Those prayers worked. Had a VERY long day yesterday, so be prepared for a long post. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s the best part: my doctor is GONE. That’s all I can say about that.
To start with yesterday morning. No word from Dr. M, so I called to leave another message, only to be reminded that it was Friday and he had the weekend of, plus a few extra days. I got mad, told the receptionist what was up; that basically the doctor left me with the impression that my head was going to blow off with Temporal Arteritis. I also mentioned the fact that Dr. M left me upset in the middle of the appointment. I was turned over to a nurse, TF, who listened to the long story, and was a bit upset to hear that Dr. M had actually said to me, “If I don’t treat you this way, it’s maplpractice.” Red flag, people. Any doctor that forces a treatment or procedure upon you to cover his license doesn’t have all his oars in the water. TF said she’d look into things and that she’d call me later.
A little later in the afternoon, about noon, TF calls back. She’d turned my records over to another doctor, Dr. B, to review. Dr. B called an internist from the hospital that sometimes does consulting work at the clinic, Dr. G. I’m to come in ASAP.
With the notes that Dr. M left in my file, the internist was positive he’d be carting me off to surgery that day and he had a fistful of hospital admittance papers. Dr. G examined me, I told my story, again, from the ER visit, what the ER Doc had told me about Temporal Arteritis and my age, low risk, etc. even though my SED rate was just a bit high, but not grossly high: 42 (if you want to know).
(I made a remark about how that number couldn’t be bad as it was the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Dr. G replied, So long and thanks for all the fish!)
The upshot, I don’t need a biopsy surgery to confirm the TA diagnosis. I don’t even need to be treated with steroids. I have only one symptom that even matched the list of symptoms, and it went away in about 3 hours; the excruciating migrained in the left temple. Nothing else matched the symptomology…. cuz Dr. G actually examined me! Stethoscope, palpation of the temporal artery.
He is switching me from Imitrex to another drug, though – I can’t spell it – Fiarocet? I think it is. The reason being, I have high blood pressure, now controlled, but Imitrex can severely knock that out of whack. And even though I didn’t take it on Tues. for the big pain, it still could have been a contributing factor. Hmmm. The other reason he’s switching is because the migraine responded to Oxygen and Benadryl quickly. Apparantly TA doesn’t quite react that well to that treatment.
Now to my face and that TSH test I’ve been trying to get the results of for about two and a half weeks. Either the blood was lost, the paperwork was lost, or the order was not correctly recorded. No test was done and instead of telling me, Dr. M kept lying about it and not saying there was a problem! So I had more blood drawn (my elbow insides and back of the hands are all bruised!) and they will do another TSH test. In addition, the “parasthesia” tingling in legs, arms, face, fingers, etc. could be something as simple as B12 and Folate deficiency!!
WTH??? Can you believe that?
To round this all up, I will be treated by Dr. B every two weeks for about the next two months. I have a refferal in to a rheumatologist that’s a Lupus expert (although it may be a few months before I see him – long waiting line). I’m to be evaluated as to the extent of my Lupus at that time. And should I need a neurologist at all for something like Temporal Arteritis, it will be determined then.
So, your prayers helped me a ton. I thank ya’ll for those, for the positive thinking, for the virginal sacrifices, the invoking of goddesses and gods.
It all sounds very positive. I’m glad.