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A Follow-Up With A New Doctor (or I’m Just Going To Keep Doing What I’m Doing)

A few months ago, I had my first appointment with a doctor in bariatric medicine. That appointment went as well as I could have hoped and that’s when I started the new injectable medication I’m on. I felt so lucky that the doctor I met with understood where I was coming from and wasn’t trying to push other options, such as having surgery. I was nervous going into that appointment because I knew I might have to do some additional steps to try the options I wanted to try. But when that wasn’t the case, I knew that I would have the best chance to test this out. When I left that appointment, I knew my next follow-up would be a few months later to see how things were going.

And since that appointment, I think things have gone pretty well. I have been dealing with side effects and I had to deal with a medication shortage, but I am seeing results and I know that this is giving me the chance that I’ve been wanting. So I was expecting that when I had my follow-up with my doctor, things would go just as well as the initial appointment. But when I got the call to schedule my follow-up, I learned that the doctor I had seen before wasn’t there anymore and I would be talking to a new doctor.

Even though I had such a good first appointment, I was nervous again about what this new doctor might say. You never know how they might feel about progress or different medications. But I tried to just hope for the best and remind myself that this was another doctor in bariatric medicine so they likely had a lot of patients like me and it wasn’t like my case was an oddity. And I knew that having it be a phone appointment would hopefully be a bit less pressure and easygoing.

I’m so glad that my fears were wrong and everything went just as well with this new doctor as it did with the first. We did discuss the side effects I’ve been having and how it might still take some time before they really get better. Although I have been doing my injections in a different location and it seems to be making things easier for me, so that was helpful. And this new doctor seemed fine with me doing the injections in my leg instead of my stomach as long as I was still following the recommendations in the instruction packet. And even though I haven’t had insane results, I have been seeing results and that’s what matters the most. The first week I was on this, I had a lot of change, but I knew that wouldn’t be sustainable. Since then, it’s been a lot slower but it has been steady and that’s what my new doctor was happy about. There is a higher dosage I could take, but since I’m seeing results with the dosage I’m on, there’s no need for me to change things yet. Possibly in the future I would need to, but I’m not going to worry about that until that time comes.

And the new doctor said that could still be a chance I have to deal with medication shortages, but that hopefully if that happens they can be resolved as quickly as possible so I don’t have to miss too many weeks. If it becomes a bigger issue, I feel comfortable enough messaging this doctor and asking what the best options would be for me. But I hope that the medication company understands that there is a high demand for this and they will continue to increase production.

My follow-up appointment ended with us deciding that in a few months, I’ll have another follow-up. I don’t know if that next one will be another phone appointment or if it will be in person. I guess when they call to schedule it I will find out. And hopefully over the next few months before I have that next follow-up, things will continue to go as well or better than they have these last few months.

I know this medication isn’t a miracle drug and that I still have to put in the work myself, but it’s helping in a way that nothing else I’ve tried has. I’m so grateful that my first doctor allowed me to try it out and that this new doctor is going to let me continue with it so I can see even more results in the future.

I Guess Not All Doctor Appointments Can Be Good Ones (or I Don’t Think I’ll See This Doctor Again)

After having a lot of pain in my back and hips that seemed to not end, I knew it would be smart to see an orthopedic surgeon. I’m still sad that my original orthopedic surgeon isn’t with my insurance anymore because I did appreciate how he never talked down to me and really worked with me to make a plan. I’ve had a few appointments with other orthopedic surgeons since then, but I’ve never really worked consistently with another doctor. So I had to get a new referral, which fortunately was a very simple process. And I got everything all set to see this new doctor.

It turned out that this wasn’t a new doctor to me. I had forgotten that I had an appointment with them a few years ago. If I had remembered that, I might not have gone since I now know I didn’t have the best impression of him. But since I didn’t know that until I was in my appointment, I went into this appointment hoping that I would like this surgeon and that maybe they would be the newest member of my medical team. But instead, I left that appointment feeling pretty certain that I will never see this doctor again and knowing I need to submit a complaint about them.

I know that going in for a random check for an ongoing medical condition isn’t the most normal thing, but when I set up this appointment I was still in a lot of pain. I’m glad the pain is gone now, but I would like to know what was causing it since you really can’t get diagnosed post-pain. Because of how it happened and ended, I feel like it must have been a back issue and not a hip issue. And it might have been something as simple as pulling a muscle. I know there isn’t anything wrong with my spine (based on information I got in this appointment) and there’s nothing else that is obvious. So while I started this appointment explaining that’s why I made the appointment, it was really only for a few moments before we moved on.

