Wednesday March 31, 2004
It's been quite a day today. Medical news and landlord news abound.
Early this morning the dermatologist prescribed antibiotic cream and advised me to reduce the stress in my life. "Find your karma and follow it." A couple of hours later, my family doctor said "You look a little yellow". I told her I felt a little yellow. Blood tests have been ordered to help narrow down the cause of my liver not livering enough. She suspects my 8 year long regimen of naproxen sodium for the herniated discs in my neck has compromised my poor liver. That's all I know right now. She'll have more to say after the tests are back. And then ... ?
I am no longer ingesting Aleve. Instead I now anticipate pain. Oh, and I wasn't really feeling much stress in my life except for the debilitating effects of having no energy. So perhaps once this obstacle has been conquered, my skin will return to its normal happy self as well.
Luckily, I was ready to push for a neurological consult and diagnostics related to getting my neck permanently repaired. I had called the neuro guy in Ottawa who saw me back in '96 but he needs a referral from my GP to schedule me an appt. The earliest estimate was July. This is apparently a much shorter wait than I would have in Kingston. My GP will be scheduling an MRI and EMG test of nerve function to go along with me when I do see the neuro.
At least I may get some relief this year. In which case I won't need any Christmas gifts at all. This will be the best gift I've had in a long long time. One that will make the next 50 years a lot more adventuresome than they'd been starting to look. But I am not going to count my kayaks and camping trips with the new dog I plan to adopt until the actual thing is done, so to speak.
My only other source of stress was my landlord situation. Some of you have some idea of how the past year and half has gone. I went to the new landlords apartment building to pay the rent and deliver a letter I'd finally decided would be my first response to the occurances of these past couple of weeks. I found a no-nonsense down-to-earth professional sounding manager who told me he (and perhaps others) had invested in the property and would be doing things without a property management team in the middle. I walked away having been hugged and told that he wanted me to relax and be happy.
Knowing his phone numbers are good 24/7 was a big help. So, that stress is changing - things are being done around here. I included the fact that I'd noticed these things already in the very long letter I gave him explaining my position as a tenant. Finally, rope that doesn't have to be pushed.
The most stressful things now are waiting for the blood test results and trying to figure out how to allieviate the insanely distracting whole body itch that my malfunctioning liver has caused. I am going to try Benadryl to quell it, but I'm open to suggestions anyone has. Especially people who've been through this.
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