(Ok, I just want to say that I titled this post and wrote the whole thing before I found that picture! Has anything so perfect ever occurred in this world? I can’t stop laughing!)?

But!

Today a monumental thing occurred.

I left the house!?

I know, I know, don’t be jealous.

But I only left the house because I had a doctor’s appointment with my amazing PCP. Seriously, love her.

However, when I say monumental, I mean monumental. It took every effort I had to get myself out the door.

First, when I went to bed around 5 am (because hey, that’s what my body likes to do), I decided that since I was planning on wearing sweats to my appointment anyway, that it would be a lot easier to get ready if I just slept in them. So I did, with my merino wool leggings underneath because the wind chill currently is 7 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s about -14 degrees Celsius for all of my non-American readers.) And it’s only going to get colder. So layers are a necessity! And merino wool is the greatest thing when it comes to awesome fabrics.

Anyway, yes, I pretty much slept in the clothes I went to my appointment in. It allowed me to expend as little energy as possible when I got up so that I was even able to get up in the first place. So after my alarm went off at 2 pm and I hit snooze five times, I dragged myself out of bed, managed to brush my teeth, wash my face, run a brush through my hair (which I then put a winter hat over that I just left on the whole time anyway), put on a bra, and got out the door mostly on time. Not that it mattered because Dr. P was running late. Very, very late. I mean, she always runs late, but I sat in the waiting room for 40 minutes (which is normal) and then waited for her in the exam room for another 20 minutes. So by the time she walked in the door, it was a full hour after my appointment time of 4 pm. Oh well. I wasn’t going anywhere.

But did I mention she’s amazing? Yes, this was technically a pain management follow-up, but she’s been my doctor for six years, so she knows me and the trainwreck that is my health very well. (And she remembers the fair days before I had any chronic issues…then she went and diagnosed me with celiac disease and it all went out the window from there.) Since I hadn’t seen her since April, we had a lot to talk about.

I went through all my surgical procedures, starting with my surgery in Atlanta and the finding of the hernia causing intermittent ovarian torsion (which clearly explained the pelvic pain she had put me on long-acting narcotics for!) She was quite surprised at the operative findings, but then, even Dr. Sinervo himself was a bit floored when he opened me up and found that. We also went through the brain tumor surgery and stent placement for the aneurysm. Then she just paused for a moment and said, “2016 needs to just stop for you. It needs to be done now.” Never were truer words spoken! Did I mention she’s amazing?

We talked about my fatigue issues, even though there really isn’t anything anyone can do about it. It’s up to my body to decide what it wants to do. And we talked about my chronic pain. She was thrilled when I told her that after ten months of hell, my headaches finally stopped at the end of October, since that pesky little tumor had been evicted. And though my pelvic pain has decreased since the surgery, it’s still very present and unpleasant. Not to mention that my menses have become hella painful since the tumor was removed, and hella heavy since I went on the aspirin and Plavix. Seriously. It’s a uterus massacre. So we tweaked things with my pain regimen a bit and she sent a message to Dr. Bain to ask him if he’s ok with me taking tranexamic acid during my periods so I don’t keel over from blood loss. She was also concerned about my weight loss, as was the tech who weighed me. I was a bit confused, because I’ve only lost 3-4 lbs in the past 3 1/2 weeks but whatever. I told her I hadn’t been very hungry, but I’d try to eat more. She gave me some new prescriptions, told me to schedule follow-ups in March and June, and said, “I don’t want any new health issues from you in 2017! Unless it’s a baby!” She does indeed know me well.

By this point, it was 5:30 pm. I dropped my prescriptions off at the pharmacy and went over to the lab to get the labs that my endocrinologist and Dr. P wanted. The needle went in at just the wrong spot and I immediately flashed back to my ED visit in February, when my IV was placed rather painfully. So I was glad to get out of the lab and back to the pharmacy, although it seemed like I waited forever in the pharmacy. My heart skipped a few beats when the label printer went off, because (one of) our (nine) label printers in the satellite at work makes the same sound. I’m so embarrassed that something so small that reminded me of the main hospital made me have an internal freak-out. I feel so pathetic. But I got my prescriptions just as the pharmacy was closing and then drove home through surprisingly light traffic.

When I got home, I checked my weight trends in our online patient portal and discovered what the problem was. My last weight measured before today was 124 lbs the day after my stent placement. The bed scale must have been waaaaaaay off, because in reality, I weighed 112 lbs at that time and today was 109 lbs. No wonder they were worried about my weight loss! So I messaged Dr. P and explained that I’ve really only lost 3-4 lbs in the last few weeks, not 15 lbs!

So that was my achievement for the day. I am now incredibly exhausted and don’t anticipate doing much of anything until next week when I have my follow-up with Dr. Bain. And that’s my last appointment of the year! Yayyyyyy! (And we’re supposed to get 8-12″ of lake effect snow tonight! Yayyyyyy!)❄️❄️❄️

?ribbonrx