Debt Dumpers 2025

[WDW_fan_in_TX]

I did my first solo trip in February. Absolutely loved it. Would do it again in a heartbeat, if my DW would let me. We have a trip scheduled in 2 weeks. We talked about canceling it, but we'd lose all of our airfare money if we did. So we were forced to keep it, which is fine.

I have done 1 solo trip and loved it! It was so nice not having to cater to my kids most of the time. It is getting easier as they get older, but I was really looking forward to this trip to get some down time. I just need to use that money for travel for my grandmother's memorial service instead. I could probably do both, but it's better to do just the memorial service travel.

 

[bababear_50]

ruadisneyfan2​

The year was 2002
I suffered many of the symptoms you described for months,,, until one day my Doc is listening to my heart beat and taking my BP he says ....
"I am just going to turn the lights down a bit... lay down on the exam table and I want you to relax and,,, I will be back in a minute."
He comes back and says uh I see your Ex hubby in the waiting room.... yeah so.... could that be upsetting you? No.
Sent me to the hospital for blood work.
I was in danger of a heart attack.
I had lost a great deal of muscle control and my sons had to help me up from the ground when gardening. Physically I was a mess. ( Google Thyroid storm)
DX .... extreme Hyperthyroidism.(Caused by multiple non cancerous nodules).
Immediately saw Endo.... she and my Doc don't seem to like each other ,,, explain that in a minute.
Shipped to another hospital for Radioactive Iodine Pill.
I just walked into a lab room where they take the pill out of a vault looking box and they are wearing protective gear. (Giant thick oven Mitts)
Place it in my hand and tell me to swallow it.
Then they tell me I can't be near my family or kids for 3 days. Uhhhhh I am a single parent............... I work in a school.
So off I go to the family cottage and get quarantined in the bunkie /and have to use a port potty. No post Radioactive Iodine issues.

Now my Doc and specialist say each the other was negligent in not prescribing me any Synthroid or Eltroxin after blood work test following the Radioactive Iodine,, even tried to blame the lab. So...................................... I developed Hypothyroidism.
It took a few months of taking thyroid meds to stabilize.
I ran out of sick days and financially things were tough but I had a great family helping me.

I should have ben told the consequences of taking thyroid meds,,,, I now (23 years later) I have a ton of bone issues.
It is important to have regular check ups for thyroid levels.
A couple of years ago my level went too high due to a small piece of thyroid regrowing.
But I am not sure I had any alternative at the time,,, I just wish someone had told me.
I would have investigated natural thyroid medication.

Word to the wise,,,, get all the facts.
Put your self first and fight for short term Disability.

Best wishes Hon
Hugs Mel

 

[disney-inspired]

On the other hand if they don’t like how you drive then your rates will go up next renewal.

True. I could never sign up for that. I drive like Cruella on my way to the train station to go to work. Any other time, I completely follow every law. I wish I could leave a few minutes earlier but it never seems to happen.

I work from home so I don't drive a lot. I handled being without a car for 1.5 months - delivery is awesome!
Hoping it doesn't come back to bite me in the butt. They did say if I keep it for the whole year, I can get a 30% discount at renewal.

I checked and my score isn't terrible - it's scoring hard brakes (so hard in GP where people are cutting you off and not signaling). So I'll work on keeping more distance.

 

[princesscinderella]

I work from home so I don't drive a lot. I handled being without a car for 1.5 months - delivery is awesome!
Hoping it doesn't come back to bite me in the butt. They did say if I keep it for the whole year, I can get a 30% discount at renewal.

I checked and my score isn't terrible - it's scoring hard brakes (so hard in GP where people are cutting you off and not signaling). So I'll work on keeping more distance.

I believe hard breaking is the main way it gauges your driving besides, speeding. If the drivers around you are as bad as you say, I would not choose the tracking because they will cause you to hard break a lot more than you realize in city traffic with cutting you off etc. Where we live I have to hard break all the time just for these reasons not because I am a bad driver and I would never get the tracking. I would look up stories online about other's experiences with your particular insurance and the tracking just to make sure its the right decision for you.

