I had a day off today. The entire day. John was gone too. What did I do? Well, actually not much. I decided to get a doctor here in where I live now so I jumped online and began the RESEARCH!
First I had to find out what insurance I had through work then skim through their pages of acceptable providers, 84?! How am I supposed to arbitrarily pick from 84 different names?! Wow.
With a little help from vitals.com I "reviewed" some doctors. Unfortunately most of them had only 1 review. Yea, great sample size there. Phsaw.
Thanks to this article from NPR I narrowed my search a little more. (I also only looked at those within 2 miles of my house.)
I landed with a new female doctor who was accepting patients right now and could actually see me within the next hour provided I filled out the paperwork in time.
Hastily, I printed out the 12 page history, 2 page HIPPA, and 1 page personal data sheet and swibbled away.
The history was unremarkable. I simply wrote NO or NA to everything (save seasonal allergies as a child) and signed the bottom. Then I threw on my vibrams and was out the door.
1 blood draw and x-ray later I was told I was healthy but... what was I going to do about my blood pressure? 130/80? That's amazing for me. (Not great, but better than last years 150/90 incident or the previous years 180/100 embarrassment) We talked a bit about the general diet=vegetarian, exercise= 2miles a day, stress=not gonna change. Finally, we landed on my birth control. I take an estrogen-progesterone compound, well estrogen can increase blood pressure. So, I switched today. I opted not to go to simply oral progesterone (since a slip up by even one hour can greatly increase the baby risk) Now I'm getting shots every 3 months.
A bit scary since it can completely eliminate your menses (where does it go?!) by inhibiting follicular development.
Wahoo.
I was going to switch to this a while ago, but realized I would be moving, so here I am. All moved. I will say I did google scholar this thing like crazy as I waited for the injection. I hope I don't have the weight gain side effect. I worked so hard to get back into these size 4s. I'm not going anywhere!!
In other news. I ran this afternoon to a new podcast and nearly peed my pants it was so funny. I guess I'm a bad person for not listening to Carl Sagan's Dance Party earlier in life but man, oh man was it funny. Tuesday runs are going to be so much more fun now. Not very "science" heavy but very sarcastic. I recommend it highly.
Back to the doctoring bit. In my "weekend of horror" where I sat around and did nothing, I think I gave myself a pressure ulcer. Well, it hasn't gotten any better, it's making it a pain in the (exactly where it is) to sit and it keeps seeping serosanguinous fluid!
So the fact that it's been two days of bandaids and neosporin sans ANY clotting or scabbing at all made me ask the doctor about it.
It's either an abscess (antibiotics for a week) or a pilonidal cyst.
Great, I've got Jeep Disease.
These cysts experienced a great out-coming during WWII when the service men did a lot of riding around in bumpy jeeps. They would get (essentially) ingrown hairs on their coccyx making those bumpy jeep rides a pain in the... er... coccyx.
I'm sure all you non-medical people out there are shocked at how personal this blog suddenly is.
Oh wow, today we talked about my menses and infected butt-hairs.
Ha ha, how funny.
Sorry all.
; )
Totally awesome, Sam! I, too, had to let the BC go due to BP a few years ago. At one point I was running 150s/100s consistently. I felt horrible and gained some weight, too. Once I was off the BC, my BP dropped back to 110s/70s within the week. Never again! I did like not having monthly cycles, but it wasn't worth my health. Good luck with the shots and your butt hairs!
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