern generator (Amy Herzog’s Custom Fit) would be disappearing. I can’t get gauge to save my life, and I need to knit about three different sizes in one sweater, so it’s easier to build a sweater pattern around my gauge and my body than try to shoe-horn one or both into a commercial pattern. I found Phrancko’s sweater pattern generator, and thought I would give it a try as it produces set-in sleeve sweaters, although top-down and all-in-one, rather than bottom-up and pieced.

I had, previously knitted Jurisfiction from Glenna C, but ended up frogging it because of massive issues with the knitting. I thought I’d try it again, so generated a pattern using the Phrancko site and plunged in, using the numbers from that pattern, adding extra stitches to account for cable pull-in, and working top-down, also converting it because the only pattern available at the time was a pull-over. I run far too hot for pull-overs, so was cardiganizing it instead.

Anyone who knits sweaters top down knows that nearly all of them have you knit the sleeves last, at which point you have the entire sweater flopping around in your lap as you knit. I was knitting the body flat, so why knit the sleeve in the round? I decided to do something different and when I reached the point of setting aside stitches that would become the sleeves so that I could work on the body, I set aside the body stitches and knitted the sleeves instead! Then I blocked the whole mess, seamed the sleeve seams, put the body stitches back on the needle and picked up for the underarms, and away I went! It did, however, produce a very strange-looking shape during blocking –

I’m not sure if it looks more like a dis-assembled pair of trousers, or a smashed elephant. What do you think?

Level-up goods needed for GE

This was an anonymized way to communicate gameplay mechanics to someone without sharing e-mail address, file metadata, etc. As it’s not relevant to anything else, I’ve deleted it.

Logging off of Ravelry

I know I don’t actually have any readers out there, but if I did, I would hope that they had heard at least something off the noise surrounding Ravelry.

In June of 2020, with little warning (there was a “teaser” posted on the twitter account), a new design was launched for Ravelry that made major changes to the look and feel of the site. In addition to having specific esthetic characteristics, it caused a lot of people to have a range of effects, from minor (eye strain) to major (chronic migraine, seizure).

Within a week, the possibility existed to “go back” to Classic Ravelry, except that it’s not really Classic Ravelry, it’s New Ravelry filtered through some sort of overlay.

Not very long after that, the mod-hammers came out. Post a rave about the new look? We’re all good. Post in the Big 6 about problems you were having with the site? Thread is locked and archived as soon as a mod sees it, posts are hidden, etc.

People are told it’s all in their heads, the effects are not linked to the new look, how on earth could they be? Many many people have tested various aspects of the accessibility of the site, and, well, it’s not.

Because the LIVE SITE ARCHITECTURE was changed, not a development site, the changes can’t be rolled back.

Really, this is serious. Imagine you’ve just taken in an airplane, and now you discover that the av engineer is down in the hold running calculations to see whether the gear will support the landing. You don’t play with the architecture of the live site, and when you launch the NEW site, you set the old site aside so you can put things back the way they were if you need to.

Anyway… we were eventually told that Classic Ravelry would be sticking around for a defined time, then disappearing – New Rav or Nothing! Then the date was set, 31 March 2021.

The developers promised to fix the accessibility issues. Did they? No. They ran surveys about the esthetics of the new site, but not the accessibility; they ran surveys about accessibility THAT WERE NOT ACCESSIBLE; they promised to hire accessibility support and didn’t; they ignored the Ravelry volunteers who came out of the woodwork to help them with their accessibility issues.

Things continued in this vein. Threads were locked, problems were denied. Designers who suddenly started selling elsewhere (Payhip, Lovecrafts) had the links to their off-Ravelry stores changed or deleted by specific mods.

Then there was an article in the New Yorker in mid-March 2021 that presented the view that these problems were all silly and how on earth could they possibly be related to Ravelry? Any mention of that article in the Big 6 apparently gets the culprit banned from the Big 6, and the thread gets immediately locked and archived.

Gaslighting reigns supreme.

I have been on Ravelry since… 2004? My Ravelry number is somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000, I think right around 54k. I have contributed pattern entries to the database. I have answered questions. I have left comments on yarns and patterns. I have bought patterns – lots of patterns! – on Ravelry.

I have not spent a single red cent on Ravelry since I think August of last year. If I want a pattern, I buy it elsewhere.

