Immediately after I wrote this post (about how busy I will be for the next several weeks), I ran off to a routine doctor's appointment. Well, I thought it would be routine. The problem is, I don't go to the doctor often enough to have a routine.
I grew up in a family that was kind of hypochondrical. A case of the sniffles would keep me home from school for three days. And don't get me started on all the other diseases my parents suspected we all had. Ironically, my parents made it into their 70's before they started developing any real health issues, and the only time I've ever been in a hospital was 13 years ago, when I gave birth to my daughter.
It doesn't help that every year, our health insurance carrier changes and the coverage gets worse. Until I became a stay-at-home mom, I had a doctor whom I loved and I was diligent about my checkups. But after losing both our second income and my former employer's excellent insurance plan, I couldn't afford to see that doctor any more. In the decade since, I've periodically made an effort to visit whichever primary care physician available to us -- but I have never found another doctor I loved. And so it hasn't been a priority.
I subscribe to the theory of "what I don't know won't hurt me." I am pretty comfortable living in denial - which is how I ended up having to lose 50+ pounds a few years ago.
One of the reasons I went to the Lindora medical clinic to lose weight was so that I could avoid our last PCP (ironically, because he had made a big deal about my weight TO MY HUSBAND, which pissed me off). Anyway, I lost my weight, I improved my blood pressure and cholesterol, and I've been feeling pretty good...
...except for a chronic pain in my left shoulder that has been driving me crazy for months.
I chalked it up to age (I am turning 53 next month). But a few weeks ago, it got to the point where I literally couldn't lift my arm above my head - and my husband made me promise I would get it checked out.
So I searched our current health plan site for a new primary care physician. I really wanted a female doctor this time, and found one with a practice fairly close to home (she was actually the ONLY female listed in our area).
I figured the exam would be routine. After all, after losing the weight, I feel better than I have in years. So I was surprised at her reaction when I was on the table and told her I'd lost 56 pounds last year:
"On purpose?"
She frowned and she probed my midsection.
"How long have you had this abdominal mass?" she asked.
HUH?
She took my hand and pressed it against the right side of my tummy. "Feel that? This side is hard. Not like this one," (she moved my hand to the left).
She was right. I'd never noticed it before, but now that she pointed it out, I can feel this hard thing on my side. And most disconcerting: it's BIG.
"It doesn't hurt?" she asked.
Uh, no. If it had, I would have noticed it before now.
"It might be nothing," she said. I noted the words "might be nothing" instead of "probably nothing."
She then hooked me up to an EKG machine. She shook her head.
"The pattern is abnormal," she said, pointing to the printout.
She just found some kind of growth in my abdomen, which sounded pretty ominous to me. Of COURSE I had a funny heartbeat after that.
She asked me to come in the next day for an ultrasound and a heart echo.
I was more than a little bit freaked out. My daughter's birthday was Friday and Passover is this Wednesday and then my mother-in-law is coming out THIS Friday and staying with us for three weeks and then we have the Bat Mitzvah and my entire family coming out...
...and that was just ME. Around me, people I care about were having problems, too. One of my closest friends was having a mastectomy performed on Wednesday. Another of my closest friends had to fly home to the Midwest because her mom had suffered a blow to the head after a fall and was in a coma.
I agreed to a 10:30 appointment and called my husband, who freaked out a little, too.
"Maybe it's your fibroids," he suggested. My husband has present for our daughter's birth by c-section 13 years ago and he's never forgotten the sight of the bulbous growths on my uterus. (I have to take his word for it; my eyes were closed for the entire procedure.)
As I walked to the doctor's office the next morning, I remembered how much I looked forward to getting ultrasounds back when I was pregnant. This was not the same.
The ultrasound technician didn't see me until 12:15. I'd been instructed to fast and by this time, the lack of food and caffeine -- and the long wait -- made me extremely grumpy.
"Any changes in your health recently?" she asked. I told her about my weight loss and she had the same reaction as the doctor: "You did it ON PURPOSE?"
Sheesh. Most people give me a pat on the back for it! But I guess if you're in medicine, it's a red flag.
"I'm thinking it might be fibroids," I told her. "They're pretty big."
She shook her head. "This isn't your uterus," she said.
I'm glad I wasn't having the heart echo just then, because my heartbeat would likely have been off the chart.
This ultrasound was definitely NOT like the ones I had when I was pregnant. Where those were gentle and roughly in the same spot, this one was all over the place. I was instructed to roll on my side, roll on my back, roll to the side again... and she dug in with the instrument as she poked and prodded and tried to get a good image of what was going on there.
"Well, it's not your liver or your intestine," she said. GOOD NEWS. Then: "I don't know WHAT this is," she said.
I flashed on one of my favorite TV shows (House) and was sorry I ever found it entertaining. The last thing I wanted was some kind of mystery ailment that would take a lot of time and money to diagnose.
"You know - I'm not a doctor, so I can't diagnose - but I think it might just be a large fibroid that's popped out."
I was supposed to come back the next day for a pelvic exam so the doctor could confirm, but there was a slight wrinkle in that plan: My period had arrived. (Yes. I am nearly 53 years old and I am still fairly regular. Go figure.)
So I wasn't able to come in for my follow-up visit until today - and the doctor thinks the ultrasound tech was right.
"So, do you want to have it out?" she asked.
Well, I'm not sure. It doesn't hurt or bother me (although now that I know it's there, I do feel it). Is it dangerous?
She couldn't say. "I want you to have a CAT scan," she said. "In medicine, we can't say anything with 100% certainty until we take it out."
I asked if I could put it off until May, when my mum-in-law is back in the UK and my life is back to normal. After all, I've had it this long (I figure it's been there for years but it wasn't detectable under all that fat I used to carry) what's another month?
"I would rather you do it soon," she said. "We need to know if it's impinging on anything. Then we can make a decision."
I am cooking tonight, getting the rugs cleaned tomorrow, cooking the rest of Passover dinner on Wednesday and cleaning on Friday before Marion arrives. So that leaves Thursday to see the radiologist.
When this is all over, my husband and I are going on a weekend together in San Francisco. I'm going to need it.
Recent Comments