Make That $30,000 Thursday

The cost of this cycle's Ocology Day just went up. Given that I'm on a variety of drugs that can cause blood clots and that my shortness of breath can be caused by a blood clot in a lung, my PA wants me to get a chest scan today to rule that out. I'd say that seems like overkill, but since blood clots terrify me, I'd be lying. I'll happily troop back down to the SCCA for a late afternoon scan -- or most anything else -- to have blood clots ruled out. 

And here I thought I was on blood thinners. Apparently it's a fine line between thin blood and clottty blood. Who knew? 

What else to report?

It seems it doesn't really matter that I don't have my pills. I can start them whenever they show up. It also seems the PA renewed the scrip six weeks ago. So on the one hand it's good news: no medical ramifications for the lack of drugs. On the other hand it's terrible news: I get to try to navigate the miscommunication between SCCA and Walgreen's so the latter will send me my pills. There goes my afternoon nap. 

Hmmm... What else? Oh yes. I'm fat. Or, as the PA put it, "Does it seem to you like you're gaining weight?"* Why, yes, yes it does. Eating a half gallon of ice cream in a three or four hour period will do that to you. So we commiserated about ice cream and jointly agreed that it should depart from my diet for the foreseeable future. Of course I'd already figured that I either need to lose the weight or buy new pants, but now I have the official health care provider confirmation that I'm fat. Oh well.

Alarming to me but less so to the PA, my tumor markers are up again. For those who understand such things, over my last three tests my number has gone from 12 to 14 to 19. I do not know whether that's on a scale of 1-25 or 1-1,000; I just know lower is better. Again, oh well.

Last funny bit: I think I wrote previously that to make things easier,  I picked a general practitioner tied to UW Medicine. As a result, the PA can see that I've got a raft of diabetes-related appointments scheduled. So she tells me, "I'm proud of you for scheduling these appointments... I hope it's not weird for me to say I'm proud of you..." And so our conversation drifted off into a discussion of what's weird and what's not when you've got a patient who's not yet reached the childlike stage of old age but yet is getting care from a provider a generation or two younger. She does crack me up.

But sadly, the conversation did eventually land on yet another confirmation of my status as an (increasingly) old person. One of the questions every single provider here asks -- and  I do mean every single provider; I get asked this question at least five times a visit -- is whether or not I've had a fall or other stability problems since my last visit. When the PA asked, I said no, but mentioned that I was giving serious consideration to bolting a grab bar to wall next to my bathtub. (It's a fairly deep -- and very slippery -- claw foot tub, and there have been a few times recently when taking a shower has felt a bit too much like ice skating.**) Her response was, "Do it. Do it now." 

So I'm hoping I'll be able to find something snazzy on Amazon, 'cause it's bad enough to have to put a grab bar in your bathroom at home. It would really suck if it had to be ugly, too. On the bright side, perhaps installing a handle will prompt me to actually finish the rest of the work in the bathroom.***

Speaking of things that make me feel old, the PA concurred with my new  GP, and wants me on the blood pressure/kidney pill. She was nice enough to say it was my choice, but at the same time strongly implying that anything other than taking the pill would be a very stupid choice. So I guess I'll take the pill. This means I'm now up to twelve pills a day during the Xeloda periods, and I'm starting to wonder how many pills you can take each day before you're officially old. I'd like to hope it's something like twenty, but I fear it's more like five or six. 

And for the third time, oh well. 

I guess that's it for now. We'll see if the scan brings any further developments. And in case you didn't notice, this was composed on the iPad -- the world's worst blogging tool -- so forgive any crazy word choices or capitalizations.


* Here's the funny bit about that question: they assume that the scales at the SCCA are wrong. When presented with evidence of weight gain, too many patients have objected, claiming their home scales have reported no change. So the SCCA folks have reached the point where they just treat any identified weight gain as a potential (very expensive) equipment failure until the patient confirms their numbers. Crazy. 
** I do not skate. I fall.
*** Hope springs eternal. For those tracking at home, I still need to paint behind the bathtub, fix a rotten window sill, paint the remaining trim, and cover the ceiling with tin.