Week 76

Been kind of a rough week my back has been fighting me hard. I have had several days where the pain was just too severe and I couldn't stand up. The days I could stand my back was so painful and cramped up that I nearly blacked out during the walk to or from the living room. Then there was Wednesday night and all-day Thursday. 

Yeah. At about 16:00 on Wednesday, the internet stopped working. I check using my cell phone and the system should that for some reason they couldn't connect to my modem. I asked my brother to pull the power to it for a minute or two, then had him plug it in.  We wait and after it was fully rebooted, the same thing. So being the curious person I am, I decided to see if the hotspot they have in our complex was getting Internet. Nope, nada. So, I call tech support, and after dealing with menu upon menu, I somehow managed to talk to a real-life person. I explain that I have no internet access through my router and that the local hotspot has no internet as well. He says ok, let me look. He spends two minutes typing on his computer and says, the problem is on your end you should restart my routers, I politely asked if that would restore the Internet to the hotspot as well. After about 30 seconds of silence, I just hung up.  I let myself cool down a bit and decided to use their chat/messenger thing for support on the website.  Once you have to figure out the proper combination of things to tell the automated system to get it to transfer you to an agent. Fortunately, I got someone who does more than follow prompts on a screen. I ran through what I had tried including trying to use the hotspot to double-check if it was my system acting up or if it was the area. After some checking, she did find out that we had scheduled maintenance for our area that was supposed to start at midnight. She was very helpful and ever gave us a nice credit to the bill, as she saw in the system how many time I had used their automated systems to try and resolve the ongoing issues with slow or no internet and offered to have a tech come out, I declined and told her I would check after they did maintenance if I still needed help.

On to Thursday morning, my brother and I get up and start trying to list on his eBay store, and no internet. I'm a bit flustered but I know from experience that after they mess with the lines, it's common to have to restart the modem. He does and we are off. I then call support for my new cellular provider to find out what the issue is with porting my number. After being on hold for 20 minutes I was told that the old provider denied the port and I needed to talk to them. So I call provider two and spend 35 minutes waiting for a real person. I tell them I was trying to port my number, and the new provider said this provider had rejected the port. They looked into it and didn't see anything wrong so I had them verify my account number and pin, and called the new carrier back. After another 20 minutes of waiting, I verified my information and this agent said that the computer showed the reason they denied it was my zip code. I was at my computer and looked on my account and it had my current address. I verified all the information with the agent, and we were practically yelling at each other because of a poor connection, they said they would resubmit the request and it could take up to two days and they would email me so I could switch sim cards. Now all during I was trying to do data recovery on a damaged hard drive. Not really fun, but I'm pretty good at it. I was finishing that when I get an email saying my number port had failed again. I call the new carrier back and sit on hold for 20 minutes. Right as the agent answers the data finished transferring to a portable hard drive. In my frustration, I accidentally clicked erase on the wrong drive and started to erase the portable drive. I stopped it quick but had lost some data, I tried to reopen the drive that I had taken out of the laptop but it was done. So I only had about 80 percent, but the laptop had been taken to a computer shop, and they couldn't access the data at all. The new carrier tells me that the old carrier still says my zip code is wrong. The agent had run into this with that carrier before and said, unfortunately, I needed to call them and get the zip code on file. So, I call back my former carrier, sit on hold for 35 minutes, and get an agent. I explained again that I was trying to port my number and they were denying it because the zip codes didn't match, I told them I had looked at my account information online and it showed as my current address, after 10 minutes of back and forth, I finally find out that although the address on my account summary is used for billing. The account is locked to the zipcode I used when I set up the service. Back to the new carrier and I am rushing and hoping the wait is short as it is getting close to the time for my video meeting with my therapist. After 10 minutes I get an agent while we are getting everything correct my therapist texts that he is running late. So I finished up my call and was trying to calm down before therapy. So I'm waiting for a message that my therapist is ready and at the hour mark, I get an email saying that he had just tried to call and it's going to voicemail. I looked at my phone and it said no service. So I quickly changed out sims and got the link for the video chat. 

My therapy involved going into great depth of specific events that resulted in the trauma I still see to this day. It was a grueling and painful experience. That combined with all the frustration from Wednesday night and that morning left me feeling pretty devastated. When my wife got home from work, she and my brother were going to a garage in her old neighborhood. So I had her help me to the room. I said I needed to lay down. Once they were gone, I started to have a full-blown breakdown.  I was shaking all over and was crying. I texted my brother and told him what state I was in but asked that he not tell my wife as she would worry about me, and I wanted to try to work myself out of it. Imagine my surprise when my father texts me and asks what is going on? I give him the long version of things and he tells me to breathe and it's just a bad day and to not let it stop my progress. I spent about 2 hours using the various techniques I have learned in therapy and was still frustrated but able to control myself. 

My health this week has been less than stellar. My back is in severe pain and the muscles and all drawn up. I am guessing that the nerves in my spine that go to my legs are compressed because when I go to stand or walk my legs hurt and are very weak. Several days this week I couldn't muster the strength to stand all the way up my legs would give out and I would collapse back on the bed.

My wife and brother are doing all they can to support and motivate me. We are all trying to help each other eat healthily. 

I am still asking for help with my Go Fund Me campaign. The money will be used for things like upgrades to my blogging/streaming equipment, a new lift chair as mine is wearing out, and some new batteries for the power scooter my brother found at a garage sale, so I can start getting out more. If you can't make a donation but know a person, company, or group that might be able to assist, I ask that you please share my link.

I know this was a long one, I appreciate everyone who takes the time to look at my blog, and as always feel free to comment.