Brrrr!

                                                      

From time to time, I have strange symptoms. I don't ever seem to know what causes them. For a while, my sense of smell was wacked. Was it related to my cancer or my congestive heart failure or the Salmonella I had? Everyone shook their heads in mystification.

During the duration my entire house smelled urine soaked although I knew it wasn't. It was strong enough to gag me at times. All food smelled and tasted as if it was spoiled. I opened a can of peaches and had to throw them out because of the odor. Milk all smelled soured. Cooking chicken gave off an odor of rot.

You don't usually think much about smell. Things simply smell like they are supposed to but let me tell you, when your fragrance detector goes crazy, it is very disconcerting.

In time, my sense of smell returned to normal. I was very grateful for that.

Now that I'm totally over the Salmonella, I feel well. My lone symptom is being constantly cold, not just cold but freezing. It can be 90 degrees outside and I'm wearing my heaviest pants and sweatshirts. (Velour, I've found, is the warmest material you can wear.) I haven't brought any of my summer blouses down from upstairs this summer. 

I have the temperature in the house set at 74 and that's how warm the thermostat says it is but it feels more like 34 to me. My primary reason for taking naps isn't because I'm tired but as an excuse to get under the covers to get warm. My primary reason for taking baths isn't to get clean but to get in hot water and get warm.

My nose is like an ice cube perched on my face. My feet and hands are numb from cold. It feel as if someone is blowing cold air across my shoulders and down my backbone.

Being cold doesn't make you sick and it's not exactly painful but it can be surprisingly incapacitating. You don't feel like doing anything except finding a way to get warm. Sometimes, I sit in the car and let the heater run.

I checked out Google to see what might cause always being cold and found out it might be anemia (I've had a transfusion for anemia but my last labs showed it to be under control.) It could be hypothyroidism but none of the other symptoms are consistent with me. It could be diabetes but my diabetes hasn't been a problem for a long time. It could be anorexia but I know that isn't it.

Of course, WebMD recommends that you see your doctor for tests but I'm pretty well doctored and tested out so I guess I'll just go on being cold. I can't wait for the temperatures to drop enough for the furnace to run. Then I can stand on a heat register.

Vicious Circle

Back in the day, you had a family doctor. He (in my case) was your physician for everything. My doctor back then treated me for various ailments, delivered my son, did surgery on my tailbone, removed John's tonsils.

Then, somewhere along the line, family doctors quit doing surgery. They sent you to a surgeon instead.

Later, still, family doctors now do only the most generic stuff. For everything else, they refer you to a specialist. Or if you condition isn't serious enough for them, perhaps they send you to a nurse practitioner screen you to decide if you really need to see the doctor.

Clinics used to have their own labs. A doctor's visit would end at the lab for the tests the physician (or nurse practitioner) ordered. Now, in Wabash, at least, you have to go to the hospital for lab tests, which might mean another visit to the clinic for a follow-up visit. (Our hospital is now part of a large medical conglomerate rather than being local).

Please don't take these criticisms as implying that I don't like my doctor because that would be the farthest thing from the truth. Fact is, I love her. It is the system that I hate.

I recently had experience with this frustrating cycle. I fell and the trauma caused my eyes to bleed. I would wake up in the morning with bright red blood blobs on my eyeball. I wasn't sure whether to see my family doctor or my eye doctor. I went to the doctor's office and they recommended that I start with the eye doctor. I have declined treatment for cancer and congestive heart failure but everything I love depends on my vision so off I went to the Retinal Specialist as my eye doctor said I should.

The Retinal Specialist evaluated my situation and said I needed laser surgery to stop the substantial bleeding in my right eye. That surgery was scheduled. It did stop the bleeding and they set me up for a follow up visit to check my left eye.

At that time, the RS  was very concerned about my sugar levels and said he couldn't do anything for me until we saw if my they were stable. I'm now blind in my right eye (due to scar tissue) but there was a surgery that might be able to be done though the outcome was iffy.

So I went to see the nurse practitioner and she ordered the lab tests to check if my sugar was fluctuating.

I had been wearing reading glasses, which were almost useless. So I went to the eye doctor to ask if she could do anything to help my vision in my left eye.

Nope. She agreed she'd have to see the results of my lab tests first. She also said when they came back, I needed to see the Retinal Specialist again before I came back to see her. Then, and only then, would she write me a prescription for new glasses (which she said would improve my vision considerably).

I didn't really think I had problems with sugar. My doctor had taken me off all diabetes meds and my sugar hadn't been running high for a long time. When the labs came back, my A1C (I think that's what its called) registered 5.2, which isn't even high enough to be considered diabetic.

So I went to the Retinal Specialist again, test results in hand. He was very pleased. I asked him if he would recommend the surgery.

He said, "well, if I knew your prognosis...."

I said, "well, you don't and neither do I and I don't want to know so for the sake of argument, let's say its a year, would you advise it if it was a year?"

He said no and explained that it was a difficult surgery. More, hypodermics in the eyeball - oh, God! Then try to pull off the scar tissue and insert a gas bubble in your eye to re-inflate the retina. Maybe I'd get some vision back or perhaps not. Long recovery time.

Well, that settled that.

I have an appointment with the eye doctor next week and maybe I'll finally get a prescription for glasses that will help me see a little better.

In all, I have had eleven appointments with eye doctors, nurse practitioners, labs, retinal specialists and I still can't see.

I miss the old days and the old ways.