I have not logged into Ravelry since about 25 March 2021. At this point, I am not likely to go back.

Let’s not forget what Ravelry is. Ravelry is a database fed and maintained by volunteers. Volunteers enter patterns into the database, answer questions, leave comments on yarns and patterns. It is THE place to go for information these days. But beyond that, our fees support Ravelry – when we buy patterns, a sales fee goes to Ravelry. When we surf, the ad fees go to Ravelry.

But a lot of people can’t use Ravelry, and have been effectively locked out of Ravelry, told they and their observations are “silly’, and told that they ARE NOT WANTED.

Guess what. Ravelry is not wanted around here. I apologize for any links from this blog to Ravelry, and I’ll be cleaning them up at some point.

Until Ravelry acknowledges the harm it has done, apologizes for it, makes Classic Ravelry available permanently, and makes even Classic Ravelry accessible, I am done with Ravelry.

And farewell to Britspin 2020

Well that was a challenging four days! Britspin started at 9pm UK time on Wednesday 14 October, and finished at 9pm UK time on Sunday 18. I decided to spin a multi-colored braid from deep stash (2016….), with no real plan what I am going to do with it once I have it spun up! Most of my knitting isn’t really suited for multi-colored wool, other than socks of course, and I really am not keen yet on spinning for socks.

This is a braid of 15-micron merino from Woolgatherings; gorgeous colors, but a lot of variation in there! My original plan was to just spin straight through, but that changed a bit as I spun.

Wednesday night was interesting to say the least. My Symphony wheel has been sitting in the corner of the living room collecting dust for at least four years, the poor thing, although interestingly I don’t think the cats ever tried to use it as a climbing frame. So the first order of business was to dust it, put it back together (I’d taken the flyer off and wrapped the drive band around so that the cats wouldn’t hang themselves), and oil it everywhere. I sat down and started spinning, only for it to squeak every time I treadled. More oil, but no improvement. Since I’m in France, not the UK, I only sat down to start spinning at 10pm my time – not ideal! I think I finally packed it in around 11, with not much done. I’m torn off a blob of wool from one end of the braid and just started spinning my default fine singles.

Thursday I had no motivation, so maybe put in half an hour? Something about a squeaking wheel and a book I wanted to finish just sapped me of much energy.

Friday, I did some spinning, but not much. The good news, however, is that the squeak essentially went away! I untied the laces holding the footmen to the treadles, ran them over a candle to wax them, retied them tighter than they had been before, and oiled everywhere else. I sat down to spin, and after about fifteen minutes realized that the only noise I could hear was the whirr of the flyer and bobbin and drive band. No squeak!

Saturday I think I sat down at the wheel at about 1, and except for short breaks to stretch or change position I pretty much spun until about 6. Sunday, I started at 10 and finally quit and wound off my yarn to measure at just after 6. Thank heavens for long audiobooks.

As I said earlier, my initial plan was to just spin straight through the braid, and that’s largely what I’m doing. But, as I pulled off short bits from the braid, I would sometimes get the start of one color on the end of the next, and while there will be some color blending I didn’t want a lot of barber-poling either in the singles or the plied yarn. I was also having a bit of frustration managing to spin from the entire width of top without having it end up in a wad.

The solution – pull off a blob of top, split it lengthwise into generally about five or so thinner pieces, and then pull off any of the next color that had come along for the ride. So, if I had purple shading into turquoise, I would try to get as much of the turquoise off as I could, spin all the purple, then start spinning the turquoise. It made it much easier both to handle the unspun fiber, to keep it from bunching up as I spun off of it, and to manage the color in a way that made me happy. You can see in the montage below how the colors progressed as I spun.

At the end of my spinning on Sunday, I wound the single off the bobbin around a book. I plan to put it back on a bobbin and spin the rest of the braid, or at least as much as I can get onto that bobbin, before chain-plying the whole mess. I counted the wraps as I wound, and based on the circumference of the book I ended up with just over 317 meters spun from 18 grams of top. Not bad for a novice!

Some of the singles is awfully thin, some is thicker than I’d like it to be, but I think once I have it plied up it’ll make about a fingering weight, although it might be a heavy laceweight, we’ll see.

