Have you ever had a PAP and felt like you were on display in the middle of a Shoppers Drug Mart?
That’s the feeling when the walls of the medical clinic are parchment-thin and you can heard every.single.word exchanged between the nurse practioner, assisting medical students, doctors and other patients.
How.uncomfortable.
However, my relative embarrassment was mitigated by the fact that I finally convinced a doctor (after 3 unsuccessful tries with my family physician/s) to order a full battery of blood work including glucose, creatinine, sodium, potassium, chloride, WBC, STsh, free T4 and free T3, ferritin, vit B12, calcium, magnesium, albumin, and cortisol for my hair and other symptoms of some kind of a health problem.
Hopefully, these tests will rule out an underactive thyroid for the second time in a year and maybe point me in the right direction of a concrete condition… a mineral or vitamin deficiency, perhaps? Perhaps a lack of EFAs? Easier to treat, me thinks. I’ll be getting results back from my kidney/liver tests in August on Friday to rule out causes related to “bone problems” following my accident.
I also met with my orthopedic surgeon this morning and although the scaphoid–the bone I broke in my left wrist–often does not fully heal or may heal crookedly in some patients, things seem to be progressing well in my case. Well, he says the bone is healing, with little to no evidence of necrotic tissue and/or loss of blood circulation to the rest of my hand. He’s not particularly talkative and I pretty much had to beat it out of him. Good news after the radiologist scared me with thoughts of not-uncommon surgery to pin the bones into place.
AND apparently the pain, discomfort and cracking I’ve been feeling lately in both wrists is pretty normal and since it seems to be triggered by the rainy, chilled weather of late, it may very well remain for the rest of my life. For now, I’ll continue to use my knees and wrists as weather radar!
BTW, don’t forget your umbrella tomorrow in you’re in the Ottawa area; it is going to rain cats and dogs.