 

[afan]

I believe hard breaking is the main way it gauges your driving besides, speeding. If the drivers around you are as bad as you say, I would not choose the tracking because they will cause you to hard break a lot more than you realize in city traffic with cutting you off etc. Where we live I have to hard break all the time just for these reasons not because I am a bad driver and I would never get the tracking. I would look up stories online about other's experiences with your particular insurance and the tracking just to make sure its the right decision for you.

I routinely speed and all State has never told me I'm going too fast. Anything that isn't marked as a nice trip is due to braking or phone. I feel like their braking is generous too given some it hasn't picked up. I think their phone use is too sensitive, especially when there are times I turn the car off, grab my phone and it's still tracking the trip and I have to stop it.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I have done 1 solo trip and loved it! It was so nice not having to cater to my kids most of the time. It is getting easier as they get older, but I was really looking forward to this trip to get some down time. I just need to use that money for travel for my grandmother's memorial service instead. I could probably do both, but it's better to do just the memorial service travel.

Can you take some days off while your kids are in school? When ours were young I would do that occasionally to catch up on housework, organize, get rid of clutter, etc. Maybe make it a fun day for you and have lunch with an old friend or a spa day or something like that? Just to have some down time and/or alone time.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

ruadisneyfan2​

The year was 2002
I suffered many of the symptoms you described for months,,, until one day my Doc is listening to my heart beat and taking my BP he says ....
"I am just going to turn the lights down a bit... lay down on the exam table and I want you to relax and,,, I will be back in a minute."
He comes back and says uh I see your Ex hubby in the waiting room.... yeah so.... could that be upsetting you? No.
Sent me to the hospital for blood work.
I was in danger of a heart attack.
I had lost a great deal of muscle control and my sons had to help me up from the ground when gardening. Physically I was a mess. ( Google Thyroid storm)
DX .... extreme Hyperthyroidism.(Caused by multiple non cancerous nodules).
Immediately saw Endo.... she and my Doc don't seem to like each other ,,, explain that in a minute.
Shipped to another hospital for Radioactive Iodine Pill.
I just walked into a lab room where they take the pill out of a vault looking box and they are wearing protective gear. (Giant thick oven Mitts)
Place it in my hand and tell me to swallow it.
Then they tell me I can't be near my family or kids for 3 days. Uhhhhh I am a single parent............... I work in a school.
So off I go to the family cottage and get quarantined in the bunkie /and have to use a port potty. No post Radioactive Iodine issues.

Now my Doc and specialist say each the other was negligent in not prescribing me any Synthroid or Eltroxin after blood work test following the Radioactive Iodine,, even tried to blame the lab. So...................................... I developed Hypothyroidism.
It took a few months of taking thyroid meds to stabilize.
I ran out of sick days and financially things were tough but I had a great family helping me.

I should have ben told the consequences of taking thyroid meds,,,, I now (23 years later) I have a ton of bone issues.
It is important to have regular check ups for thyroid levels.
A couple of years ago my level went too high due to a small piece of thyroid regrowing.
But I am not sure I had any alternative at the time,,, I just wish someone had told me.
I would have investigated natural thyroid medication.

Word to the wise,,,, get all the facts.
Put your self first and fight for short term Disability.

Best wishes Hon
Hugs Mel

Oh my! I know what you mean about needing help to get up. Looking back, that was one of my first symptoms over the summer. At work, I used to squat at a low file cabinet drawer and I could easily stand straight back up without holding onto anything. Then this summer, I'd have to hang onto an office chair or push up from the floor (ewww). I chalked it up to lack of sleep, getting old, losing muscle mass from losing weight, everything except something that needed treatment.

