Tag Archives: health issues

One Busy Week And One Unscheduled Week (or I Guess This Is Balance)

Posted on April 7, 2023 | Comments Off on One Busy Week And One Unscheduled Week (or I Guess This Is Balance)

Last week for me was a bit of a busy week. I had some really fun things that I got to do and I was around a lot of people. It felt like a week I would have had before the pandemic. And I was surprised that I wasn’t feeling burnout after being so social since that’s something I’ve experienced before. I was just living my life and loving having things to do and being around others. But I guess my new way of balancing is having one week on and one week off because this week has been the exact opposite.

I knew this week might be a tough one for me because I was expecting to have my pain and nausea kick in. And it did do that right after I got home from Santa Barbara (I was so glad that I wasn’t feeling horrible while I was with my family). And this month, it has been extremely bad. I have been taking all the medications that I have available and it hasn’t been taking the edge off. I’ve been working a lot from my bed because it’s uncomfortable to sit up at my desk for too long. And I’ve been using my heat pad so much that I’ve been turning on my air conditioning even though it’s not hot out, I’m just getting overheated from having the heating pad on me for so many hours in the day.

I’m glad I didn’t have anything really scheduled for this week because I just wouldn’t have been up for doing it. And I’ve also been exhausted so I would probably be tired if I were doing something and not enjoying it the way I should. As much as I’ve been trying to get enough sleep each night, I’m not sleeping well and I can see that in the app I use to track my sleep. I’m tossing and turning all night and I feel like I’m dragging all day. It’s not that I’m going to bed too late, I’m just not sleeping when I should be.

I know that this week is not necessarily normal for me. I also know that every month I can have a week or two like this. It’s always just frustrating and annoying when they are as bad as this week has been so far. I don’t have a lot of motivation to do stuff, so I have to put my focus on doing things that I have to do like working. But anything outside of my required things each day seems like too much effort. I’m trying to not be upset with myself for acting like this because clearly, my body has needed this week to not be a social one. But when I was so happy last week with how being out in the world again made me feel, this can feel a bit depressing.

I don’t have any plans for this weekend yet, but I also don’t want to make any plans until I know how I feel. I might need this weekend to rest and relax or I might be craving being social again and will make plans at that point. It’s so hard to know what I’ll want to do when I don’t know how I’ll be feeling. And I also worry because I could be feeling ok one moment and then I start experiencing really bad nausea again. So it can be better to lay low instead of making plans and having to cancel them. And hopefully, it won’t be that much longer before I feel ok again and I can get back to trying to make some fun plans.

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Default ThumbnailMaking Busy Days Busier (or I Guess I Like To Maximize Only Certain Days) Default ThumbnailSeeing Friends In Random Places (or Unscheduled Hangouts) Default ThumbnailBusy Workout Week (or Maybe Overdoing It A Bit) Default ThumbnailIt’s Another Short Post Type Of Week (or Sorry About This) Default ThumbnailBeing Social And Out And About When In Pain (or Of Course This Would Happen When I Am A Bit Busier) Default ThumbnailNot Much To Write About This Week (or Busy But Not Doing Much)

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

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Being Social And Out And About When In Pain (or Of Course This Would Happen When I Am A Bit Busier)

Posted on March 10, 2023 | Comments Off on Being Social And Out And About When In Pain (or Of Course This Would Happen When I Am A Bit Busier)

I haven’t been busy in quite some time, at least as far as my social life goes. I’ve been busy with work and things like that, but I haven’t been doing a lot after work and usually just lay low most days. I am trying to work on fixing that, but it’s not as easy as just saying I want to be busier. And of course, whenever I want to start planning things, I just lose motivation when I’m done with work for the day because I’m usually pretty exhausted since I get up so early. But I’m trying and sometimes it works for me.

