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Leggos and Eddie Izzard bring you "Death Star Canteen"
8 November 2007
Leggos and Eddie Izzard bring you "Death Star Canteen"
(no subject)
8 November 2007 20:24Oh, let's just jump into the weirdness of the day.
Jane is back with us. Someone in the household that took her ended up having an allergy to cats, so Mark brought her back this evening. She's happy as a clam. A lovely, furry, sleek, gray clam :) I love having her here, but the longer she stays the harder it's going to be to send her away again. Damn! In a similar vein, her mom Mirabelle has decided that she likes being an indoor cat. This is not a bad thing, as long as she's figured out what the litter boxes are for. So far outside of one instance we haven't found any evidence of her being, uh, indiscreet :)
It's been snowing steadily for two days, but fortunately it's not really building up. It's not the pretty snow, either, lest some of you start sighing about how lucky we are. It's that wet, spitting, cold, windy, achy kind of snowy weather that always gives snow a bad name. More of the same is expected for tomorrow with a possibility of freezing rain, which would vastly screw up our trip to Buffalo.
I had this bizarre moment early this morning around 4AM or so. I was awakened by Dar shaking my shoulder. All I heard was, "Lee, blahblahblahblah" because I was still so sleepy I couldn't make it out. In fact I fell back asleep for an instant and then realized that Dar had left, so I jumped out of bed to find her. She was on the couch on her side, rubbing her leg, so I thought she was having a muscle cramp or spasm as she sometimes does. Except . . . she actually was sound asleep and no, she hadn't just been in my room shaking me awake like I thought. I found this out after I scared her awake by calling "Dar, are you all right?" So there are the two of us staring at each other, half awake and completely bewildered. Very, very strange.
But stranger still was my appointment with the rheumatologist today. I don't even know how to explain it. I told Dar after we left - and we both finally stopped rolling our eyes practically out of our heads- that every time we see this guy it's like reinventing the wheel. He has no idea who I am, why I'm there, what he's ordered, what test results we're waiting for, or most importantly how any of this all fits together. And it's getting worse!
I had to explain again about the plaque building up on my abdominal aorta and how it wasn't because of cholesterol because mine is fine. Could I get the antiphospholipid test, please, because if that came back positive then I'm in very real peril of a stroke or a heart attack. (Most probably stroke, in my case.) Then Dar nudged him to reread the results of my brain scan, and then he broke out in a smile and agreed that given those things the apl blood test would be very wise. Jesu Cristus! Who's got the M.D. after their name here, please?
My second anti-dsDNA test came back with virtually the same result; again that's a strong indicator of lupus. A word which never passed his lips during the meeting, btw. Dar did snark at him, "So I guess this means that the first test wasn't a fluke, huh." No follow-up was mentioned, of course.
The salivary scan can back as normal. Or so he says. If that's true, then I think I can rule out having Sjogren's Syndrome even with having that one small test come back as somewhat positive. It's a minor test and I have no other results to back it up. Not that he had anything to say about the subject other than that the report - which he didn't show me - said it was OK. Now about that . . .
I finally got to see the report from the pelvic x-ray I had done back in September. The one that he said showed a collapsed disc. Hey, guess what? It also shows "degenerative disc disease especially at L4-5. Facet joint osteoarthritis. Scoliosis." Which I guess he figured I didn't need to know about. (I'm getting all pissed again, writing this.) In fact I didn't even get to see a copy of it until we were literally on our way out of the office.
So we have all of this disjointed information - most of it only because I've pushed for the tests - and a "specialist" who doesn't have a freakin' clue as to what to do with it. I'm really hoping that the neurologist is as good as I think he is, and that he can take the point with my diagnosis. Actually, my grand plan is to have him put together his best idea of what's going on once all of the testing is completed; then I'm going to gather everything and send it to Partners' Online Second Opinion and see what they have to say about it all. Because this is just getting too crazy to be believed.
On the way to Buffalo tomorrow we have to stop back at the rheumatologist's office to pick up yet more test results that they still hadn't found by the time of my appointment today. Because he went on vacation for three weeks and completely shut down the office - just let the mail and the test results build up for weeks without having anyone attend to them. Because that's how disorganized he and his operation are. In. Sanity.