I first became aware of thyroid storm back in my 20s I was seeing my doctor(different from my current one) and routine lab work showed my thyroid slightly high. He looked that I was using a nasal inhaler for my allergies called Vancenase and he said that can sometimes cause it. He explained how serious thryoid storm is and why we need to get it solved asap. He had me go off of the nasal spray for a while and repeat labs and my thyroid returned to normal levels. Later, when I told the story to my allergist, he said he never heard of that but he would ask the drug rep who just happened to be there that day. The drug rep also said he's never heard of it. (There was no internet then.)
Even now when I google to see if Vancenase is linked to elevated thyroid levels, no connection. I've been taking Flonase, and before that Rhinocort, for years because when my allergies get out of control, I get sinus infections which are just miserable. So now I wonder if that's related.

From what I've been reading, even if people have their thyroid removed, it's much easier to treat hypothyroidism because taking the right amount of Synthroid can get it to a healthy level. Once it's stable, it's easy to maintain. The list of potential side effects with the iodine treatment is long. Honestly for me, not that they thyroid is close to breasts but close enough that it could lead to some radiation exposure to breasts. I have a horrific family history of breast cancer so I don't think I'd choose that. My mom is one of 4 girls, 3 out of 4 had breast cancer, plus my sister at 44. Of the 4 total who had it, 2 of them had genetic testing which came back negative for the BrCa gene. (Most people who get breast cancer don't have the gene and have no family history but that's another story.) It still worries me and working in breast imaging means not a day goes by that I don't think about it for the majority of my day.

I'm assuming the endocrinologist is going to order more tests such as thyroid ultrasound or nuc med scan. I don't know. I'll find out tomorrow. I was told to allow an hour for this appointment so it sounds like it will be very thorough and not rushed. I have a list of questions written down and typing all this out reminded me of more that I hadn't written.

Believe me, I am fighting for my disability payments. There is no reason to deny it, my primary doctor filled out the forms but they sure are taking their time. Part of it is my own fault. My symptoms were intermittent at first so when they asked if it would be intermittent leave (let's say for someone with asthma where you miss days here & there.) or continuous leave, I told them it's intermittent. My own stupidity. Yes, the symptoms are intermittent but they were also unpredictable. So after about a week of calling out every day, I requested they change it to continuous leave. So all new forms had to go out. My doctor estimated 6 weeks out but that would be next week and I'm sure the endo will push that date out depending on what else I need.

I was reading somewhere online, maybe Reddit, with all these people talking about their treatment and how the meds that lower thyroid, I'm on methimizole, is effective at lowering it but still you feel awful while you're on it. I really hope this is not how I will feel forever because this sucks. Others were saying their endo would say their numbers are good but she still felt her heart racing and a little bit twitchy like tremors. So the endo would refer her back to her primary, the primary would say no, those are thyroid symptoms, see your endo, and it kept going back and forth. She finally had her thyroid removed and she said she woke up feeling great and all those symptoms were gone. So bizzarre. The tremors are like low level electricity running through you constantly.

Anyway I'm sorry you went through all of that and hope they got your thryoid at healthy levels now. Honestly, I believe it's the job of the endo to monitor your levels post treatment, to determine how effective the radiation treatment was for you, sort of see what your new baseline levels are, and see over time what further treatment is needed and to get your thyroid at perfect levels. JMHO.
I do plan to hold my endo responsible to get it right for me, however long it takes.

Thanks for sharing your story with me and thanks everyone for letting me vent.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

So my appointment went well today. He said it's definitely Graves disease (based on labs for anitbodies) which is an auto-immune disease that attacks the thyroid. It can cause the thyroid to stop or it can cause it to overproduce which is my situation. The medication is working and I should be feeling a lot better in a few weeks. He said for the most part the meds work well for people and can even eventually come off the meds once their immune system "settles down". Sometimes people have a flare up and have to go back on the meds or adjust their dose back up. Everyone's different. He said you only worry about surgery/radiation treatments if people get flare up after flare up and it's not well controlled. He said I wouldn't need to leave home but just stay in a different room and flush the toilet twice since the urine itself would be radioactive. No need for imaging because we already know the cause. The labs they did at my first ER visit proved it. We'd only need imaging if we were trying to find the cause such as looking for nodules.
Very rarely the meds can cause liver problems and it can destroy all white blood cells which would make me susceptible to infections. If things like that ever happen then you have to go to surgery or radioactive iodine.
It was a good visit and hopefully by the end of this month I am feeling like myself again.
I go back for more labs in 2 weeks.

