I did explain it to her. Her "just let me know" really did mean make another appointment and come in. That is what she expected me to do. I explained that would cost me $200. We came to the compromise of her just writing me a prescription for Y that I could fill on my own if X did not work and that I promised to send a message through the portal if I filled it so it would be in my record. I think there is also a wide assumption amongst the providers I have been to that people are in PPO type insurance plans so a visit is just a small copay to the patient. That's a little nuts since the largest employer in the area (which happens to be mine) is high deductible only.

To the OP, I totally understand your situation! We are in an underserved area and the turnover for doctors is unreal, so we have had to switch family doctors many times. Several times we have not even been formally handed off to a new provider.....I find out ours is gone by calling the number and being told, "oh so-and-so left 6 months ago...." We never used a pediatrician but all of our family doctors have been very inaccessible. Getting an appointment is usually not a problem but any sort of follow up is blocked by gatekeepers. I actually snorted during my last appointment when my new doctor, who I like, said, "Just let me know if X does not work and I can prescribe Y." Let you know HOW? The only way to do that is to make another appointment. We have high deductible insurance so that is $200 out of pocket to "let her know" something. There is a patient portal and I have tried this MANY times. All I get is a follow-up call from a scheduler to make an appointment. If I call to leave a message to "let her know," again, I get a follow-up call to make an appointment. We are lucky in that none of us has ever had a big enough medical issue that could not just be dropped, but I totally understand the problem and in many places, like mine, switching providers will not solve the problem. There are ZERO private practices in my area so anyone I go to is governed by one of two medical groups that use the same tactics/systems. I have often wondered if the doctors even know there is no "letting them know" anything! I mean, THEY go to doctors, right? Surely they have seen this in action?

I thought of another one. Our current house is 130+ yo, so it has "quirks." Lots of them. The attic space is unfinished and we only use it for storage. There was wiring and lights up there but we searched the entire attic and the floor below and could never find a light switch for them. But they would sometimes be on and sometimes off! One time they were on for weeks and we could only shut them off by removing the bulbs (as other needed things were on the same circuit). Of course, I would screw them in to look for something up there, they would not come on, and I would forget to unscrew them....then days/weeks later they would be on again! I assumed ghosts (naturally) or some seriously bad electrical problems. Dd was toddler at that time and she never napped so we had daily "quiet time" where she spent 30 minutes in her room. One day, I came up to check on her and she was inside her closet playing with something tucked into the wall out of sight from the accordion doors. A light switch! The two-year mystery had been solved! Doh!

Back in college, I was grocery shopping. When I came outside, my car was GONE! But, another car in the lot was the same year, model, and color. I called the cops and they called the owner of the car that remained. 10 minutes later, an older gentleman sheepishly drove up and returned by car. He never even noticed that he had the wrong car! He was able to start it with his key. Neither car was locked.

This was a long time ago but I once had to pick up a dc from a summer camp that was far FAR away and involved a ferry ride to shave 7 hours off the drive. I left having two hours to spare to catch the ONLY ferry for the day. I was cruising along, feeling like I was making pretty good time so I stopped at a cute cafe for an unplanned lunch. Later, when I crossed the time zone border, I realized I had calculated the time change in the opposite (WRONG) direction and even if I drove at top speed, I likely would not be able to catch the ferry! I panicked and stepped on the gas while calling the ferry line to warn them that I would (might) be coming in hot assuming I even made it. I drove so fast, it was insane! The whole time, all I can think about is how heartbroken dc would be that I missed their final performance and that they would have to sit around for hours waiting of me to drive around a giant lake. I made it by literally seconds. I now triple check my time zone math then have someone ELSE check it for me again!

I just had Covid and am still suffering the aftereffects, but I would not have taken it if it was an option (it was not). The risk of extended isolation and the side effects are concerning for me. I had a "mild" case but am still dealing with annoying, but not debilitating, aftereffects and I am under 60, triple vexed, and in good health, so I am guessing it would not have made much difference. If this turns into long covid, I will be singing a different tune.