And as far as how I’ll use it – I’ve made arrangements to borrow a rigid heddle loom over the holidays to see if I enjoy weaving, before I splash out money on a loom of my own. If I have this all spun up by then, I’m thinking I might eventually use it as the weft in a scarf of some sort. That would certainly be easier than trying to knit with such a variety of colors!

Britspin is here!

Last night was the start of Britspin – although you don’t have to be British, be located in Britain, or even spin British wool to participate. It’s a spinning competition open to all, and I thought it would be fun to join in and see how much I can spin when I focus on speed.

My normal spinning style up until now has been to use the largest whorl and treadle so slowly that the wheel is just on the brink of stalling. In fact, I have had it stall on occasion. The slow treadling gives me lots of time to focus on drafting as close to perfect as I can. I like fine yarns, for a chain-plied yarn I tend to aim for fingering to sport-weight after plying, so need a fine singles.

This weekend, though, I’m focusing on working a lot faster and still trying to draft more or less evenly for a fine singles. I’m using a 4-ounce braid I bought ages ago from Woolgatherings, in 15.5 micron merino, and spinning straight through the braid without separating colors. When I’ve spun up the whole braid, I’ll chain-ply it, to try and reduce the barber-poling as much as I can. What will I do with it? no idea! I don’t think it’ll work for a shawl or anything lacy, but maybe 2-color brioche? Not sure what color I’d use with it, I’ll have to see it spun first.

Here’s the braid unbraided, the empty bobbin, and my first day’s progress from Wednesday night.

All Change!

Hello! Hello indeed to anyone who’s reading, I can’t imagine anyone has been reading this in a while, since I haven’t been writing this in a while.

There’s been a lot of change around here, and unfortunately some things haven’t changed (more on that in a bit…).

Changes –

• I lost my poor old Sophie-cat who had kidney failure. She went into what was probably organ failure in December 2018 and had to be put to sleep. She made it I think three years with kidney failure and was in good spirits and good appetite right up until the end, so although I miss her I feel I made the right decision at the right time. Aubrey is now an only cat, and seems to be happy.
• I’ve changed jobs! After 20 years with one company, I decided that things would be better elsewhere. I’m still in the same job description, and in the same industry, but the name on the sign “out front” has changed.
• I’ve changed countries! I moved to France in August 1999, and in January 2020 I moved to the UK. Well, the cat and I, some of my clothes, and some of my knitting, moved to the UK. Our belongings have not yet moved thanks to my inertia and to coronavirus, but I’ve just been given a firm deadline of end of the year to have the move FINISHED. It’ll be good to have my furniture, but I’m thinking of renting a storage container for everything else so I can sort it out and bring into the house only what I truly want.
• I’ve been bitten by the spinning bug in a big way. Did you know about that, blog? I’m not sure you did. Well, I have been. I’m still knitting, and at the moment all of my spinning is / will be to knit with, but I am spending an awful lot of my hobby time in front of the wheel.
• which means I may spend a lot more time talking about spinning than I do knitting.
• I’m traveling a lot less than I was at my previous employer – good for the environment and my bank account, at any rate.

Unchanges –

• well, the biggest is that poor dear Princess has not been taken out of her plastic bag in the closet since the last time I mentioned her. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that, when I sort out the closet in preparation for the movers coming, I find that the moths have not gotten her…
• I still have cat hair in my knitting…

If I can get the apartment sorted out a bit in the next week or so, I may limber up the wheel I have here in France – BritSpin starts in 13 days, 10 hours, 19 minutes, and I’m registered!

Boy, is it dusty in here!

Yes, I’m actually back – again.  I’m still knitting and I still have cats (more on that later), I still travel more than I’d like, but have just not made time for the blog in a long time.

One of my new interests actually stems from some of the work travel I’ve done in the last few years.  Four years ago, I had (oh, the horror, I was forced to do this!!!)  to go to Japan for a meeting on one of my projects.  I really enjoyed it, and felt very welcomed by people in Japan even though we had few words in common and even though I was obviously “not from around here”.  My last day in Tokyo, I wore a sweater I had knitted, and went to Rokugien Park to see the fall color and sit in the sunshine and knit a bit.  I ended up sharing a park bench with some ladies of a certain age, who had no English to go with my lack of Japanese, but we still admired each other’s sweaters and exchanged smiles.  So – I decided to learn Japanese!  I’ve now been studying it with a teacher for two years, although “study” means a 90-minute lesson each week and not really doing my homework until a few hours before my lesson.  I start the intermediate text book soon, though, and I’m hoping I can improve my study habits with the new book.  I’m also going to be posting the odd blog entry in Japanese, just to practice my use of the language.

