Some tests, some answers, some mental/physical assistance?

I went to the doctor. Everything is fine. My heart is, if anything, a little slow. When the doc asked me how things had been lately, I told him I'd been a little stressed lately, (true) and my movements* had shown the effects of the stress (also true), and I'd also, oops, been forgetting to take all my medication (true, true, true). We talked about alternate medications for a while, and the overwhelming propensity of human beings to have problems adapting to required, daily handfuls of pills.

Then the doc asked me how THINGS had been lately. Apparently, lower-case "t" things meant crap, and heavily-emphasized "THINGS" meant are you having a nervous breakdown due to mental problems and chronic disease symptoms?

I fumbled and stuttered and somehow managed to perpetuate a multitude of miscommunication, to which my doctor's reaction was "She must have broken up with her boyfriend" and also "Oh, she's unable to pay my office-visit co-pay." (This happened because I had requested upon my arrival that the office bill me, something which is not done in private practices. This is also the first time I realized, shit, I'm seeing a private doctor.) He assured me it was taken care of, which turned out to mean HE had paid it.

After awkward discussions with my doctor and the office administrator, I was allowed to pay my co-pay, which I did immediately, all while feeling like an ungrateful yet ethical (and stupid) jerk.

I have never, ever had a doctor offer to pay my co-pay. The only possible reasons are one of the following:

1. I am incredibly pitiful/pitiable.
2. I am smoking hot.
3. They are watching my bank accounts.
4. Doc took his entire office out to Sicko and afterwards redid the budget system.
5. I can't communicate for a hill of beans.
6. All of the above.

I think my favorite is a combination of 2 and 4.


But embarrassment aside, apparently there's nothing physically wrong with me. I have a feeling the doc wants to send me to a shrink or his accountant.




*Using the word movements for my bathroom sojourns makes me feel like I'm part of a military battalion, or maybe a ninja squad.

Don't you know I have the INTERNET?

Last Friday I saw my gastro.

We have a very formal relationship. I come in and sign my name at the sliding window, write out a check for my copay, page through a couple magazines, and then he summons me to the last office on the left. His office is very cold and clean, and it smells like freon even in the winter. He sits down behind his monstrous bare desk, which takes up half the room, and thumbs through a single manila folder with my name on it. On the window ledge there is a pop-out rubber model of a liver squashed atop a pile of intestines. A medication brand name is painted in pink across the liver. Otherwise, the ledge is bare.

This is good, I tell myself. This means he's probably not prone to leaving instruments inside patients. Which wouldn't matter since he won't be operating on me any time soon as he is not a surgeon. He turns some blank pages and looks up at me. He never smiles. If I make a joke, he pulls the non-laugher trick from Seinfeld. Oh. That's funny.

"So how are you feeling?"

I explain the sedated feeling I've been having for...well, for a while now.

"Hmm. I've never heard of that as a side effect." He steeples his fingers and stares off behind me. "Well. You could always drink a lot of caffeine. Coffee, Mountain Dew."

I tell him that once drunk, coffee spends a nanosecond inside me before bolting, and that I'm trying to stay away from soda as it is soda.

He writes me a new Imuran prescription, I go to the pharmacy downtown and spend fifteen minutes finding necessaries such as flip flops and Yuengling. I drive home and rip open the prescription bag and read the side effects blurb:

All I need is Google! That's all I need!*

(Granted, it is a ways down the page, under What side effects may I notice from receiving azathioprine (imuran)? Side effects that you should report to your prescriber or health care professional as soon as possible. Yep, that's it: unusual tiredness or weakness.)

On the positive side, he was encouraging about my idea to gradually lower the dosage of Imuran from 150 to 125, whereas my previous NP pretty much bitch-slapped the thought away.


*Okay, so as the Eckerd link is no longer happy, I've posted a new one.

What? Don't think I've got the minerals?

Nothing like pissing out a bunch of supplements, I always say.

Calcium is to combat bone marrow suppression caused by the Imuran, while the multivitamin serves to keep my urethra full of vitamins C, D and B70jillion.

But the little guy? The one on the right, preening in his modest yellow heap?

He is special.

That's my birth-defect control!

Unfortunately I don't have any documentation on the type of birth defects Imuran causes, except for the exciting warning Walgreen's prints on their Complete Patient Information:

"FOR WOMEN: THIS MEDICINE HAS BEEN SHOWN TO CAUSE HARM to the human fetus. Avoid becoming pregnant while you are taking this medicine. IF YOU THINK YOU MAY BE PREGNANT, contact your doctor immediately. This medicine should not be used to treat rheumatoid arthritis in pregnant women. THIS MEDICINE IS EXCRETED IN BREAST MILK. DO NOT BREAST-FEED while taking this medicine."

CAPSLOCK = We are serious, bitches. (or was it serious bitches?) (or was it triple eyes? Like an eye in the middle of the forehead, how incredible would THAT be?)

According to my esteemed gutwatcher, the above is really just so much overreaction. Sure, Imuran can really fuck up the average fetus, but with the help of the Wondrous Sparklie that is Folic Acid!, there is no problem, because, see, he knows this couple and the father was on Imuran but the mother took Folic Acid! and the baby looks perfect.

"The baby was fine?"

He replied, "No visible defects."

"So there could be internal defects? Or brain damage?"

(mild annoyance) "Well, anything's possible. But the baby looks fine."

Well, sweet ASS.

So I am on Folic Acid! to make sure my [unexpected] [presumed possible] [as yet nonexistent] baby bears all outward signs of cheeky Little Miss Peaches Township, and to prove my gastro-man right in his Imuranic faith. I am also on the Pill so as to crush any Little Miss PTs before they can become a peachy little zygote.

Under such daunting circumstances, any baby created in my womb would clearly be Super. Or at least have an adamantium intestine.

Are you listening, A.? I'm in a pro-mood again.