This doctor asked me what else was going on and I tried to explain my history with my hips. That’s when the doctor said that they had seen me a few years prior. I then moved on to explain that the pain I had worried me and I knew that I still needed a few surgeries for my hips and that I’ve gone longer than my original surgeon expected me to be able to go. As soon as I said that, this doctor said that they didn’t agree with anything my other doctor said and that I might be in a worse situation because of my first surgery. That really didn’t sit right with me. I knew how much pain I was in before and how that surgery helped. To be told that surgery wasn’t a smart thing to do really contradicts my experience.

And things just continued to get worse. Basically, the rest of the appointment was this doctor telling me I need to lose weight. They implied that if I was in pain now, they wouldn’t even recommend doing any diagnostic testing as they would not treat me until I was at a weight they felt was right for me. I know that there is a fat bias in the healthcare field and I have experienced that from time to time. But it’s usually been from doctors who I won’t see again. For example, once at Urgent Care, the doctor I saw asked me about losing weight when I was there for strep throat. Weight has nothing to do with strep. But with my regular doctors, I usually don’t get weight lectures because they understand that my problems don’t necessarily connect to my weight. But this doctor seemed to not want to discuss anything else.

They could see that I am working on my weight and am working with someone in bariatric medicine, but they were almost hounding me and asking over and over again what I am going to do to lose the weight they think I need to lose (which is also 40 pounds more than what any of my other doctors recommend for me). I kept explaining what I was doing and they just wouldn’t listen or understand that I am working on it. I don’t know what answer they wanted me to give them. They asked what I was going to do and I told them and their response was to ask me what I’m doing. It was so frustrating and I really was ready for the appointment to be over because I could tell that this was going nowhere.

Finally, they did review my x-rays with me and said that I do still have some hip dysplasia on one side (which is a birth defect and completely unrelated to weight) and that there is no sign of arthritis or any other issues. But then it got back to them asking me about my weight and what I would do before they felt like it was too late. I was feeling just over this appointment and was so glad when they ended things with me by saying that if I do have any more pain that I would need to be at the low weight they want me at before they would consider helping me.

I have never had a doctor say that they wouldn’t help me if I didn’t meet their weight requirements. I’ve also never had a doctor who could see what steps I was taking toward losing weight and just ignore them or dismiss my previous efforts. I think that was not right of them. What if I had a lot of pain right now and they refused to help me because of my weight but it ended up being something they could have fixed if they had listened to me before? I follow someone on social media who was dismissed by a doctor when they went in to discuss their pain because of their weight and when they got to another doctor who was willing to work with them, it was discovered they had stage 3 colon cancer. Refusing to help patients because of weight isn’t right. I would have understood if this doctor said that they wouldn’t recommend a hip replacement until I was at a different weight or if they discussed why weight can cause issues with that surgery. But to say they wouldn’t do anything for me unless I lost weight was just awful.

I am working on writing up a complaint about this doctor. I know I wasn’t treated fairly and that they wouldn’t have cared what my complaint was because they wouldn’t see me as a worthy patient until I was at their goal weight. And to have a doctor ignore what I’ve been doing and see that I’m working on weight isn’t fair either. They knew what medications I’m on and what doctors I’m seeing, yet they didn’t care because they wanted me to do something other than what my other doctors recommended and what their plan is for me. I have lost some weight since starting my new medication. I’m down about 3% of my body weight, which I think is pretty good for it just being a month so far. But it could have been 50% of my weight and I feel like this doctor would have been just as dismissive of me.

I’m grateful that the pain I was experiencing is gone for now so I don’t have to worry about seeing this doctor again. And I do want to find a different doctor to work with me because I don’t feel comfortable with this doctor at all. Even if I was at the weight they want me to be, I would still know that they wouldn’t want to help me if I gained weight and got out of the range they want me to be in. I don’t need someone helping me who only wants to help if I match specific things.  Unfortunately, this doctor is the only hip specialist at the hospital I go to. So I would need to find a different medical center to meet someone else. But honestly, I think the drive would be worth it so I’m not treated like this again.

A Few Weeks With The New Medication (or I’m Hoping I Continue To See Progress)

It’s almost been a month since I had my appointment with the doctor in bariatric medicine and got put on a new medication. This was a medication I was interested in and one of the main reasons I made the appointment. However, I was nervous about it since I knew it was an injectable and I know how much I hate getting shots. But since it could be something that would help me, I was willing to try. And I’m very glad that when I went to that appointment, the doctor I met with agreed and I started the new medication that day.

