Current mood:	okay
Entry tags:	illness

Hospital Week in Review
Monday was the long awaited doctors appointments. I saw the rheumatologist first and then the GI doctor 3.5 hours later. I had thought I would have an hour or so to grab food in between, but no dice. Had to rush my checkout at the first appointment and walk quickly to make the second appointment. The 'hurry up and wait' philosophy sucks. With a waiting room full of people, the GI doctor rushes out of the office, telling us "I have to run to the main hospital, sorry folks, I'll be back soon" and disappears.

By the time my appointments were over, the lab was closed. This hospital actually has two laboratories, a regular one for emergencies and people with good insurance, and a craptastic understaffed cubby which sees those on Medicare, Medicaid, or people unlucky enough to have a shitty HMO. So I had to return the following day for my labwork and xrays, again with an unholy wait. Just unlucky in the xray department and came during a rush. Then I took my prescriptions to my pharmacy (which is not part of the hospital complex) and, true to low-cost health care, was told I'd have to come back in the morning to pick up. Spent Wednesday with my dad and picked up the prescription on Thursday, only to discover I was out of refills of the one drug I'd needed refilled, even after I'd asked the lady on Tuesday to specifically check and make sure I had refills before I left. So much for 'yeah, yeah, it's fine'.

Thus I spent two-and-a-half days in the hospital, just for some outpatient visits, and still have a day of pharmacy crawling to go.

Currently, the rheumatologists are looking toward a possible auto-immune disorder. I'd given them a list of my meds and supplements, and the one told me "we can't prescribe CoQ10, but we often recommend it to patients who don't want traditional medicine and they are doing some tests with it now at Harvard for muscle inflammation. I could prescribe a painkiller, but nothing I give you is going to work better for your condition than the flaxseed & CoQ10 combination you are taking." I was told that, because the pain was responding to supplements, it probably was some form of inflammation (rather than the vague pain of fibromyalgia which seems to have no cause) and was therefore more likely to be an auto-immune disorder. Some other possibilities included Crohn's disease (apparently, some GI problems can actually cause joint pain) and something I'd never heard of called reactive arthritis. If you have a bad enough illness, it can trigger arthritis.

The current tests will rule in or out lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or another auto-immune disorder. I also have a colonoscopy and upper GI scheduled to check for IBD, Crohn's or polyps. Now all I have to do is find someone to run the July Blogger's meetup as it looks as though I might be missing it. Drat.