But even though I say I want to be busier, there are plenty of times I’m so grateful that I don’t have much to do outside of work. Whenever I’m dealing with pain and nausea, I really want to just stay in bed and rest when I can. I do still go to my workouts and I still work, but I don’t do much else. I work from my bed or from the floor when I need to. Being able to move and work where I’m most comfortable when I’m not feeling well is just one of the reasons I’m so grateful that I work from home.

And of course, getting busier just happened to line up with when I’m dealing with a significant amount of pain and nausea.

I’ll share in my posts next week about what I’m doing, but in normal times I wouldn’t consider myself that busy. But I have a few things happening that cannot be postponed so if I want to be a part of them I have to do them now. And when I knew that this week was likely going to be a bad week, I was hoping that maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Sometimes I expect a lot of pain and nausea and it really doesn’t kick in that much. I will always have some that I have to deal with, but when it’s tolerable or manageable with medications, it’s not that bad. I’m uncomfortable and maybe a bit awkward if I’m breathing through a wave of symptoms, but it’s nothing like when it’s really bad.

Fortunately, even though my pain and nausea are pretty bad right now, it’s not the worst I’ve dealt with. I am able to get out of bed and the symptoms are lessened by my medications instead of feeling like they are the same whether or not I take something. But I’m uncomfortable and sometimes the best way to feel better is to be in really weird positions in a chair or on the ground. That’s not going to be possible at the things I’m going to. But I’m going to do everything I can to feel ok when I go out and am around other people. At one thing, I’ll be around just my friends so if I’m really not able to feel ok I can let people know and they will understand. But I still want to feel ok so it’s not a big deal or something that I have to work around.

At least I’m not so busy that it will be overwhelming and it’s only a few events I need to worry about. And they aren’t back-to-back days so I’ll be able to rest in between them and maybe those rest days will help me feel better for the next time I have to be around others. And of course, when all my symptoms should be ending, my calendar is pretty empty outside of my usual obligations. But maybe I’ll be able to add a few more things so I can continue working on doing more outside of my house and I’ll be more up for it when I know I’ll be feeling ok.

I know that I’ve been saying I want to do more things and get out of the house more and I also know that pain and nausea can be 2 weeks a month of my life. So it shouldn’t be so surprising that they happen to overlap. I do wish it wasn’t like this, but I’m going to do my best to make the most of the fun that I have coming up!

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Default ThumbnailSleeping Away The Day (or Sometimes The Pain and Nausea Are Just Too Bad) Default ThumbnailEnding Some Pain and Starting Other Pain (or At Least I’m Stocked Up) Default ThumbnailDealing With The Pain (or Not All Pain Is The Same) Default ThumbnailStill Feeling Sick (or This Will Be Another Short Post) Default ThumbnailNeeding To Take Care Of Myself (or Not Ignoring All Pain) Default ThumbnailDoubling Up On Pain (or Physical and Mental Pain Together)

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Getting Out Of A Doctor Appointment (or I’m Lucky I Was Listened To)

Posted on March 2, 2023 | Comments Off on Getting Out Of A Doctor Appointment (or I’m Lucky I Was Listened To)

Considering all the medical things I deal with and how many recurring doctor appointments I have, I’ve been pretty lucky with having good doctors who listen to me and don’t make assumptions. This isn’t always the case and I’ve had some doctors who aren’t as helpful or won’t believe either my symptoms or my lab results, but I usually can avoid those doctors after they act that way.

In the past, I wasted time trying to get doctors to believe me when things aren’t what they expect. For example, I have low cholesterol, low blood sugar, and normal blood pressure. But because there are assumptions about people who are a certain weight or size, I have had doctors wonder if the results were correct. Or if I’m seeing a new doctor, they look at my past test results and think that they must not be accurate anymore so they make me do all the same things again to prove to them that I am healthy. Things have gotten better over the years, but there are still some doctors who believe that weight is the reason behind any ailment and won’t budge or look into what the cause could potentially be.

I’m always nervous when I’m meeting a new doctor or seeing someone I haven’t seen before. For example, when I went to urgent care recently, everyone there was new to me and they don’t know my history. I know that I will always have to do some of the basic vitals when I go to urgent care, but sometimes because of the situation, they aren’t normal results for me.