Since I started the shots that day and they are once a week, I did my fourth one this past Monday. And the way the medication is set up, you have to work up to what is considered a therapeutic dosage. You start at a very low dose for 4 weeks before increasing to a higher dose. And you don’t get to the therapeutic dosage until 8 or 10 weeks in. So I have only done the lowest dose so far and I will be switching to the next level when I do my shot this Monday. I know that because this medication, or ones that are like it, are being advertised a lot on tv that a lot of people are curious about it. So I thought that I would share my thoughts and feelings on how this has gone for me so far.

I’ve tried many different medications in the past for either weight loss or my eating disorder. I know that none of the things I have taken are a miracle cure and that they have always been tools that can help me with the effort that I’m making on my own. And while I would love to not have to try, I understand that I can’t just rely on medication to do the work for me. Fortunately, I have been doing a lot of the right things already. I didn’t need to worry about adding in exercise since I’m at Orangetheory 4 mornings a week. I know that my eating isn’t great, but it’s much better than it has been in the past. And I have felt for a long time that if other people were doing what I have been doing, they would see results. But I know that my metabolism has been off for a long time and I have wondered if it’s gotten worse over time and that’s why I haven’t seen a lot of change.

And so far, I can say that with this new medication, I do notice some changes. And I’ll start with the positives. I haven’t been as focused on food as I have in the past. I know that other medications were supposed to do the same thing for me, but maybe I have needed the combination of them in order to get that feeling. I do still have moments where the desire to binge eat happens, but it’s less frequent than I can ever remember. I’m also not eating as much at each meal as I did before. I know that this new medication slows down digestion, so you feel full sooner. And I do notice that.

But feeling full sooner isn’t always a good thing. I’m not great at eating lots of little meals, but I think I need to try to do that or add snacks to my day. I can eat too fast and that makes things very uncomfortable. I haven’t had some of the more severe reactions to eating too quickly or too much, but I have felt pain when I haven’t done the right things. I also know that my blood sugar is probably very low now. This new medication does lower your blood sugar (it was originally for diabetics) and that really affects me throughout the day. It’s a struggle to work out in the morning, and I’m working on finding the best things to have before a workout in order to not feel lightheaded or shaky. I’ve been drinking juice, but I think I might need to eat something more substantial before going to class. I just need to find the balance of what will make me feel ok but not sick when working out. I don’t like to eat before a workout, but I will just have to be flexible with that idea and do what is best for me and allows me to push myself as much as possible in class. And the main side effect that I’ve experienced has been nausea, but I also know that can be due to other things in my life so I’m not sure how much is from this new medication. I know that when I do the shots, I feel worse for a few hours, so I know some of it is from this. But it’s not nearly as bad as what I deal with normally each month.

Even though I’m not on the therapeutic dosage yet, I have seen results. The first week I had a pretty significant weight loss. It was about 5% of the weight I want to lose. That’s a lot, but I also knew that the first week or so of any new medication or eating program can cause a lot of weight loss right away. I haven’t lost a lot of weight since that first week, but I have seen very small changes. I’m trying to not weigh myself too much since there are so many things that can cause fluctuations in my weight, but it is reassuring sometimes that I’m still making progress. Even if it’s not fast, it’s something. And if I lose a pound or so a week, that’s still going to add up to a lot. So I’m hoping that I’ll continue to see this type of progress, especially as I work up toward the therapeutic dosage.

As much as I hate shots, I’m lucky that injecting myself with this new medication hasn’t been as much of a struggle as I feared. It’s still not easy, but it’s tolerable. And I think seeing the results I’ve had so far has been good motivation to keep going. So after 4 weeks of this, I have to say that I’m glad that I am trying this. I think it was the right step for me to take and even with some of the negative side effects I don’t have any regrets yet. And I hope that’s how I continue to feel as I keep going and that it will be the tool that I have been needing to work toward recovery.

Finally My Last Doctor Appointment Of This Month (or Getting Better With Dealing With Needles)

I seriously had a full month of doctor appointments this month. I still have some coming up next month, but it won’t be anything like how October has gone for me. But this last appointment was one that was scheduled a while ago and I had no idea that it was going to be in such a busy month for me with my health.

This past week I had my check-in with my dermatologist. I knew this appointment was going to be pretty simple because it really was to just make sure that I’m doing ok and I don’t feel like I need any adjustments in the treatment plan for my autoimmune condition. And I have actually been doing a lot better with this condition. I haven’t been having as many flare-ups as I have in the past and the ones I have tend to be less severe than what they were before. And because these flare-ups can be extremely painful, I’m so grateful that they aren’t as bad as they were before we started this plan.