I have been insatiably thirsty the whole time so getting enough fluids has been easy. But I have been trying to drink mostly hot tea because anything not hot makes me cough.

Thanks all. I'll try to hit on everything in this post. I did try a nasal spray, Sinex, last night and this morning. That did make a notable improvement! Certainly not "normal" but much less annoying. I don't normally have seasonal allergies but these last two weeks are peak for allergens so that could be a factor. Do sinus infections clear up on their own, without antibiotics? I am trying to weigh what is worse, the stomach problem from taking antibiotics or the possible sinus infection. I am willing to skip the half marathon if I'm not ready. I will try running again today but just take it even easier to see how it goes. My worry is if this Covid thing is here to stay and we are all going to be getting it every three months, I cannot just stop exercising for 4-6 weeks every time.....if only for my sanity alone. I was walking/hiking only up until yesterday and did not find that difficult in any way. That felt pretty normal. Putting Mucinex on the shopping list......

As someone who is recovering from Covid after an international flight, I agree with others about the airport being the real risk. I don't know exactly where I got it, obviously, but I masked 100% of the time in the airport and on the plane. But they had us stacked up on top each other in the boarding holding cell and we also had to ride in very crowded trams through the airport. And here's the other thing....they did not ask for proof of negative test at either end of our return flight. I am seriously irritated that I spent $65 per person and the STRESS of waiting for results for the "required" testing that was never asked for. I would focus on masking and anything preventative you can do to bolster your immune system.

Yes! I was sad when I learned that my dd would not be moving back home after her first year of college but also relieved after surviving Christmas break (barely). However, the got-neater part does not apply in our case which is why that break nearly killed us all. I grieve for her housemates. She used to be a neat nick. I have no idea what happened.

Hmmmm. What about no mucus?

I hate the add antibiotics to the dumpster fire. They always wreck my stomach which is unhappy enough due to everything tasting like cardboard. Will a sinus infection go away on its own eventually?

That's what I tried in desperation last night. I had to go sell my soul to the devil at the pharmacy counter.....felt like a criminal. But it kept me up all night. I literally never fell asleep. I felt like I have drank four cups of very sugary coffee right before bed or something. It did kick down the stuffiness slightly.

It's good to know that this is somewhat "normal." Sigh. It is the possible secondary infection that has me wondering about seeing a doctor. How do they go about diagnosing that?

I know we have big threads about this but I am hoping to rope in people who might have recent experience but are no longer following those threads. What are we seeing with recovery paths/times with the current variants of Covid? I know this will vary widely but I am trying to determine if I should see a doctor and how best to proceed with life. I tested positive 14 days ago. Symptoms started 17 days ago. I'm boosted (back in November) and this is my first time being positive (that I know of anyway). At first I thought I got off easy. It started with the classic sore throat. The day I finally tested, I had a slight fever which only lasted 18 hours. When the fever went away, I felt mostly fine. For two days, anyway. Then I woke up to my head being all stuffed up. Not a runny nose, just stuffed. Even my ears felt stuffed. I am not prone to sinus infections but that is what I imagine one might feel like? Add in the occasional non-productive coughing fit.....so not coughing all the time but when I do, it is hard to stop. And the dreaded impaired taste. This has been the status quo for ELEVEN days now. It is not getting better or worse. Just the same. I am not tired, I'm sleeping OK, but this cough and stuffiness is driving me bananas. I'm worried I'm going to crack a rib. I am a runner and I have a half marathon coming up in five weeks. I was on vacation for two weeks prior to illness so I have not been training for 4+ weeks now. I tried to go on a short run today for the first time and found my heart rate much higher than normal and was coughing a lot. And I was running at a significantly slower pace than normal on a flat trail in cool temps. Running (actually any cardio) is also my main and most effective tool to cope with anxiety so not working out is causing other problems for me. I did some light gardening yesterday and also noticed that my heart rate was higher than I would expect. Any BTDT stories? How long can I expect this stuffiness and cough to last? Any hacks to move it along or at least get some relief? I have tried Sudafed overnight which might have decreased the stuffiness a little but kept me up all night.....I have never taken it before and it was a weird trip that I do not want to repeat. I have been using a neti pot several times a day. I have also been sipping hot tea pretty much constantly because that keeps the coughing down a little. Cold or even room temp water makes the coughing worse. I am getting very frustrated and don't know if I should seek a doctor appointment or if this is just "normal." Thank goodness I work from home!