When I was in urgent care last month, part of the intake was to do my blood pressure and heart rate. I know that my blood pressure reading can be weird sometimes. It has come back impossibly high, not just high like what a living person could have but high where I should be dead. Those results are obviously not accurate, and I’ve learned things I need to be mindful of when I get my blood pressure taken. One of the biggest things I need to do is make sure my feet are on the ground. I usually can’t touch the ground with my feet when I’m sitting back the way they want me to be, so I need something for my feet otherwise I know the results won’t be right. And when I was in urgent care, I tried to tell the nurse that so I could get my blood pressure taken correctly. They didn’t have anything I could use, but my results weren’t high so I figured that was the end of that.

Then a week later, I got something in the mail saying I had a doctor’s appointment I didn’t schedule. I called my insurance and found out that it was for me to go to the blood pressure clinic again because of dangerously high blood pressure in urgent care. That didn’t make sense to me since it was in the normal range, so I looked at my online records and realized that there was a typo in my vitals so it looked a lot higher than it was. I asked if I could get that appointment removed because of that error, but they couldn’t do it unless I spoke to a doctor.

So I had another phone appointment this week to discuss what happened. I’m so glad that even though this was a doctor I didn’t know, he listened to what I said and found other things that seemed off about my vitals from that appointment. He said that my blood pressure should have been taken at another time since I was in pain and my heart rate was very high. There were signs that I wouldn’t have normal blood pressure, even if my feet were on the ground, so I shouldn’t have been referred to the blood pressure clinic. I don’t think he really cared that there was a typo in my records because the other information showed him that I was ok. And there is a history of recent blood pressure reads where it is normal so having just one high one with all the other information shouldn’t have triggered the referral.

I was totally prepared to explain a lot about why this seemed wrong, and I was lucky that this doctor already found things that didn’t seem right and I didn’t have to make that much of an effort to get the appointment removed. He did say that I should get my blood pressure done at my next in-person appointment, which I always have to do so it will be done soon enough. And of course, if it comes back high then, I might have to go back to the blood pressure clinic.

It’s nice when I really don’t have to put in as much work as expected to have a doctor hear me. This should be how it always is and I’m fortunate that it’s like this most of the time. It’s only the rare time now that I have to stand up for myself more and I’m glad that it’s become less and less frequent.

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Another Virtual Therapy Appointment (or Preparing For Potential Changes)

Posted on February 16, 2023 | Comments Off on Another Virtual Therapy Appointment (or Preparing For Potential Changes)

My therapy appointments have been every 6 months for a long time and ever since the pandemic, they have also been virtual appointments. I did some virtual appointments before the pandemic, but they weren’t every appointment because there was a rule that you had to be seen in person every so often. I’ve been grateful they have been video appointments that I can do from home because that makes them very easy to fit into my work day. I just take my lunch break when my appointment happens so I don’t have to worry about much. If I had to drive in and wait for my appointment time, I might still be able to fit it into a lunch break, but it would be harder to do. So keeping them virtual has worked out perfectly for me.

Because of the timing of when these appointments switched to being every 6 months, my appointments are now around my birthday and half-birthday. And the one this month just happened to fall on Valentine’s Day. I found that kind of funny, but I also didn’t mind having my appointment then since I knew it would be a pretty routine check-in.

And for the most part, it was very routine. My therapist made sure that I was still doing ok in general and I did let her know I was getting over a cold so if I sounded down it was because of that and not my mood. She confirmed I was doing ok on my current dosage of the medication I have been taking for years, which I am. And we discussed the new medication I’ve been taking and how it’s been working for me. She’s happy that I’m seeing success with it but was frustrated for me about the medication shortage. But she agreed that there’s not really anything I can do other than to be patient and pick up my refill as soon as it is available.

