1. No degeneration showed up on the x-rays, but I do have a pointy spot on my knees that I'm not sure is normal. Hmmm... googling knee x-rays, it probably is normal. It's at the spot labelled 6 here, at the top of the tibia.
2. I still can't take aspirin, but can take tylenol, ibuprofin, or aleeve.
3. Doc wanted to give me a prescription for headaches, but I didn't want one.
4. Doc sent me for more bloodwork... direct rather than indirect tests for arthritis.
5. Since I was getting bloodwork anyway, I asked for the C1 esterase deficiency blood test. Might as well get a definitive yes/no on that diagnosis.
6. If nothing shows up arthritis-wise on the new bloodwork, he'll send me to a rheumatologist.
My tongue was looking less swollen earlier, but is looking just as swollen now.
Still scalloped, but fewer chin zits. ;)
Okay... what's up with all the freaky people? In the time it took me to get the flickr URL for that photo, I got 7 views and 1 comment. Yet no one has looked at the cute yeti, and it was uploaded a while ago.
6 comments:
yeah... the close up pictures i have of my braces on flickr have an astounding amount of views (well over 2500...) and a whopping 3 comments (one of them my own..). :)
i hope your tongue thing gets better soon, that does not look fun! and where did you sign up for the yeti thing? how cute!
It seems to me that a lot of doctor's appointments end like this: I dunno what's causing your problems. (Not that this result is the doctor's fault, but the lack of resolution to your problems is frustrating.)
H
Cori: wow, that's a lot of views! So far my tongue has 15.
The yeti guy posted a photo to the softie photo pool, and asked if anyone wanted to swap. I sent him a flickr message, and we arranged stuff that way. I'm sure if you sent him a flickr message, he'd be interested in a swap with you too. :) His flickr ID is lost yeti productions, and I think one of my posts or flickr photos has a link to him somewhere... let me know if you need help finding him.
H: Yeah, very frustrating. I really would appreciate some answers! The joint thing has been going on since high school. :P
It takes a lot of doing but I'm trying to train my doctor to realize that it's acceptable to tell me "I don't know" but not acceptable to just send me away on that note. If he can't treat the cause, at least talk to me about treating the symptoms while we keep looking.
Then again, I know I'm not your average patient. I still remember the attitude that well, he's a doctor, he's supposed to know everything. So much is different now that I look at my GP as front-line tech support instead of the oracle of truth and wisdom.
I hope you feel better soon.
Thanks.
Actually, one of the problems with my doctor is that he wants to prescribe stuff for the symptoms, without figuring out what is wrong. Given that I tend to get the drug side-effects, and a lot of drugs haven't been tested in combination, I'd rather not be a guinea pig. Some of the stuff I can deal with as long as I *know* what it is... that it's not a sign of something serious that could kill me (like my tongue). I would like to know that my joint pain is arthritis, or something relatively benign, so I don't have to worry that maybe I have lupus or fibromyalgia or something else scary. I want to know that it's not something I need to worry about, and that taking the occasional pain-killer (or whatever) is not hiding something horrible that will get worse unless I do something now. Or that it will get horrible no matter what. Basically, I don't like bad surprises. I like time to get used to them.
And wondering all the time what my different problems *mean* makes me wonder what I *may* have, and makes me feel like a hypochondriac. If I *know*, I can stop hypothesizing.
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