A Full Doctor Afternoon (or Pain and More Pain)

I’m trying to be a good health advocate for myself. I take the medicines I need to take on a regular schedule (I have an app that helps me with that), I go to all of my annual doctors appointments, and I follow all of the recommendations that I can that my doctors make.

Sometimes, these recommendations aren’t fun, but I still try to do them anyway. And this past Monday, I did a bunch of not so fun doctor things all in one day.

First up was my mammogram. While my mom’s geneticist recommended a baseline mammogram (which I did last year) and then start annual ones when I’m 40, my hospital had the recommendation to do annual ones starting now. The one I did last year was pretty painful, so this year I took a painkiller before going in.

Because of a patient issue, the hospital was running about an hour behind, so I had a long wait in the waiting room. There were a lot of other women waiting too, and we all started talking. We had a pretty nice chat and soon enough it was my turn to go in.

The mammogram was still painful (the technician told me that it’s likely that it will always be this painful for me or possibly get worse in the future), but it was over pretty quickly. And fortunately, I’ve already gotten an email from my doctor that I had normal results.

After the mammogram, I moved over to the medical offices next door for my next painful doctor recommendation.

Immunizations.

I knew I needed a flu shot since I get them each year. But I usually can get the nasal spray vaccine from either the medical offices or one of my jobs. I hate needles, so the nasal spray vaccine is a great option for me. But this year, nobody seems to have the nasa spray. So if I wanted to get a vaccine, it would have to be one with a needle.

I also needed my tetanus booster. My last tetanus shot was less than 10 years ago, but there are some discrepancies in my medical record on what shot I got (with whooping cough or without) so it was recommended that I get a booster shot earlier than necessary to make sure I’m covered.

I’m happy to announce that I didn’t faint with the shots. I did start to black out, but I never completely passed out. The shots weren’t fun, but I got them done quickly.

The only bad thing that happened was it turns out that I’m the rare case who gets pretty significant flu-like symptoms after the flu shot. The night I got my flu shot, I woke up in the middle of the night sweating like crazy and with a really high fever. The entire day after the flu shot I was like a zombie. I barely could stay awake during work.

But I was able to nap after work from 3-7pm and then went to bed at 9pm and slept until 7am the next morning. All that sleep did help, but I’m still feeling a bit off. I’m sure in a day or two I’ll be totally better, but it still wasn’t fun to feel so out of it for a few days.

Even with the flu shot making me sick, it’s totally worth getting the vaccination. What I dealt with is way less severe than the real flu.

And at least I don’t have to do any more shots or mammograms (hopefully) for another year.

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