Another day, another doctor
Aug. 24th, 2015 11:13![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillI've got to stop doing this.
"This" being the doctor appointments. They're incredibly stressful, I end up feeling terrible about my body, and I feel like no one believes me. I now have an additional diagnosis of "essential hypertension" after explaining to the doctor that I have a stress reaction to the BP machines, because they hurt. She insisted on taking my BP after the appointment today anyway. My pulse was, predictably, 102, with a BP reading of 150/89. I'm not sure what purpose was served there. She scheduled me for an EKG; I told her that my cardio workup in 2009 showed that my heart was in superb shape, but she ordered it anyway.
We had a tussle over weight because she didn't like the fact that I had refused to be weighed. I told her I feel like it just biases doctors against me, sight unseen, since I don't fit the BMI. She said she has had patients who are too muscular for the BMI, so she relies on skin-fold measurements. Yay, I thought, finally someone who prefers a more individual and accurate measurement of fitness! She reached over and pinched my belly, as I sat hunched in the chair, and said, "that's about 50 pounds of overweight right there."
I gave her the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she had seen and measured so many people that she was good at gauging it by eye, though I told her I've never been fitter than I was at 220. She shrugged. She made noises about how hard it is to lose weight on hormones (it really is), but I wonder whether she's going to be on my case about weight later. I will explicitly ask her, when I see her in two weeks, what relevance weight has to my health -- and I won't step on that scale unless she can give me a good answer.
It turns out that I made exactly the wrong choice when choosing a doctor to help with the hormone situation. She said she's very good at internal medicine, but very weak on women's health. She suggested seeing a different gynecologist, since mine threw up her hands. At this point I'm only six weeks away from seeing the apparent guru in Gynecology anyway, so I guess I'll just wait.
She did order some routine tests that the last doctor missed, though... a liver panel, iron, B12, and a few other things. She said that the anemia had gotten better in the last test set, but that it might be nutrient related (though she acknowledged my comment that I've been bleeding since April, so...) She also ordered an estrogen panel and luteinizing hormone test -- I'm not sure how useful it will be to get a snapshot when I'm feeling fine, but at least it's a baseline of sorts. You have to start somewhere.
She recommended going off of all birth control for six months. I told her I'd love to, but it becomes very difficult to do things like eat and work. On later reflection, though, I think I'll lay off any prescription meds (I had added some progesterone a couple of days ago) and see whether I can control the symptoms with just GSE. Then we'll chat in two weeks and see. By October, I will have been off everything for six weeks, which may show something. If nothing else, it may show that I can stop going to doctors and manage the damn problem myself.
Other than these two appointments, I think I'm just done. The tests show nothing hazardous, so that's all right. And in the meantime, I'm collecting peripheral diagnoses that I believe are irrelevant or inaccurate, because they're blindly sticking to protocol and not actually interpreting the results. I weigh myself at home, for my own information. I'll start trying to do BP readings at home, because hell, if I do have high blood pressure we'll never find out in the doctor's office. The only difficulty then would be getting a doctor who believes my results.
She said "This must be very frustrating" several times. Oh sweetheart, you have no idea.
"This" being the doctor appointments. They're incredibly stressful, I end up feeling terrible about my body, and I feel like no one believes me. I now have an additional diagnosis of "essential hypertension" after explaining to the doctor that I have a stress reaction to the BP machines, because they hurt. She insisted on taking my BP after the appointment today anyway. My pulse was, predictably, 102, with a BP reading of 150/89. I'm not sure what purpose was served there. She scheduled me for an EKG; I told her that my cardio workup in 2009 showed that my heart was in superb shape, but she ordered it anyway.
We had a tussle over weight because she didn't like the fact that I had refused to be weighed. I told her I feel like it just biases doctors against me, sight unseen, since I don't fit the BMI. She said she has had patients who are too muscular for the BMI, so she relies on skin-fold measurements. Yay, I thought, finally someone who prefers a more individual and accurate measurement of fitness! She reached over and pinched my belly, as I sat hunched in the chair, and said, "that's about 50 pounds of overweight right there."
I gave her the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she had seen and measured so many people that she was good at gauging it by eye, though I told her I've never been fitter than I was at 220. She shrugged. She made noises about how hard it is to lose weight on hormones (it really is), but I wonder whether she's going to be on my case about weight later. I will explicitly ask her, when I see her in two weeks, what relevance weight has to my health -- and I won't step on that scale unless she can give me a good answer.
It turns out that I made exactly the wrong choice when choosing a doctor to help with the hormone situation. She said she's very good at internal medicine, but very weak on women's health. She suggested seeing a different gynecologist, since mine threw up her hands. At this point I'm only six weeks away from seeing the apparent guru in Gynecology anyway, so I guess I'll just wait.
She did order some routine tests that the last doctor missed, though... a liver panel, iron, B12, and a few other things. She said that the anemia had gotten better in the last test set, but that it might be nutrient related (though she acknowledged my comment that I've been bleeding since April, so...) She also ordered an estrogen panel and luteinizing hormone test -- I'm not sure how useful it will be to get a snapshot when I'm feeling fine, but at least it's a baseline of sorts. You have to start somewhere.
She recommended going off of all birth control for six months. I told her I'd love to, but it becomes very difficult to do things like eat and work. On later reflection, though, I think I'll lay off any prescription meds (I had added some progesterone a couple of days ago) and see whether I can control the symptoms with just GSE. Then we'll chat in two weeks and see. By October, I will have been off everything for six weeks, which may show something. If nothing else, it may show that I can stop going to doctors and manage the damn problem myself.
Other than these two appointments, I think I'm just done. The tests show nothing hazardous, so that's all right. And in the meantime, I'm collecting peripheral diagnoses that I believe are irrelevant or inaccurate, because they're blindly sticking to protocol and not actually interpreting the results. I weigh myself at home, for my own information. I'll start trying to do BP readings at home, because hell, if I do have high blood pressure we'll never find out in the doctor's office. The only difficulty then would be getting a doctor who believes my results.
She said "This must be very frustrating" several times. Oh sweetheart, you have no idea.
