Things are chugging along. Yesterday, I thought I would lose the whole week to fatigue, but I perked up enough to go for a walk last night.
The hubby is mad at me because I had a doctor's appointment and failed to mention my knee. Which was attacked by a random piece of furniture as I innocently walked by, minding my own business.
No one reading this is surprised, right? It's a theme. Just like every car I've ever owned has a cracked windshield. I bang my knees around like they owe me money and I'm the mob boss looking to collect.
What makes this time different is, it was my good knee and it looked deformed--through my jeans even--for a good 24 hours. Basically, I gave my one functioning knee a rather large goose egg.
But it felt better the next day, even if it was a strange purple color. So I didn't mention it and hubby got mad.
Which is funny to me because this is the guy who refuses to have a primary care doc and does all his health care the expensive Urgent Care way.
The doctor's visit was routine, just adjusting some medications and getting refills, but the adrenal stuff came up.
I was told again I had unusual presentation, to which I wish I had said 'not according to all the adrenal patients I talk to. I'm actually adrenal pretty much the same way all the other adrenal patients are adrenal, maybe ACTH testing is useless unless you're at total failure, maybe medicine needs to adjust the parameters because I do know I'm not the only patient like me around who is under served by medicine's ideas of adrenal problems.' But I didn't have my wits about me.
I did spend a lot of time trying to explain how I can't exercise. First, there's the two weeks on, one month off dealing with sick (mine or others) pattern, which is extremely frustrating. Then there's the 'exercise still tires me out' pattern and the 'if I do all the cooking cleaning working, then I find I don't have much energy left for exercise' sequence.
Oh, and let's not forget, 'I f*cked up my knee doing nothing in particular and need 8 weeks for it to heal.'
When the adrenals were acute, I could do ONE thing a day. Just one and that was it. Now I can do something like ten things a day, but after that, forget it. While I am much better and functioning at a near normal level, I still run out of steam.
I am surprised to be typing that because I had such great resiliency last month that I really thought it was just onward, up to the moon, but no, it's not. It's more up and down. I can still exceed my available energy and I have a tendency to over do things when I feel good. Hopefully I will leave this all behind someday and not have to worry if everything I do is going to come back to haunt me.
At least we got the stomach flu out of the way, right?
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Diagnostic Tests to Reassure Patients
4 days ago
I can understand not mentioning the knee. I might have skipped it too. When it's something that has an identifiable cause and presumably limited presentation (injury, trauma, recovery), it just doesn't seem worth eating up precious doctor time with it.
ReplyDeleteI also am a frequent victim of random furniture attacks ;). I suppose if there is anything relevant about it to doctors, it would be why the clumsiness (which I already know is due to me walking around with systolic BP in the 80s and to the combo of loose joints and weak muscles) and maybe why so much bruising for what maybe should have been a minor bump.
I hear your frustration. After 4 years I'm still undiagnosed and my body just keeps sending out stronger and stronger warning signs; like I've just come out of hospital with a 3 foot DVT and bilateral pulmonary embolism - if that's not screaming 'there's something wrong here' then I don't know what's up.
ReplyDeleteHow long have you been fighting for an adrenal diagnosis? Is that just through your primary health provider (local doctor) or through the specialists?
Here's to waiting ...