The timing of this appointment was actually perfect because I was having one of my rare but bad flare-ups come up right before I saw my doctor. This one was in a really inconvenient location, right near where the seam is on the sleeve of any shirt I wear. It was painful to begin with, but having a seam always against it made it even worse. I knew that before, my dermatologist had injected my flare-up with a medication that helps to make it go away faster, so my plan was to ask about that to see if it would be an option for this one as well.

And as expected, the appointment was very quick and easy. My doctor agrees that my condition is much more under control than it was even at my last appointment. It could be the medications are helping more or other lifestyle changes I’ve been making are making a difference. Whatever it is, it’s a good thing and I’m glad that he agrees that things are much better for me. And I showed him my one bad flare-up, and he said that he could inject it to help it. It can cause it to heal a bit weirdly, but I didn’t care because my focus was making it less painful.

I still hate needles, so requesting to get a shot is a bit crazy to me. But I knew it would help me a lot so it was worth it. And the shot this time wasn’t as bad as it was before. I don’t know if it was easier because it was a different location this time or if I’m doing better with shots now that I have a new medication that I have to inject myself. But I was glad to not fully blackout during the shot and get through it quickly.

Everything else in the appointment was pretty easy. I had to be prescribed one new cream due to an ongoing skin condition that should be easy to use than the pills I took the last time I had to deal with it. And that was that for the appointment. I don’t have to go back until January, so I’m hoping that things will still continue to improve with my autoimmune condition and that my next appointment goes just as smoothly.

After my appointment was done, I had to go to the pharmacy to get my new prescription. The wait was really long after dropping off the new prescription, so I took advantage of having a long wait and got my flu shot while waiting. This wasn’t as easy as the injection at my appointment, but it went much better than what my last few flu shots were like. I struggled a bit more with feeling like I was going to pass out, but I stayed awake and that’s a win for me. And so far, I’m not having any side effects which I usually have after any vaccines. I’m hoping that I don’t have any coming up, but it’s been a few days so I think it’s a pretty safe bet that I will be feeling ok from this vaccine other than a really sore arm.

I’ve had a lot of needles to deal with this past month between the new medication, blood draws, injections, and vaccines. I’m glad that it seems to be a bit easy for me to tolerate them now and I hope that this trend continues. But I also hope that I don’t have another month filled with doctor’s appointments like I did this month. It was a lot to do, but it also allowed me to get on top of multiple health issues and I can feel much better about things now.

And Yet Another Doctor Appointment (or At Least This One Showed Me What I Already Knew)

There are so many assumptions that are made about health based on appearance. I know that you can’t tell health by appearance, but I still feel lucky that I don’t fit the stereotypes that people or doctors make. I have normal bloodwork when I have my blood drawn unless it’s due to something odd (like how my liver tumor affected my liver enzymes). I have low blood sugar and typically I have very low blood pressure. Historically, my blood pressure has been low enough that doctors will take it a few times to make sure. It would be a normal low for someone who is thinner, but I know doctors think it must be wrong because someone who looks like me shouldn’t have that low of a number. But that’s been my normal for as long as I could remember until recently.

I don’t know what changed, but something happened where I started to get outlandishly high blood pressure readings. These weren’t high readings where people have to be seen by a doctor to get put on medication. They are high readings that you wouldn’t be alive to have. So obviously, they aren’t accurate because I feel fine and I’m alive. But it still put red flags in my medical record.

I also sometimes have higher readings before an appointment compared to after. I am always nervous before an appointment, so I know that can affect things. But when my doctors let me do a check after the appointment, they are always back to my normal low. And since they go back to that, my crazy high ones are something to joke about.

But recently, I had an appointment where we couldn’t get my blood pressure to be in a normal range. They were coming up high, but not deadly high like before. So there was a reason for my doctors to worry. It seemed off compared to every other check I’ve had, but because they couldn’t get it to be ok they said I needed to go to the blood pressure clinic to be looked at.

I was able to get an appointment for that before work last week, and I knew it would be a simple appointment because all they were going to do was check my blood pressure. I didn’t have to see a doctor after that. Even though I was sure I would be fine, I was still nervous that maybe something had changed with me and that I did have a new medical issue.

Getting my blood pressure done at the clinic was a different experience compared to getting it done before an appointment. They made sure I was positioned correctly, which included bringing in a stool for me to put my feet on. Normally, my feet dangle a bit because of being short, and that can mess up a reading. They also had the cuff on my arm for 5 minutes while I rested before the first check happened. That way, I would be calm and relaxed. And the machine was set to do 3 checks back to back so they could look at what the average was in case one happened to be high and the others were low.