Other major travel I’ve done has been a trip to China three years ago for the same project, and another trip to Japan two years ago again for the same project.

Next year is a big birthday for me, and I’m buying myself a tourism trip to Japan.  At the moment, I’m thinking about the spring during cherry blossom time, but I’m not sure that’s going to work because I’m going to be in the US for two weeks in March to attend a congress and a departmental meeting, and I’m not sure I can then take two weeks the following month to go to Japan!  But we’ll see.

Knitting – I’m still knitting.  I made the mistake of taking Princess off the needles several years ago to spread her out for someone who wanted to see her, and I haven’t touched her since.  One day…  Other than that, I’ve been doing a lot of knitting!  Not really very many shawls, but lots and lots of sweaters, most of which actually fit.

Cats – three and a half years ago, my little calico girl was diagnosed with advanced kidney disease, and started on blood pressure meds and special diet.  In feline kidney disease, the kidneys lose their ability to hold water back, so the cats just lose water like mad.  Blood pressure meds reduce the load on the kidneys and extend their lifespan “a little bit”.  I figured I would lose her first, but she’s still going strong!  Unfortunately, in March 2016 her big fluffy brother developed a carcinoma under his tongue.  Cortisol kept it from growing too fast, although it was growing, but in July 2016 it just got to be too much and I had to say goodbye.  In October, I adopted an 8-month old tiger boy who VERY rapidly made himself at home!   Here he is, about 48 hours after moving in.

Sophie had settled on my lap to “help” me knit, and he decided that he wanted to help too!  Sophie didn’t stay on my lap for very long after he did this, for some strange reason…

So that’s me.  Anybody still out there?  🙂

I’m ba-ack

So you may remember (probably not! 🙂 ) that I was scheduled to fly DUS-ORD-PHL on Monday 21 Dec, then PHL-small town on Tuesday? Well, believe it or not, that actually happened! Flight to ORD left a bit late, actually turned out to be the same aircraft I was supposed to take Sunday on DUS-EWR, so of course it was covered in snow and ice. The de-icing solution they were using on the plane was orange, so it felt like we were sitting inside an orange slushy for a while; there were probably two inches of snow and ice on for example the wings and engines that all had to come off.

Got to the PHL airport Hilton (my brand of choice) at about 11 at night, only to find that the hotel restaurant had closed at 10, and “room service” consisted of sandwiches from the bar. Ha ha. Went down to the desk, where they had a flyer from Domino’s Pizza, handed the information to all the other starving guests I met (there were a lot of us who were very unhappy with the PHL Hilton that night), and called Domino’s. Man, does American pizza hit the spot sometimes!

Coming back was nowhere near the drama that getting to the US had been. Shall I just leave it at that? Got to take my knitting on the plane, didn’t have any major delays, I’m a happy bunny. And oh, the civilized niceties of traveling “at the front of the bus” as I call it! Arrive in Frankfurt, clear immigration, and you’re automaticlly dumped out into the land-side terminal so have to clear security again. But… Lufthansa has put in an “arrivals lounge” for all their business-class guests arriving from overseas. With SHOWERS!!! I rarely carry liquids or gels in my carry-on because it’s just not worth the hassle, but this time I did. The only thing I really needed to have with me was toothpaste, though, as each separate little bathroom-shower room has huge dispensers of L’Occitane shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, and hand soap. My favorite brand!

Progress on Princess continues, although slowly. I am now done with pattern row 90, knitting row 100, so I am at 14.58% completion (I think I can go into Ravelry tonight and bump it up to 15%, don’t you?).

How’s your knitting?

Trying it again

Remember yesterday I was supposed to fly Dusseldorf – Newark – Philadelphia? Yeah, well… it snowed. All day. They finally cancelled our flight at 5 pm when the crew ran out of legal work time, and sent us all of to hotels or back home, saying “we’ll rebook you and call you when we have a new itinerary.”

So today I’m flying Dusseldorf – Chicago – Philadelphia.

Anyone want to place any bets???