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Tuesday, February 01, 2005
boring medical stuff. Especially boring to those of the male persuasion (you've been warned)
Yesterday and this morning I have spent more time in a medical or semi-medical setting than I have since I had my babies. First I went to the clinic for a pre-referral appointment with my "primary care provider" (except that the doctor/PA turnover at that clinic is so high, and I so rarely go to the doctor, that I don't think I've ever seen the same person twice there) regarding the tachycardia episodes I have. They did that really fun thing, which I'd actually never had done before, where you lie still with stickies all over you and a machine analyzes your heart function in various places in your body. Then they took blood ("they" being a perky blonde phlebotomist who seemed about eleven years old -- you know you're getting older when medical personnel and teachers start to seem too young). THEN we went to the valley so that T and I could get our eyes checked, both of us being phenomenally overdue for that. My eyeglass prescription dates from the time when I had only one child, for example. Anyway. My eyes have gotten worse, and T's (stinker) have actually gotten better. I was going to get contacts but because of the severity of my astigmatism I'd have to sell one of the kids to do that, and it's just not going to happen. But T's contacts are CHEAP. CHEAPER THAN GLASSES. And yet he only wants them for playing paintball. [blows raspberry in T's general direction]. And then this morning the kids and I took Henry to the vet. Poor Henry got two shots and two different kinds of medicine (not all relating to his upper respiratory infection; some of it's standard stuff that the SPCA didn't do before we got him) and will have to have MORE medicine at home. Poor Rachel's checkbook got quite a dent in it when she paid the bill.
Today I discussed the results of yesterday's bloodwork with the physician's assistant (PA) (not, thankfully, the perky phlebotomist). Turns out I am severely anemic. This is not startling news, I've always been pretty anemic, but it's even worse than it was and I've been ordered to take THREE STINKING IRON PILLS A DAY to try to bring my numbers up. This means I also have to take a stool softener because I am all cool that way. Meanwhile I have an appointment for an echocardiogram on Thursday, and ANOTHER appointment, this one with the good ol' GYN, in early March, to try to address the actual probable cause of the anemia, that being my overachieving-yet-useless uterus. The PA did say that anemia can trigger tachycardia, so that stacks up one more reason for a hysterectomy -- which I tend to be flippant about, especially for three or four days every three and a half weeks or so, but which really kind of freaks me out when I think hard about it. Not that I would be getting a radical hysterectomy and going through menopause at 30 and all that fun stuff -- but still. As much as my uterus pisses me off sometimes, I'm really kind of sentimentally attached to it. But all the various hormonal methods have been tried, and they really do not agree with my system (not only do I gain unpleasant amounts of weight while using them, but they frequently have the direct opposite of the regulating-and-lessening effect they're supposed to have).
The funniest thing about all this is that I don't feel "anemic". I feel normal. Who knows, maybe if I'm ever not anemic (which I've been, at least in a borderline way, since at least the time of my first pregnancy when I was 20), I'll suddenly turn into some kind of energetic house-cleaning superwoman. And I'll have the kind of house where people can just drop by and it's clean and fresh-smelling and airy and uncluttered.
Ha ha. Fat chance.