Because I had to wait before it started and they did multiple checks in a row, I was there for about 15 minutes before I was done. But as soon as the nurse came back after all the checks were done, they confirmed I had nothing to worry about and my blood pressure was still low. It’s a little higher than my normal, but that still puts it in the normal range. And there is no explanation or reason for why it might have been high before my other appointments. It could be because the cuff wasn’t on correctly. It might have been because my feet weren’t flat on the ground or they rushed doing the test so I was stressed and anxious. But that’s the reason why someone is sent to the blood pressure clinic. They can check it in a different way and it can end up being a more accurate reading than something that is just a small part of a bigger appointment.

I’m glad that everything ended up being ok for me and that I’m still just as healthy as I was before. I’ve still got another doctor’s appointment to go to this month (unless another one is added). So I’m finally almost through this crazy month of working on my health.

Getting Through A Few More Doctor Appointments (or Hoping For Some Positive Outcomes)

I continued with my numerous doctor appointments this week. I had one in-person appointment and one phone appointment so far this week. And this weekend I think I will have some medical testing done. Like I said in my other post, I have a lot of appointments this month and they just happened to pile up. But I’m working on getting through them one by one. But they are all for good reasons and I’m hoping that through all these appointments I will have some plans for how things are going to move forward for me.

My first appointment this week was my in-person appointment. This was with someone in bariatric medicine, which was through a referral from my therapist. There are a few new medications that can help with weight loss, even though they are used off-label, and I wanted to learn more about them. My therapist couldn’t go over those with me since they weren’t her expertise, but she knew that bariatric medicine would be able to do that.

I was a bit nervous going into that appointment. Maybe it’s just me, but I have always thought of bariatric medicine as weight loss surgery. And I knew that I was not interested in doing that. There are a lot of reasons why I don’t want surgery, and I didn’t want a doctor trying to convince me otherwise. I know that surgery is usually the option with the best results, but it just wasn’t something I was willing to do.

Fortunately, my appointment went a lot better than I expected. I really liked the doctor that I met with and she did discuss the various options with me, including surgical ones. But once I said that I was not interested in surgical options, she didn’t discuss it further. We went over the history of my weight, various diets I’ve attempted, and my eating disorder. She was very clear that nothing she could help me with would help with my eating disorder, and I knew that. I take Vyvanse to help with that, but I think my history of dieting and other weight-related issues has really messed with my metabolism. I can have what should be perfect food days for multiple days in a row and I won’t see any weight loss. There should be at least a little weight loss when I know I’m not overeating. Or when I’m sick and not really able to eat, I don’t lose weight when I know most people do. So I wanted to find a tool that might be able to help my body lose some weight while I do the rest of the work myself.

Going into my appointment, I specifically wanted to discuss a few different medications that all were essentially the same thing but with different dosages or protocols. The one downside to these is that they are all injectable medications and I really hated that idea. But I think my desire to see if this would work was higher than my fear so I was willing to try it. And after going over my medical history and other information, the doctor agreed that one of these injectable options could be something that helps me. It’s not a guarantee, but I at least want to try it.

So I was prescribed the medication and then had to be taught how to use the injectable pen. It’s similar to what an EpiPen looks like, but there are multiple doses in each one so I had to learn how to select the correct dose and change out the needle. This is something I will need to inject once a week, and I started the same day I saw the doctor. I was terrified to do it, but I watched all the instructional videos and did it while laying down on my bed in case I passed out. And I was shocked that I didn’t pass out! I was shaking pretty badly before and after the shot, but I think that was just nerves and nothing else to worry about.

I hope that each injection is as easy as this first one was. I won’t have my next one until next week, so at least I have time between each one. And because of how this medication can affect you when you start it, you start with a dosage that is below the therapeutic dose. So I might not notice results for a little while as I build up to the dose that is supposed to work.

My second appointment this week was my phone appointment with a general medicine doctor. This was to get a referral to orthopedics because of the pain I’ve experienced recently. I’m feeling much better now, but I also know it’s better to get checked out since it’s been several years since I’ve seen anyone in orthopedics. I didn’t know if this phone appointment would be all I needed for the referral, but the doctor I spoke to could see my history of working with different doctors in orthopedics as well as the notes that I will likely need more surgeries. So she put in my referral without asking too much or needing me to come in to see her first. And I’ve already spoken to orthopedics and I’ll be seeing them in about a month. I think just making sure I’m ok and having a new game plan will be smart since I know I will need additional surgeries at some point.

And the other things I have to get done are medical tests related to the appointments I had this week. I need to do some blood work for the doctor I saw in bariatric medicine just to have some baseline information since this new medication has some rare side effects and it’s important to have a bit of monitoring around that. And I also need to do a general x-ray of my hips to prepare for my appointment with orthopedics next month. I know that in the past, my hip issues are not seen on x-rays, but that’s the process when you start with a new doctor. And after my appointment, they might order an MRI since that’s how they can really check how things are. I don’t have to do either of those tests immediately, but I would like to get them out of the way so that’s why I’m trying to get them done this weekend.