After my check-in, my therapist gave me a heads up that the medication she prescribes me might have a shortage soon. For some reason, of all the medications that do similar things, all the doctors at the hospital are switching their patients to the one that I am taking. So there will be a higher demand for it than there was before. We discussed what this shortage could mean for me, but hopefully it won’t affect too much if it happens. And if I have to go a week or so without my medication, I would be able to start back at the same dosage I’m already on and I wouldn’t have to worry about starting at a low dosage and working back up. I won’t need to order my refill for another month or so, so there is a chance there won’t be a shortage when I have my refill in. But she wanted to make sure I knew so I could be prepared.

And she also gave me a heads up that I may have to go to occasional in-person appointments again. My next appointment in August will be virtual, but the one in about a year might have to be in the office. She’s not sure if that will be necessary because the policy is about making sure patients see a doctor in person at least once a year, and I do see other doctors in person on a regular basis. So I might not have to go in for therapy. And a year is a long time from now, so a lot of policies could change in that time. But just like with the medication shortage, she wanted me to be prepared for this potential change and not have it seem sudden or surprise me. I really appreciated that.

That was about it for my therapy appointment. It was simple and easy, just like it’s been for a while now. And I guess I’ll just have to see if I’m affected by this other medication shortage in the next few months and if in the future I’m back to going to in-person appointments again. But maybe nothing will change and my appointment in 6 months will be another boring and routine check-in, which sounds perfect to me!

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Another Medication Shortage (or I’m Feeling More Calm This Time)

Posted on February 15, 2023 | 1 comment

I’ve recently dealt with a few different medication shortages. I understand if I’m taking something that a lot of other people are taking, this can happen. I don’t understand why the manufacturer didn’t plan for something like this because they should have realized when a medication is approved for something that affects so many people that they would have increased interest. But there are a lot of things about the medical community that I don’t understand and that I believe are done more about profit than healthcare.

Every time I’ve had a medication shortage, it does get resolved in one way or another. Sometimes it means I have to miss a week or so of medication and sometimes the medication is back in stock before I run out so I just have to pick it up at the last minute but I’m not missing a dosage. There’s nothing I can do to change the situation. I order a refill as soon as I can (which is usually a week before I run out) and I pick up my medication when it’s available. Sometimes it’s on time and sometimes it’s not. But I don’t stockpile or do anything else that could make a shortage worse. I just take things as planned.

With my injectable medication, the first time I had experienced a shortage things stressed me out. In the end, my dosage was increased early so I could get a refill sooner, and that brought some other issues for me but in the end, I’m glad that’s how it worked out. But not knowing what was going to happen made me worry and I didn’t know how my body might react when I missed a dose, especially since it was a new medication for me. I don’t know exactly how I reacted since when I started it up again, my dosage was higher and those side effects were intense.

The next shortage I had with that medication ended up not affecting anything because I was able to pick it up right before my next dose was supposed to be so I never missed anything. I was a bit worried about what would happen if I had to take another week off, but I’m glad I didn’t have to experience that. I had no idea how long the shortage would take since all I could find out was that it was out of stock, so it was a big relief when I got the text alert that it was ready for me to pick up and I could go that same day.

I ordered my next refill this past weekend because I knew my last injection with my current pen would be on Monday this week. Originally, the system said it would be available to pick up mid-week, but then I got an alert that they are experiencing another shortage. I have no idea if this shortage will be resolved before I am supposed to take my next dose on Monday or if I’ll end up missing a week again. But for whatever reason, I’m feeling much more relaxed about the situation this time.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been noticing the medication working more and more. I’m not experiencing as many side effects which is nice too. Even though it is working, I’m not worried about maybe missing a dose. I know that I will pick things back up as soon as I can if I can’t take it this coming Monday and I don’t have any reason to believe that it won’t continue to work. Maybe the stress in the past was because I wasn’t experiencing all of the positive outcomes yet and the stress was also about worrying if this was the right thing for me to take or not. But now, I know I’m doing the right thing and that I will just continue doing it as soon as I’m able to.