 

[Nettlelondon]

So my appointment went well today. He said it's definitely Graves disease (based on labs for anitbodies) which is an auto-immune disease that attacks the thyroid. It can cause the thyroid to stop or it can cause it to overproduce which is my situation. The medication is working and I should be feeling a lot better in a few weeks. He said for the most part the meds work well for people and can even eventually come off the meds once their immune system "settles down". Sometimes people have a flare up and have to go back on the meds or adjust their dose back up. Everyone's different. He said you only worry about surgery/radiation treatments if people get flare up after flare up and it's not well controlled. He said I wouldn't need to leave home but just stay in a different room and flush the toilet twice since the urine itself would be radioactive. No need for imaging because we already know the cause. The labs they did at my first ER visit proved it. We'd only need imaging if we were trying to find the cause such as looking for nodules.
Very rarely the meds can cause liver problems and it can destroy all white blood cells which would make me susceptible to infections. If things like that ever happen then you have to go to surgery or radioactive iodine.
It was a good visit and hopefully by the end of this month I am feeling like myself again.
I go back for more labs in 2 weeks.

That all sounds as positive as it could be. You must be relieved.

During my cancer treatment I had to have a number of PET scans which leave you radioactive. When I went for the first one the information sheet I received beforehand said that I should not use public transport to get there as I would be radioactive for a while afterwards and that I should stay away from children for 24 hours. It also said I should not drive myself in case of an adverse reaction.

When I got there, and after they had injected me with the radioactive tracer, they gve me a leaflet that said that I needed to stay at least 2 metres away from everyone for at least 24 hours. I asked how I was supposed to get home, given that my husband had driven me and I had a normal car not a stretch limousine. The advice was to sit in the back. I asked why the information I had beforehand was different to the advice they were now giving. Apparently different departments create the two documents and neither reads the other. Really helpful. We both seem to have survived and I drove myself to the subsequent scans.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

That all sounds as positive as it could be. You must be relieved.

During my cancer treatment I had to have a number of PET scans which leave you radioactive. When I went for the first one the information sheet I received beforehand said that I should not use public transport to get there as I would be radioactive for a while afterwards and that I should stay away from children for 24 hours. It also said I should not drive myself in case of an adverse reaction.

When I got there, and after they had injected me with the radioactive tracer, they gve me a leaflet that said that I needed to stay at least 2 metres away from everyone for at least 24 hours. I asked how I was supposed to get home, given that my husband had driven me and I had a normal car not a stretch limousine. The advice was to sit in the back. I asked why the information I had beforehand was different to the advice they were now giving. Apparently different departments create the two documents and neither reads the other. Really helpful. We both seem to have survived and I drove myself to the subsequent scans.

When I went to x-ray school, we had only a 2 week rotation in Nuclear Medicine. They use a variety of injectibles and then after a proper amount of time, they put you next to the sensor/camera to create an image.
I could ask our physicist but I'm guessing that the dose for an imaging study is going to be a lot less than the dose that's given to intentionally destroy an organ's ability to function, as in what Bababear had done.
Still being given different instructions is so frustrating. Had you known in advance, maybe you would have taken 2 cars.
I asked the doctor if I would stay in a hotel and he no because we don't want to expose hotel staff either. Not exactly like your example but we sometimes hear from patients who say they weren't given proper instructions. That really shouldn't happen but we're all human.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

That all sounds as positive as it could be. You must be relieved.

During my cancer treatment I had to have a number of PET scans which leave you radioactive. When I went for the first one the information sheet I received beforehand said that I should not use public transport to get there as I would be radioactive for a while afterwards and that I should stay away from children for 24 hours. It also said I should not drive myself in case of an adverse reaction.