Over the next 4 weeks, I have 3 more appointments. I don’t know if I’ll have more than that, especially with how quickly appointments piled up already, but at least I’m getting all this done so I can make sure that I’m doing the things I need to do for myself and I’m as healthy as I can be. And hopefully, this new medication will help me with losing weight, and when I see the new doctor in orthopedics I will have a good plan figured out for my next steps.

A Month Full Of Doctor Appointments (or I Guess This Is A Health-Focused Month)

For most of my adult life, I have tried to spread out doctor appointments so I had them throughout the year and not bunched up together. For once-a-year appointments, I know they say to make them around your birthday so you don’t forget, but I would do various holidays to remember to schedule them. It’s rare that I have a lot of appointments at all once unless they are all for the same issue. For example, when I had blood work for my MRI one week, my MRI the next week, and my follow-up appointment the week after. Even during the pandemic, I’ve been trying to keep things spread out when I have the option to do so.

But for some reason, this month is going to be filled with various doctor appointments. Some of these were scheduled already, some are ones I have been waiting for a referral for, and some are ones that I realized I needed to do and just scheduled as quickly as possible. And last week, I kicked off a month of appointments with one that I tried to schedule as quickly as I could. And that was to get my eyes checked.

The last time I got my eyes checked, it was at the beginning of the pandemic. It was right after everything in LA had shut down, but I still had my appointment to go to. It was very weird and eerie because I knew we were supposed to be staying home, but I also needed this appointment because I was out of contact lenses and couldn’t get more without seeing a doctor. If I didn’t need to go for that reason, I would have stayed home. And I remember how everything just seemed off. There weren’t cars on the road because people were staying home. I’m used to seeing a ton of people in the waiting room and there was nobody there. Everyone was being hypervigilant and I was worried that being out for that appointment was maybe too risky.

That appointment was over 2 years ago, and contact prescriptions are only good for 2 years at a time. So when I realized I was almost out of contact lenses again, I knew it was time to schedule my next appointment. I know that I probably should be a bit better about trying to go 2 years apart instead of something like 2 years and 6 months, but I also know that these appointments are mainly to confirm my vision hasn’t changed. Of course, it’s important to have other eye health checked out, but the appointments I schedule are mainly vision checks.

Even though the pandemic is very different now than it was in March 2020, a lot of what I experienced at this appointment was the same. I scheduled it to be very early so I could go before work and not be late to log in. There weren’t too many cars on the road and there was nobody else in the waiting room. But I think the lack of patients in the waiting room was more about how early my appointment was and not because people aren’t going in for their appointments.

I expected my vision to be the same and for there to be nothing much to discuss with the doctor, and I was right. I did have a little trouble with the vision test because wearing a mask while doing it meant the little lenses in the machine would fog up quite a bit. I was having to wipe them off every time I looked through them to say if version one or two was better for me. It wasn’t too annoying because the doctor and I both were laughing a bit about how ridiculous it was. It did make the appointment take longer, but not by much.

When the eye exam was done, I went to order new contacts and I got a spare pair of contacts that were a different brand because I had told the doctor that I was wearing my last pair. I didn’t intend to let things get like that, but I didn’t realize I was out of contacts until I put in my last pair. I thought I had another box left and panicked a bit when I realized I was wrong. But at least now I have some backup ones I can use if necessary. But the ones I ordered should be arriving in another week or two.

I’m glad this appointment went well. Some of the other appointments I have coming up this month are a bit more stressful or I’m worried about how things will go. I know everything will be ok, but I still get stressed about the possibility of finding out something weird at an appointment. But at least for this first one this month, it was very routine and easy and I’m hoping this is a trend that will continue throughout the month.

At Least My Skin Is Doing Better (or Not Escaping An Appointment Without A Needle)

It’s been a bit of time since my last dermatologist appointment. I was supposed to go back about a month ago, but then my doctor got sick and the appointment had to be rescheduled. Because I have to work around my work schedule, it took a bit of time before I could get another appointment. But I knew nothing in my appointment would be urgent, so I wasn’t too concerned about that. And if there was something that changed and I needed to go in quickly, I could always call back and see how soon I could go in.

My last appointment was before the surgery on my foot, so I knew that this appointment would be to see how things were going. And of course, it would be an appointment to check about my autoimmune condition and to make sure that things are going well for me.