I hope that this shortage isn’t something I have to deal with every time I get a refill, but I know it might be like this for a while. The company that makes it hasn’t really increased how much they can make and more and more people are being prescribed this. Fortunately, it’s not a medication that anyone needs to stay alive, but it is something that helps so much and it’s unfortunate when you don’t have that help, even if it’s temporary. But all I can do is continue to try my best with the other things I have been doing and know that as soon as I can get my refill I’ll be back on track with things again.

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I’m Not Used To Being This Sick (or I Know This Could Be Worse)

Posted on February 7, 2023 | Comments Off on I’m Not Used To Being This Sick (or I Know This Could Be Worse)

Last week, I started to have a bit of a scratchy throat. That used to mean that I was about to get sick, but it usually started very soon after that feeling started and it was slightly different from what I was experiencing last week. So I thought maybe I was having an issue with allergies or something else. I honestly didn’t think that I was getting sick. But after a few days, it was clear that I was getting sick and I had to work on taking care of myself.

Fortunately for me, I work from home so I spent Friday working from my bed. I also had a friend who was able to run out and get cold medicine for me because my head was so foggy that I knew I wasn’t safe to drive. I also took a Covid test since I knew a few friends who thought they had a cold but it turned out to be Covid. And if that’s what I got, I wanted to get anti-virals right away. But the test was a very clear negative.

So I knew this was just a bad cold and not something worse.

But a bad cold isn’t great either. Over the weekend, I spent almost all my time resting. I wanted to get better, and I knew that resting my body was the best thing for me to do. I tried to eat a little since I know your body needs fuel to get over a cold. But between congestion and my sore throat, it was tough to even make myself drink water. But I tried my best and just did as little as possible. I knew I was pretty sick when just making my bed made me out of breath.

I hate being sick like this. I used to deal with this during the winter, but since the pandemic, I haven’t been inside with many people and when I have been around others, I’ve been wearing a mask. I still wear a mask when I’m inside almost all the time. I might be the only person at the grocery store who wears one, but I know it can keep me safe. But there have been a few times when I didn’t wear one, and I’m guessing that one of those times I was around someone who had a cold and I managed to catch it.

I know that I could have been more cautious and that catching a cold is my fault, but at the same time, this is a bit of my normal too. I know that at some point, we will be back to something similar to what our old normal was, and for me, that means I’ll probably catch a cold during the winter. I might take some more precautions now than I did before, but I also know that catching a cold isn’t something I can completely avoid unless I want to stay isolated.

So I just had to suck it up and work on fighting this bug. I had to skip my workout yesterday and as I am writing this, I’m debating about my workout this morning. I might want to take another day off to get just a bit better but I also know that there are studies that show that working out once you are doing better and not contagious can help to get rid of a cold sooner. I just have to find the balance between needing time to recover and being ready to start pushing to be back to my routine.

I am grateful that this wasn’t as bad as other things that I could have gotten. If it was Covid, I have no idea how much worse it could have been. Even compared to when I had vertigo a few years ago, this isn’t quite as bad. It’s frustrating when this isn’t how I want to spend my time, but it’s life and I’ll be fine soon. Maybe I’ll need to take more time off from workouts and other things than I would have liked, but this is a temporary thing and I’ll be back to my normal before I know it. And being better and feeling better is my focus for now and that’s what I have to be ok with doing.

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Not My Normal Workout Recap (or At Least I Was Feeling Ok During The Week)

Posted on February 6, 2023 | Comments Off on Not My Normal Workout Recap (or At Least I Was Feeling Ok During The Week)

This workout recap will be a bit different from what my normal ones look like. And that’s because I am currently sick. I’ve taken some Covid tests and they have been negative, so I think I just caught a really bad cold. This is something I used to deal with somewhat frequently, but the last few years have been better since people have been wearing masks and not really doing things around others. But I guess things are back to normal enough that I’m back to getting colds the way I used to.

