u/CcKrKEj

Okay, so this may just be me, but I'm curious if anyone else has ever had this happen to them.

There have been a few series I've tried to read where I get really into it, love it, but one particular character (usually one of the MMCs) gets more and more annoying, and then eventually it hits critical mass and you have to drop the series.

I HATE not finishing books, let alone finishing series, so it has to get pretty bad. Usually I can get by skipping any chapters written from their point of view, skimming and skipping scenes that feature them, etc.

The worst I've ever encountered was The Firestone Academy by Hannah Haze, and please forgive me for a moment but I just have to have a small rant for a moment:

Dray is one of the absolute worst characters I have ever encountered. He was annoying but alright in the first book. The other MMCs were about the same, and it made sense for the first book. The problems really began in the second, where the other MMCs got depth and backstories. They ended up being pretty interesting, and I was super into the story. Except for Dray. He not only managed to lose any personality, the literal only thing he ever talked or thought about was sex. There would be a serious conversation about emotions, plans, anything, and his entire contribution would be "but have you seen her body, though?". When he went to meet his family I was so excited. I thought that maybe we'd finally see another side of him! No. Not at all. He spent the whole time talking to his brothers about his sex life, and all they wanted to know was if she let him (a non-shifter, btw) have sex while in his wolf form. Let that sink in for a moment. It gets worse.

Book 4 happened and I had to DNF. They had spent like a week tramping through the wilderness with no bathing, and she was like "oh no it's almost the full moon, you need to make sure you're eating enough" and then he said it. The sentence that haunts me and had me immediately put the book down. "I bet your juices are swimming with calories" and then he went to town. I feel awful just thinking about that sentence again. It's legitimately the grossest sentence I have encountered.

RANT OVER

So has anyone else ever found a character that they hated to the extent that it ruined the book or series?

I'm 4.5 weeks out from an L5-S1 ALIF with rear hardware. Oddly enough, one of my legs is 100% symptom free, my lower back hurts SO much less than before the surgery, and if i concentrate on that I'm beyond thrilled! And hopeful that the rest of this will fade.

Then I think about my other leg. Nerve pain beyond belief. Burning, acid feeling that makes it hard to walk, even moving air from a fan touching it is agonizing.

Surgeon put me on (eventually) 100mg of Lyrica every 8 hours, but says they won't go higher than that. I've been off all opioids for about a week but I was only taking 5mg per day, and it didn't really touch nerve pain anyway.

After a week of not being able to sleep for more than a couple hours at a time, I messaged the office on the patient portal with an update, as I've been in frequent contact with them about pain and other things as they've come up.

Today, I got the... weirdest response. I told them my pain was 8/10, described my symptoms and where they were.

I got a response saying I could take 300mg of gabapentin.

I responded that I was on pregabalin, reiterated my dose of that, and added a few more details (the portal caps messages at 500 words).

The response?

"Double up nighttime dose of gabapentin"

If I wasn't in so much pain I'd be laughing. This surgeon has been great, up until today their office was so responsive, and every part of my except for one leg feels great.

I don't even know if I should bother responding now, though. They clearly aren't paying attention to anything I say.

The weird thing is that overall I really do mostly feel better than I did before my fusion. I'm so grateful for that. I just wish this nerve pain would calm down already.

I was so glad when they added the option to archive a pets account, it meant I didn't have to delete the account of a pet who passed, but I also wouldn't be constantly getting notifications that they said hi when I logged in. It worked great.

Until today.

I got a stupid marketing text where they said that my cat, who passed away 6 months ago, had high standards. I don't know why they didn't use the name of my still living cat with an active account.

But, wow, it hurt WAY more than I thought it would.

Frankly, I'm angry.

They should know better. They should know a LOT better.

Guess this is what happens when you go all in on AI and stop taking care of customers the way you used to.

Ugh.

So, this is pretty much just a rant, but I'm so ANGRY about this whole thing. I'm neurodivergent, and tend to have very black and white thinking and have trouble reading between the lines. I also had a single level 360 lumbar fusion 6 days ago.

So I woke up at like 1:30 this morning and my right hip and leg were killing me. I had taken my methocarbamol and oxycodone 90 minutes before, so this was pretty unusual. The pain got worse whenever I bent my leg, and my thigh was throbbing, and my foot was tingling and getting pins and needles sensations.

All in all, pretty scary.

I took my Tylenol, adjusted how I was laying, and tried to go back to sleep. No dice. Pain just wouldn't let me fall asleep. Finally, around 4am I decide to call the on-call physician at my surgeons office, just to get an opinion.

Here's where my neirodivergence started causing problems.

The automated system told me that if it was a medical emergency to hang up and call 911 or go to my nearest emergency room. Makes sense to me, but I don't think that this is quite an emergency so I stay on the line. The answering service person picks up and asks me what's going on. I relay it all to them - the pain, the timing of my meds, the low-grade fever I've had for days, the fact that this new pain is new and doesn't go away no matter how I position my leg.

Then they ask the question: "Is this a medical emergency requiring you to speak to the on-call physician immediately?"

Here's how my brain handled this question: Well it's not an emergency, if it was I would have gone to the ER like the automated system told me to. I wouldn't say I need to speak to them immediately, but having them call me back within the next half hour would be good, and I'm pretty sure that's the time frame expected.

I said no. Because to me I'm answering their question and following instructions.

I was then told to call the office back during office hours.

I honestly lost it a little at this point. Sobbing, verge of a full on panic attack. I felt like the whole system was rigged not to help me.

Luckily my saint of a boyfriend woke up when I tried to get him up (I'd been trying not to bother him because he's been so tired lately and had to work in the morning) and helped me out. He ended up calling the answering service again and dealing with that, and my actual surgeon called him back within half an hour. He explained to me that it was a script the answering service had and that I had to answer yes when they asked me if it was an emergency.

I'm thankful it all worked out but I'm also still angry.

If I didn't have him to help me I'd have been in a much worse place and my pain wouldn't have gotten better because medications wouldn't have been called in first thing in the morning.

I take things literally, I tend to follow directions to every single letter... I just didn't expect that it would be something that could cause me this much trouble at my doctor's office.

It doesn't feel fair.