I was able to get an early morning appointment before work, so that was a bit different from going after work. But I figured that it should be an easy appointment since I wouldn’t have to deal with any more freezing treatments on my foot. I was hoping it would be a relatively pain-free appointment, but I never know going in if there will be something unexpected.

The appointment started with going over how my foot was doing. I don’t know if my dermatologist was happy that the podiatrist decided to cut it out of my foot, but what’s done is done. I do have a little scar tissue on my foot, but it’s not that bad. Plus, there’s no guarantee that if I kept doing the freezing treatments I wouldn’t have scar tissue after that. I didn’t know how many more treatments it would have taken. And I am glad that I’m done with the treatments because I had been going through them for so long. So while this wasn’t the treatment plan my dermatologist wanted, I think he’s glad that I’m all done and my foot is fine.

Then we discussed my autoimmune condition. I’ve been taking the same medication for a while, and it is helping a lot. My dermatologist said that my skin looks the best that he’s seen it and I have a much lower stage of the condition than I did before. The ultimate goal is remission, but that’s not always possible. But these are really encouraging signs that I might be there one day.

Even if my skin wasn’t looking better, I’m in significantly less pain so that has made me happy. The pain of this condition has been one of the worst things for me, and to not be in as much pain is so nice. While I want my skin to look amazing too, the pain was a bigger concern. While I am in much less pain, I did still have one really bad flare that was causing me quite a bit of pain. I do have a few different things I can do that help with the pain and make it not as bad, but it’s not a guarantee they will work. And since I only had one really bad flare, compared to multiple ones like I had in the past, my dermatologist offered to inject the spot to help the pain and to decrease the inflammatory response.

While I was looking forward to a pain-free appointment, I was curious about this and decided to go for it. I knew it would hurt and that it still might not go away, but this was a good chance to try a treatment option for any really bad flares I might have in the future. I don’t know if it was because it was a needle or because the flare was really inflamed and already painful, but the injection hurt more than any freezing treatment hurt me. I didn’t faint, but I did black out. I think the blackout was more about the needle and not the pain, but the pain did make me tear up. I think I shocked my doctor with how much it hurt me, but he’s also always been surprised by how little the freezing treatments hurt. He also said that because this flare was so bad and the skin was already tender, it might have been worse than what others who get this injection experience.

This injection won’t necessarily make the flare go away, but it will make it much better. And just like how I’m doing overall, being in less pain is the priority for me. Of course, I would love to get into remission and I know that having surgery on some of the worst spots is the best option for me in the future, but I’m not planning on the surgery just yet. I do think I will do the surgery eventually, but it’s not in my future plans for now. I want to see how I continue to do on the medications since they are helping and getting as close to remission as possible before taking more permanent steps.

It did suck getting a shot while I was there since I was hoping I wouldn’t have anything that hurt during this appointment, but overall it was a really positive checkup. I don’t have to go back for several months, which is the longest time between appointments that I’ve had in a long time. And maybe things will be even better for me by then. I know that when I started the medications I wasn’t seeing progress even though I was told there was progress. I’m glad that I can tell things are getting better and I’m not just having to trust what my doctor is telling me. Because feeling the progress and improvement in my own body is the most important thing for me.

Not What I Expected From This Appointment (or I Have Some New Accessories For Now)

After my last appointment with my dermatologist, I was told he wanted me to see a podiatrist. My dermatologist had some pretty specific questions about my foot and why the treatments weren’t working the way they should be. His main concern was if the skin in my heel was too thick for the freezing treatment to get into my skin enough to work. So when I set up my appointment with the podiatrist, I figured he would look at my foot, tell me if things were normal or not, and send me on my way.

Well, that’s not exactly how the appointment went.

Pretty much right away, he told me that there was nothing wrong with the skin on my feet. He did tell me that wearing flip flops and flexible shoes isn’t the best option for me, but I also know that for my hips it’s easier to wear flexible shoes. So I might always have thicker heels but that doesn’t really bother me. I use good lotion on my feet and I never thought this could be an issue until my dermatologist said something.

I also know another concern my dermatologist had was about why the last treatment was so painful for me. I think that might have been just random because by the time I went to see the podiatrist, the pain was almost gone and it’s what my foot normally felt like.

So within the first minutes of this appointment, the podiatrist told me there was nothing wrong. But he also said that because this had been taking a while he thought doing some treatment while I was there would be best. And he gave me options and explained the potential treatment plan. The first option was for him to do another freezing treatment. He said that I probably still had quite a few treatments to go before it was gone, but I would know what to expect with pain and recovery. Another option was a type of cream that was more intense and extreme, but I would have to do it multiple times and it is much more painful than the freezing. And the final option for a treatment while I was there was for him to surgically remove the wart from my foot. He said that it would be almost a guarantee for a permanent result. There is always a chance it could come back, but it would be very unlikely. But the downside to having it cut out would be a week or two of recovery.