Fortunately for me, I wasn’t really feeling sick this past week when I went to my workouts. I was worried I was going to be dealing with pain and nausea, and I also managed to mostly escape that as well. I did have some really bad cramps toward the end of the week, but that was a lot less than what I expected. And when I went to my Thursday workout, I had a bit of a sore throat but it wasn’t bad and I thought it might be allergies since it felt different from the sore throat I get before I get sick. But I guess I was wrong and now I know that was the first sign of me having this cold. Hopefully, I didn’t get anyone else sick in class. But there’s also a good chance that I got this from someone in class.

I’m glad that my workouts this past week weren’t affected by this cold or by anything else. Overall, it was a really good workout week. And I needed it to be a good week just for my self-esteem. I don’t know what will happen this week with my workouts. As I’m writing this post, I don’t know if I’ll need to take time off. If I don’t feel better than I do right now, I won’t be able to work out. I’m hoping I’m over this cold quickly, but I also know that if I am not fully better and I go to work out, I might extend this cold even longer. And I really don’t want that.

Plus, this week is likely to be one of the weeks where my pain and nausea will be really bad, so I don’t want that combined with this cold. I’m hoping I won’t need to take time off, but I’m also realistic and willing to do what my body needs. So if I miss a bunch of workouts this week, at least this past week was a good one for me.

I don’t have much else to write about my workouts since right now my brain is a bit foggy from this cold, but I’m glad that this cold didn’t affect how I was able to do. And hopefully, whatever workouts I can do this week will go well and won’t be too bad with everything I’m dealing with regarding my physical health.

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Medical Stability Is A Good Thing (or Yet Another Easy Check-Up)

Posted on January 24, 2023 | Comments Off on Medical Stability Is A Good Thing (or Yet Another Easy Check-Up)

I’ve been working with my dermatologist on a lot of different conditions over the past few years. Some have been ongoing conditions and some have been one-off discussions or resolved within a few appointments. I know I have said this before, but I’m lucky to have a doctor on my team who works with me to figure out solutions and listens to me and my concerns. I know not everyone has that experience or the ability to speak up for their concerns. But I made sure that the doctors I see worked with me and not just talked at me. Not all the doctors I’ve seen are like that, but if they don’t see us as a team I don’t go back to them.

This is so important with all my doctors, but especially when you are working with someone for an extended time. When it’s not just a few appointments and then you never see them again, you need to make sure that they really hear what you have to say. And I think the positive experiences I’ve had with doctors that I’ve had to see for years is because I am willing to say that I want to find a different doctor to work with. I probably should have done that sooner with other dermatologists I’ve seen in the past because I have wasted so much time trying solutions that weren’t working but I wanted to keep trying what they told me to do.

Even though I have a few different ongoing conditions I work on with my dermatologist, my appointments aren’t that frequent anymore. Most of the things I’ve working with him on are going to be things I have to deal with for the rest of my life. Or if they can go away, it might be years before that happens. With my autoimmune condition, I know the end goal is to be in some sort of remission. This isn’t always possible, but it can happen. But the things that can get you into remission can be more extreme than what I’m willing to do at this point. There is a surgery that I could have that would help me significantly, but the recovery process would be very lengthy and painful. Maybe one day I’ll get there, but it’s not what I want to do at this point.

I had another follow-up with my dermatologist this past week and I knew it would likely be an easy appointment. I’m not in remission with my autoimmune condition, but things have gotten so much better over the past few years. I think I’m in a lower stage of the condition than I have been in years. I still have quite a bit of pain to deal with, but it’s more manageable now and that’s something that I never thought could happen. I know my doctor would have liked to see more improvement with me, but I’m happy that things are just stable where they are and they aren’t getting worse. It used to be stable years ago before things started to get really bad. And now, it’s stable but in a good spot. Maybe I’ll have some more regression and it will stabilize at an even better spot, but I’m not too worried about that right now. My main focus is hoping that it just doesn’t get worse again.