When I got there, and after they had injected me with the radioactive tracer, they gve me a leaflet that said that I needed to stay at least 2 metres away from everyone for at least 24 hours. I asked how I was supposed to get home, given that my husband had driven me and I had a normal car not a stretch limousine. The advice was to sit in the back. I asked why the information I had beforehand was different to the advice they were now giving. Apparently different departments create the two documents and neither reads the other. Really helpful. We both seem to have survived and I drove myself to the subsequent scans.

Do you have to still get follow up PET scans? I'm so sorry you had to go through all of that. I think cancer has to be one of the scariest diagnoses to receive.

 

[Nettlelondon]

When I went to x-ray school, we had only a 2 week rotation in Nuclear Medicine. They use a variety of injectibles and then after a proper amount of time, they put you next to the sensor/camera to create an image.
I could ask our physicist but I'm guessing that the dose for an imaging study is going to be a lot less than the dose that's given to intentionally destroy an organ's ability to function, as in what Bababear had done.
Still being given different instructions is so frustrating. Had you known in advance, maybe you would have taken 2 cars.
I asked the doctor if I would stay in a hotel and he no because we don't want to expose hotel staff either. Not exactly like your example but we sometimes hear from patients who say they weren't given proper instructions. That really shouldn't happen but we're all human.

To be honest, if I had known in advance I would probably have walked home. It would have taken a while but not impossible but as my husband had given up his morning to take me it seemed rude to say "thank you for bringing me, you can go home and I will see you in about an hour" as I didn't find out until they had finished with me!

 

[Nettlelondon]

Do you have to still get follow up PET scans? I'm so sorry you had to go through all of that. I think cancer has to be one of the scariest diagnoses to receive.

I had a PET scan at the start to determine the stage & any spread. That showed "something odd" in my groin. They didn't think it was cancer as it would have jumped from top right to bottom left without using the lymphatic system which, apparently, isn't how it works. They then decided to biopsy this oddity via a laser guided CT biopsy. Basically I lay in a CT scanner whilst someone looked at the images and tried to stick a needle in the oddity. They couldn't get to it because it was very close to my bowel and they were concerned that the risk of perforating that was just too high.

So I had me chemo & immunotherapy and they did another PET scan, partly to see exactly what the chemo had done (shrunk the tumour from the size of a golf ball to smaller than a grain of rice) and to check if anything had happened with the oddity.

I was then referred to colorectal for them to have a go at getting to this thing, but they couldn't fit me in for a while as there was only one surgeon prepared to do it because it was entwined with the blood vessels that go to the legs so there was a chance of a catastrophic bleed! In the end they went ahead with my lumpectomy because that was the main issue and dealing with the oddity (that hadn't changed between the two PET scans) was more medical curiosity. Colorectal managed to get a bit of the tissue but couldn't remove it all laproscopically and didn't want to open me up if it wasn't necessary. That showed necrotic tissue that could be safely left alone.

Then, after radiotherapy, I was due to have more immunotherapy but was invited to join a clinical trial which I accepted. Before I could be enrolled though I had to have a whole host of tests to make sure I had no other issues and the company funding the trial then looked at my medical history and decided that they wanted to see if there had been any changes in the oddity so another PET scan was ordered. No change. But about a month or so into the trial they decided they wanted more info so I spent an hour in an MRI machine whilst they imaged my abdomen - and finally decided it was an ovary. Either left over from a messy hysterectomy or possibly I had 3.

Now I get annual mammograms (in the UK the norm is every 3 years) and occassional CT or ultrasounds. I believe I will have another PET scan at the 5 year point of the clinical trial as their confirmation of the success of the drugs.

It was a scary diagnosis and it has changed me in no end of ways but I am still here and expect to be for a very long time ahead.

And I have to say I am eternally grateful that I am in the UK. I know I pay for the NHS via my taxes, but all my treatment has cost me is some parking fees, some train fares and the occassional box of chocolates for the staff looking after me.