I really thought the appointment would be an exam and nothing else, so the idea of doing an in-office surgical thing shocked me. But at the same time I knew this could be the easiest thing in the long run for me. So after asking a bunch of questions about what the recovery would be like, I decided to just go for it.

This was a bit different from when the thing on my face was removed by my dermatologist. I still got a shot to numb me, but instead of a little punch incision this was more of cutting around an area. The numbing shot wasn’t fun and I hated the feeling of the pressure while he was cutting into my foot, but at least I wasn’t in that much pain. And it was only a few minutes before he was bandaging up my foot.

Because of the location and size of the cut, I have to stay off of my heel for the next week or two. I currently have a boot for my foot and crutches to use. It was weird using the crutches because when I used them the last time, it was for my hip surgery and I learned how to use them for the opposite side. But at least this time I won’t be using them too long. And while I’m in my house I can just walk on my toes on my left foot and not use the crutches. So my plan isn’t to go that many places until I can put weight on my heel again.

This wasn’t how I thought this week would go and it is changing up what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks, but at least this might be all I need to do and I won’t have to do any more freezing treatments when I see my dermatologist. And since I don’t have a lot of plans outside my house, I didn’t have to change too much with my schedule. It is frustrating to not be able to do things I was hoping to do, but I’m trying to be kind to myself and make sure I focus on healing so this is in my past before I know it.

Another Doctor Appointment Afternoon (or Not Seeing The Results Yet)

I’ve been going to my dermatologist regularly for a while now. Originally, it was for my autoimmune condition and seeing how to get things into remission. And while I was there I did bring up a few other concerns and questions I had. Most were able to be resolved quickly, but a few others have become things that are recurring issues that I work on each time I see my doctor. And when I saw my dermatologist earlier this week, working on the ongoing issues is exactly what I was there for.

We first went over my autoimmune condition. Things are still better than they were before we started working on it, but they aren’t as good as when I was on the other medication that I had to stop. But any improvement is a good thing for me and I am happy seeing that things aren’t as bad as they were when I was at the worst. I still hope that things will keep getting better, and that’s exactly what my doctor and I are working on.

This part of my appointment was easy. The only change we are making is increasing the medication that I’m currently taking to try to put me into remission. I was taking it twice a day before, and now I’m going to be taking it three times a day. This medication is easier on my body, so I’m not too worried about adding another dose. I do have to eat when I take it, so this will also force me to remember to eat lunch. So I guess that’s a good thing too.

And the other ongoing issue I’ve been working on with my dermatologist is a very stubborn wart I have on the bottom of my foot. This time, we know for sure that’s what it is (unlike the one I had on my face that turned out to be a benign tumor). And it can be tough to treat and have it disappear. But one of the reasons I see my dermatologist as often as I do is to get treatments closer together and not waiting months between each one. And right now, the only treatment we have been doing has been to freeze it.

Freezing a wart isn’t fun, but I seem to tolerate it better than a lot of people. I don’t get that because I seem to have a lower pain tolerance than others, but maybe I’m just used to this. Normally, I don’t feel pain while the freezing is happening, but my foot is very sore for several days after. But going into this appointment, I had mentioned how my foot was actually sore a lot longer after the last treatment. And then when my doctor started to freeze it, it was some of the worst pain I’ve felt. I was shocked at how bad it was hurting me. My doctor did take a few breaks so I could let some of the pain subside before continuing. But he had to do the maximum time to hopefully make this treatment work as well as it could.

These warts can take lots of treatments to fully go away. He thinks I might be about halfway done with the treatments it will take for me. But at the same time, he has some other concerns about my foot that he thinks might be preventing the freezing from working as well as it could. So he recommended a few products I could get over the counter that might help my foot in general and maybe make the treatments more effective in the future. But he also wants me to see a podiatrist to make sure there isn’t another issue with my foot causing me this much pain now and making the treatment process take so long.

This might be nothing or there might be something I need to do so that this wart will finally be gone. I’d rather get checked out by a specialist and find out it’s nothing than waste time when there’s no way the current plan will work. So my dermatologist put in a referral for me so I can schedule that appointment. And my next appointment with my dermatologist is a bit further away than normal to give me time to get in to see the podiatrist and work on a plan with them.

It is frustrating that this process has taken as long as it has, but I also know that if I wasn’t in the middle of it I would just be doing this all later. So I just have to keep seeing my doctor and going through this and hopefully it will be in my past soon.