And because things are stable, my plan with my doctor is stable too. I’m going to continue the same medications I’ve been taking since they clearly are doing something to help manage this condition. I also use certain body washes to help my skin and I just need to continue to use that as well.

Having boring follow-up appointments like this is becoming more common for me, and that’s a good thing. I’ve had so many ongoing medical conditions for so long and to have them stabilize is so awesome. The more stable things get, the more boring my appointments are. I never knew that I was hoping for boring appointments in my life, but it turns out that it’s one of the best things and something that I continue to hope will happen in the future.

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

Posted on January 10, 2023 | Comments Off on 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.

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Another Medication Shortage (or I’ll Just Have To Wait It Out Again)

Posted on December 20, 2022 | Comments Off on Another Medication Shortage (or I’ll Just Have To Wait It Out Again)

There was a medication shortage when I had to get the first refill of my new injection. I knew this was a possibility as I had heard rumors of medication shortages from people online who were taking the same medication or similar ones. There are a lot of reasons why there has been a shortage of this category of medication. The biggest reason is that so many people are being prescribed it now.

For so long, obesity and weight issues were treated as motivation problems or laziness. Or doctors assumed you didn’t know what you were doing. I feel like I know more information about calories than most people do. I know what is considered good and what is considered bad. I know what you can eat so you can have a large volume of food for very few calories. And even though I do have an eating disorder, I have known for a long time that there is something else wrong with me. That’s why for so many years, I was going through a ton of medical testing to see if it was a thyroid issue or if there was another imbalance in my body. But doctors never could find what was wrong and I just was treated as someone who had a weight issue and that it was completely my fault that I am this weight and am not losing weight.

But finally, I think more doctors are understanding that obesity is a disease and not just a personal issue. You could ask so many people who have struggled with their weight and they would probably have similar stories to mine. They have tried so many things and maybe only the most extreme things have worked for them. There is just something else wrong with their body that nobody could figure out. But now, doctors are getting that and are working to find ways to work on this concern with patients instead of just lecturing patients and trying to scare them into losing weight by saying they will have all these other medical issues that may or may not actually be related to weight.

So since this is being understood differently, people can finally get treatments like what I’m doing. I know there are some people who are just trying to lose like 10 pounds and are finding doctors to prescribe this to them, but that’s not most people taking it. And I guess the drug manufacturer is just surprised that people would want to try something that is supposed to help with weight loss. I know there were other issues with the manufacturing that caused a slowdown, but I think the biggest issue was just them being unprepared.

With the first refill, my doctor allowed me to start the higher dosage early since that injection pen was available at that time. And since I was going to start that higher dosage eventually, it wasn’t a big deal for me to jump to the next level. And while I’ve had more side effects, they have gotten better from week to week and I’m glad that I’ve been able to do this.

But now that I’ve needed to put in my next refill request (at the dosage I’m at, I need a new pen every 4 weeks), there’s another shortage happening. There’s no estimate for when the injection pens will be available again and I’ll just be notified when my refill is ready for me. I’m hoping that since I have about a week before my next injection that it could arrive in time. Or maybe I’ll just have a single week off if it comes in next week. It’s frustrating because this is working for me and I am seeing results. They might not be as fast as I would have liked, but I also know that this is much more normal than other weight loss things I’ve experienced before. It’s still not a miracle or something magical, but it helps so much. And I am nervous about having to stop taking it again, especially when I don’t know how long I’ll have to wait.

I don’t have another option since I’m not going to pay full price for the injection pen at another pharmacy (which would cost over $1000). And just like the last time I needed to get a refill, I’m just going to have to be really careful and mindful if I have some time off between injections because I don’t want the hard work I’ve been putting in the past few months to go away.

I might be overreacting and I’ll be told in a day or two that my refill is ready. But I’m also mentally preparing myself for what might happen. And this could happen over and over again with the refill requests for a while. I don’t know when they will work on producing more injection pens to meet demand. So I might be going through this every month for the foreseeable future. But I don’t have another option right now and I’m just going to find a way to make it work.

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