We also have a big emphasis in our freshman engineering classes on how to handle team dynamics. How to set up your team expectations before work begins, what to do when there is a problem team member(s), how and when to properly communicate problem team dynamics to an instructor, etc.....

Our STEM majors often have to do a lot of electronic processing before submission, ironically much more so than arts and sciences majors. Some things my students struggled with that might be much reduced after zooming during Covid....some of which might be better addressed as an open Canvas course that any student in your department could access videos on demand if/when an issue arises. How to save files in different formats, including zip/unzip How to merge files as PDFs How to use campus printers, in general and in large format How to share Google docs for collaborative writing/editing How to navigate the campus software center How to use a computer lab (I wish I were kidding.....) How to find/recover lost files How to video/audio record a presentation How to use a thumb drive How to document a problem (screen shot, for instance) when sending a technology problem to an instructor/TA I could go on and on. Most students will know most/all of these but some might be lacking all! I am impressed the hoops some students will jump through to avoid asking for help when they don't know how to do one of these things.

More pondering on student services, background, and privilege..... I confess that as someone who did not find college easy and with little family support, I sometimes struggled to empathize with students when I was faculty. One student I had really helped me understand how student services might not reach everyone. I was teaching a general freshman engineering class, the second in a two-class series. It was the first time I taught this particular class so I was floundering myself and it was the largest class I had ever taught to date. The content was not a problem but managing such a large class that used several different software packages, having 14 sections to align with, and a very complicated learning platform had me nervous. Even the wireless mic for the class was a constant problem. The class was so large, I never got to the point of knowing each student's name. But during the first tightly-timed, technologically difficult, in-class lab practical, early in the semester, one male student started crying when time was up. The rest of the class filed out and he sat at his computer sobbing. I, of course, went up to him and sat down to try to calm him down. He explained that he barely passed the first class in the series and could see he was going to have the same problems. He had done the practical and felt like it was correct but he didn't know how to save his work to the desktop to upload it to Canvas properly (they were on guest accounts that timed out) and that his work was lost and he had nothing to upload. I assured him we would work this out and to not panic. We made an appointment for him to come to my office to retake the practical with me directly supervising so his work would not be lost. This turned into a weekly meeting when I learned a few things about him. He was a first generation college student and his childhood home did not have a computer. He was from a very small farming community and his schools also lacked technology that most of us take for granted. He simply did not have the skills to figure out how to use a computer, let alone the crazy circus we expect students to be able to manage for every course. We met once a week and I walked him through Canvas, file management, troubleshooting, etc.... I helped him figure out how to use the online textbook for Calculus. He had failed the previous semester because he could not even INSTALL the textbook, let alone manage the homework platform. He did not even know how to attach files to an email! There was (and still is) no help center or class for this type of need. He was too embarrassed to ask for this type of help from friends. I ran into him three years later. He was elated. He said he was graduating, with honors, and had a job and it was all because he got that little bit of help. It was a warm fuzzy feeling that every teacher loves but it was also eye opening how easy it could have been for a very smart young person to fail. I am now seeing it first hand (please don't quote). My own dd, who does make her own doctor appointments FTR, is struggling in college. She was homeschooled and that masked what is now becoming obvious. She likely has ADHD and struggles with executive functioning. Without the scaffolding I provided as her one-on-one teacher/handholder, managing all things organizational is very difficult for her. Luckily, she attends a local school and more than once dh and I have stepped in the help her with everything from successfully getting the proper software on her laptop to working out difficulties with Canvas. Her grades are good. She is not having difficulty with content. But without our help and privilege, she would likely drop out of school. She still might. And I pretty much guarantee she would have by now had she gone away to school. It is just too stressful for her. We are all hopeful that the sheer amount of busywork and the management that requires will decrease as she progresses through her degree sequence. Again, I don't know how to fix this. I see the challenges on both sides. I see how this can push some (not most, however) students to take unethical shortcuts.

