Monday

I am living this. 
My husband is seeing this for the first time. 
He has heard this shit from me for over 30 years.  
I am not a fan of doctors. I find them filled with a God complex. 
Men doctors don't understand women. Years ago I got fed up going to men doctors because everything to them was an emotional thing if you were sick. Women are emotional apparently only men get sick.

I went to Johns Hopkins for the back & leg pain I was experiencing around 2000.
I had a herniated disc but I did not know this at the time.
The doctor took one look at me and saw that I needed to lose 20lbs.
He said, Go home, push yourself away from the table and exercise.
And he left the room.
I cried. I got dressed. I went home and called another doctor.
I got in within a week - she did an MRI, I had a herniated disc and had surgery within a week of the MRI.

I want to add that my husband has a serious belly of late.
Not one doctor has ever every told him that he needed to lose weight and ignored his symptoms. Not one doctor ever! 

I went to a male doctor about why my belly was distended like I was pregnant and why was I having all this pain? He said lose weight. 2nd doctor (female) said she thought I had a fibroid mass and that it would go away in menopause. I said that could be another 15 years. I am to live with this pain and my distended belly for another 15 years? She nodded and left the room. I went to a 3rd and final doctor. I saw this doctor on the ABC docu-series Johns Hopkins 24/7. I liked his bedside manner and his style and qualifications. He indeed said it was a large fibroid. He gave me 3 options. I chose number 3 and out it came.

They anticipated a certain amount of time for the surgery and they told Rick all of this. When the time went by he was getting a bit worried. Someone finally came out and told him what was going on. Yes, it was a fibroid tumor, it was hiding some of itself around my organs and was very difficult to remove. She told Rick they should be done in another hour and the doctor will come out to update you. The doctor came out and told Rick it was 7.5lbs (that's a baby and she wanted me to wait for 15 yrs?) 
He told Rick all the complications the biggest being that it didn't want to leave my body and the doctor had to really push down on me to yank at this thing. I was going to be very black and blue down there and sore. But it's out and it will be tested but they believed it was just a benign fibroid. Thankfully it was. 

Those 3 doctors were in 3 years. I always waited because I honestly thought maybe they are right and I'm just a big fat baby.
But when my clothes were getting tighter around my belly, the same slacks I wore 2 days before that fit now don't even come close. 
Sadly he died. He was only in his early 40's. He was jogging and didn't come back to the house in the morning and his wife went looking for him and saw him on the side of the road. He was one of the best doctors I have ever been to. 

I went to a doctor on time with my list of symptoms and he kept saying you really take pilates classes?  He questioned me on everything. 
They sat down and said, "I think you just need to push yourself away from the table and you'll feel better. Just lose a bit of weight"
I began to cry and got off the table to get dressed. He turned and got something out of a cupboard. He handed me an enormous box of an antidepressant Efexor.
I looked at this sitting in my hand and now my crying turned to ANGER.
I said to him as I put it on the table - I do not want this, I am not crying because I am depressed, I am crying because you are NOT LISTENING TO ME!  This is not about my weight.
He poo-pooed me. 
I left them there, I did not want drugs, I wanted help and a diagnosis.

A few months later I found my current doctor. I had hypothyroidism and she figured it out in minutes by my symptoms. I then had blood work to confirm.
She didn't say, lost those 20lbs and you'll be fine. 
Now she understood my difficulty to lose them.

I have a ton of these stories.

I am currently in mind-numbing pain. I can't leave my house. I can't drive, I can barely walk. But I can bug you all when my dog's medication kicks in.
Sadly since they give me no pain meds I need something to function to this point.
So I am taking my dog's ACL surgery medication. 
Is it good for this kind of pain? No, but it takes the edge off since they won't give me anything.
I did sleep last night for 1.5 hrs. That is upright in a chair. But it was sleep.
I can't wait to return to my bed. I plan to sleep for 10 hrs.

The other thing I have noticed is if you have a serious disease and you smile and you can walk others think you are fine and then they don't believe your pain is that bad or real. I'm working on trying to figure that out.

But as Wanda Skyes says right here on the video bring a white boy.
I am bringing Rick of late and boy he doesn't take this shit well.
He keeps saying that it's amazing how shitty I am treated and he can't believe I don't speak up more. I tell him it only makes them less kind to me.
Remember Rick no longer has a filter as he did 30 yrs ago. He just says what he feels out loud and I normally hate it but lately, his non-fliter has been a blessing.

Over the weekend I saw 1 episode of the Netflix documentary Diagnosis.
The first episode was of a young woman who had similar issues with her muscles. She could walk though, not well, but well enough. I watched this show with Rick and we felt and understood every single roadblock she was facing. 
Lucky for her to go to Italy and get all this medical work for free.  
I wish I could do that. They did find what was wrong with her and while it is a genetic and rare disease. She was never given a test like this after all her years of going from dr to dr. She is claiming bankruptcy to get her through all the medical bills.  That is sad but I understand so much of what I am doing is out of pocket. Painful in another way. I'm glad she was chosen because this poor woman needed help and her life was not really a life. I am living that and I watched and thought gee could I get on this show for help? The narcissistic bitch that I am. It's all about me.😛

I am off for another IV of goodies today at 2:30p.
I have a doctors appointment tomorrow - rick has the day off now to take me and sit with me in the office. I know nothing will get by tomorrow with a big ole white guy with me.

Hope you are all having a fun Monday with good weather. It's too hot to be outside for the next 3 days. 103 is not for humans with his humidity!

I learned not to take a photo from this angle. Doesn't my arm look huge? I showed Rick and I won't share what body part he suggested he try because it will look big from that angle then. Men!

 As I sat in the room getting this IV they gave me things to read and I saw this and it made me laugh out loud.

 

Someone sent this to me this weekend. This is from 2009. I guess the puppy was exhausted and so was his playmate. This picture just makes me smile.