Worst Part of Doctor Exams

How many of you jump during your vision screener exam when the doctor uses that equipment that blows a puff of air into your eye?  That is one of the worst parts of the exam for me (besides the dilation drops - can't stand those).

At the family doctor, it's the blood tests I need a few times a year for my thyroid disease management.  I'm afraid of needles.

At the gynecologist, it's everything.  Come on, from the time you walk into the exam room and clothing starts to come off, it's mortifying until you walk out again.

At the hospital emergency room, it's the wait!  It's crazy!

When I'm admitted to the hospital, it's definitely the IV - again, hate needles!  When they put something into the IV they don't tell you about, that makes me very angry.  An adult in a hospital bed shouldn't be rendered unable to make or participate in decisions unless they are physically unable to.

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3 Days Until Diet

In three days, I will start my diet.  I really hate to call it a diet because it really isn't.  It's just a healthy way of eating that enables you to drop the pounds.  I decided to start it when my kids go back to school because with them home all day now, it'd be harder to follow the first 17 days of it while preparing three meals a day for them.  With them gone during the day, I'll be more apt not to graze on their food.

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Dysfunction for the Holidays

I found out a couple weeks ago that my sister got canned from her nursing job.  Come to find out last night, she's actually been out of work for months but everybody was hiding it from the family (oh the joys of family dysfunction especially during the holidays).  With the economy the way it is, but the need for healthcare jobs always in demand, you'd think she'd try better to behave herself being in the career she's in (or was in).

I'm not surprised but her patients are better off.  It takes a special kind of person to be a good nurse. 

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More Health Problems

With my health the way it is, it makes me glad we already have life insurance in place and had it in place before things went downhill.  Otherwise, I'd need no medical exam term life insurance because between my asthma and thyroid problems (and I'm beginning to think my joint problems might be another health problem), I don't feel all that healthy. 

My neck has been so sore for weeks now, not just in the front but the sides and back too.  Something is wrong.  When I stand up, it takes me a few steps for me to get my legs working right without discomfort.  I think something else is wrong.  Just what I needed.

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Being female and misdiagnosed

Many women who have struggled with the proper management of their thyroid disease will understand this article on being young, female, and misdiagnosed.  I was misdiagnosed for eight years and treated with a T4 medication when I have a reverse T3 problem - all that T4 they gave me was wrongly converting to reverse T3.  The doctors who refused me a T3 medication were making me worse!  I had to listen to my own body, research, and be proactive about my own health and found a doctor who listened.

The article I linked above talks about a book I am interested in reading.  If you've read it, let me know what you thought of it and if it's worth buying or taking out from the library instead.  Thanks!

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I Had Pelvic Inflammatory Disease

I said before I'd tell more about my illness later. Well, it's later.

I was hospitalized due to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (due to bacterial vaginosis...NOT an STD which the doctors would not believe until the cultures came back proving neither myself nor my husband cheated on each other and gave each other a disease!) after an ER visit had me admitted for fear of abcess and the need for surgery. I was really sick with high fever and extreme pain. They gave me morphine in the ER for pain, then dilaudid (I think that's how it's spelled) once admitted, then Percocet as the pain went down. Apparently, the flu I thought I had with fever for four days a few weeks ago was the start of the infection raging through my reproductive organs until they were screaming at me to get to the hospital.

Unfortunately, the antibiotics (Gentamicin and Clindamycin) they had me on had such bad side effects (dizziness, nausea, ear pain and hallucinations) that I was happy to get off them after 2-1/2 days when I got sent home. Those side effects lingered for several days after but they eventually worked their way out of my system thankfully.  I think it was the Gentamicin that did all that to me. The faces flying at me in my head were bad enough (and the evil grins some of the faces gave me were downright scary) but when the Virgin Mary statue outside my hospital window turned and looked at me several times, I rang for the nurse to get me off the medications!

The I.V. fluids had me so bloated I looked like I needed to find the best weight loss pills but it all came off within the first week of being home thankfully.

I'm still on antibiotics and the pain comes and goes still.  My thyroid meds got off track a bit while I was really sick but I'm trying to take them on schedule now around my antibiotics.

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Smoking

My husband loves cigars. He would smoke a couple a week while relaxing out on our porch until our kids guilted him into stopping. That was about four years ago.

About a month ago, a friend of his gave him two cigars that he brought home and put in our fridge for later. He was REALLY looking forward to them.  Well, the kids saw them first so now they still sit in my fridge because they heaped the guilt onto daddy.  We should've brought them on vacation with us so he could either smoke them or give them away without the kids around. 

I briefly smoked cigarettes before my kids were born and once in awhile afterward until my nephew made me feel bad one time when I was lighting up.  I haven't smoked a cigarette since and that was about six years ago. 

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When Doctors Can't Help, Teen Diagnoses Herself!

I just read about this story on Suzanne Somers' blog.

After years of doctors missing the diagnosis for one teen girl, she ended up getting proactive and getting a diagnosis for herself. Doctors said over the years: Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Colitis. Ends up it was Crohn's Disease. Read more about this teen's story here.

It goes to show that doctors aren't always right. Knowing your body and not ignoring that feeling that something isn't right is important! Be proactive in your health care. I've not been lucky in finding a doctor who appreciates that I won't just go along with whatever they want anymore (like I did for eight, miserable years with thyroid disease). In fact, I can think of a family doctor and endocrinologist who are unhappy with me at the moment. Oh well. I'm not very happy with them either!

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