Yes. I totally get that and battled the same things in my classrooms. They are two very different things. I was only responding to the posters that stated that collecting materials from past classes and reviewing them was cheating in the "good old days." I don't feel that is or was cheating.

This exact thing has made calculus so much more difficult for my child than it needed to be. I think more time was spend trying to master the format of answers than learning the actual material. I imagine this contributes to a lot of failure.

I have been following this thread with much interest as a have a child currently pursuing a STEM degree that is struggling to make the jump from home-based one-on-one education to large-lecture course management. And because I spent 13 years as faculty at a STEM university teaching engineering courses. I see both sides of the discussion and have absolutely zero idea how to fix it all. But, I have seen the above called "cheating" a few times in this thread and have some thoughts. First, it is and was true that IME greek (and other) organizations do maintain collections of past work, exams, textbooks, etc..... I do not see this as cheating. If an exam or any other work has been returned to students, I do not see reviewing this material as cheating. In fact, the STEM university I graduated from often had these materials available at the department level to anyone who requested it. Sure, one could copy homework solutions from these collections but homework was almost never graded for credit so what would be the point? I know I found it helpful to look at different approaches, including *wrong* ones to strengthen my understanding of the material. And any faculty recycling exam questions after returning those exams to past students has got to understand that it means some people will come to the exam having seen those questions before. I mean, we encourage our high schoolers to take practice (past) SAT/ACT/AP exams. How is this different? One of the classes I taught had a large individual project component. I changed it slightly every year....just enough that any student that attempted to start with a past completed project to try to "cheat" actually would have to demonstrate a higher level of competence than starting from scratch. I knew that people were sharing old files so I worked that into the approach. Go ahead! I could also have just created completely unique projects every year and achieve the same thing. But if I just used the same project year after year.....well, that's on me....I would be begging people to cheat. Towards the end of my teaching time, I too had a suspicion that cheating was on the rise. Most of the assessment in the classes I taught were pretty cheat-proof. I caught a few blatant examples but it would be hard to cheat without being caught unless someone was straight-up impersonating another student. However, there were a few assignments in which cheating would be easy. So, I tested the suspicion. I placed an embedded indicator within cheatable exam questions to see if students were sharing files with each other either during the online exam or from/with earlier sections. I expected a high level of cases over the approximately 500 students who took the exam. I found exactly *one.* And that one happened to copy from another student who got the solution very wrong. I did not turn in the two students involved as my plan from the beginning was simply to see if cheating was happening.....and they got zeros anyway. It would probably have been considered entrapment anyway. I'm not sure what I would have done had I kicked up a large percentage and it would have likely opened a big old can of ethical worms which I should have thought about before doing it. This anecdotal story means absolutely nothing other than my suspicion was incorrect.

This is true for many issues in my life right now!

I have one. "Could care less" It should be "Couldn't care less!" When casually uttered, I can excuse it, but I have started hearing it in song lyrics and it drives me bonkers!

I'd go back to the piercing place and ask for a ring-type replacement. I actually have never heard of a stud for a nose ring. Dd got one when she was 13 and several of her friends have them and they all had rings from the get go. Dd's was so hard to undo the first time, there was essentially no way to could just fall out. Nose ring holes heal up very very fast so he will want a solution ASAP.

I too would make sure they know ahead of time that it is not hosted. We often include dc's friends when eating out or doing whatever and we always pay. It does not even seem to be a question for anyone so I think you could very well risk someone coming and being in a bind when they find out they have to pay. I like the idea of maybe modifying plans to something you could pay for.