Jane is back with us. Someone in the household that took her ended up having an allergy to cats, so Mark brought her back this evening. She's happy as a clam. A lovely, furry, sleek, gray clam :) I love having her here, but the longer she stays the harder it's going to be to send her away again. Damn! In a similar vein, her mom Mirabelle has decided that she likes being an indoor cat. This is not a bad thing, as long as she's figured out what the litter boxes are for. So far outside of one instance we haven't found any evidence of her being, uh, indiscreet :)
It's been snowing steadily for two days, but fortunately it's not really building up. It's not the pretty snow, either, lest some of you start sighing about how lucky we are. It's that wet, spitting, cold, windy, achy kind of snowy weather that always gives snow a bad name. More of the same is expected for tomorrow with a possibility of freezing rain, which would vastly screw up our trip to Buffalo.
I had this bizarre moment early this morning around 4AM or so. I was awakened by Dar shaking my shoulder. All I heard was, "Lee, blahblahblahblah" because I was still so sleepy I couldn't make it out. In fact I fell back asleep for an instant and then realized that Dar had left, so I jumped out of bed to find her. She was on the couch on her side, rubbing her leg, so I thought she was having a muscle cramp or spasm as she sometimes does. Except . . . she actually was sound asleep and no, she hadn't just been in my room shaking me awake like I thought. I found this out after I scared her awake by calling "Dar, are you all right?" So there are the two of us staring at each other, half awake and completely bewildered. Very, very strange.
But stranger still was my appointment with the rheumatologist today. I don't even know how to explain it. I told Dar after we left - and we both finally stopped rolling our eyes practically out of our heads- that every time we see this guy it's like reinventing the wheel. He has no idea who I am, why I'm there, what he's ordered, what test results we're waiting for, or most importantly how any of this all fits together. And it's getting worse!
I had to explain again about the plaque building up on my abdominal aorta and how it wasn't because of cholesterol because mine is fine. Could I get the antiphospholipid test, please, because if that came back positive then I'm in very real peril of a stroke or a heart attack. (Most probably stroke, in my case.) Then Dar nudged him to reread the results of my brain scan, and then he broke out in a smile and agreed that given those things the apl blood test would be very wise. Jesu Cristus! Who's got the M.D. after their name here, please?
My second anti-dsDNA test came back with virtually the same result; again that's a strong indicator of lupus. A word which never passed his lips during the meeting, btw. Dar did snark at him, "So I guess this means that the first test wasn't a fluke, huh." No follow-up was mentioned, of course.
The salivary scan can back as normal. Or so he says. If that's true, then I think I can rule out having Sjogren's Syndrome even with having that one small test come back as somewhat positive. It's a minor test and I have no other results to back it up. Not that he had anything to say about the subject other than that the report - which he didn't show me - said it was OK. Now about that . . .
I finally got to see the report from the pelvic x-ray I had done back in September. The one that he said showed a collapsed disc. Hey, guess what? It also shows "degenerative disc disease especially at L4-5. Facet joint osteoarthritis. Scoliosis." Which I guess he figured I didn't need to know about. (I'm getting all pissed again, writing this.) In fact I didn't even get to see a copy of it until we were literally on our way out of the office.
So we have all of this disjointed information - most of it only because I've pushed for the tests - and a "specialist" who doesn't have a freakin' clue as to what to do with it. I'm really hoping that the neurologist is as good as I think he is, and that he can take the point with my diagnosis. Actually, my grand plan is to have him put together his best idea of what's going on once all of the testing is completed; then I'm going to gather everything and send it to Partners' Online Second Opinion and see what they have to say about it all. Because this is just getting too crazy to be believed.
On the way to Buffalo tomorrow we have to stop back at the rheumatologist's office to pick up yet more test results that they still hadn't found by the time of my appointment today. Because he went on vacation for three weeks and completely shut down the office - just let the mail and the test results build up for weeks without having anyone attend to them. Because that's how disorganized he and his operation are. In. Sanity.
