Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Appointment Anticipation

Eek, probably should have started packing for my trip home yesterday, or over the weekend, or anytime...I'm not getting home until about 10pm tonight, and am leaving for the airport by about 8am tomorrow morning. So, that was wise on my part.

I am both excited for and dreading my appointment with Dr. A on Friday. Still kind of wishing he has some magical treatment up his sleeve that will cure me once and for all. At the same time, I'm bracing myself for the worst—bad news, no news, no cure, live with it, etc.

I was just telling Alie about this in an e-mail, but what the heck, let's share the indignity with everyone! Dr. P asked me yesterday about how I've been doing pain-wise and how I'm feeling about the upcoming appointment, and instead of answering with, you know, words—I promptly burst into tears. This stuff is still incredibly hard for me to talk about without getting emotional because I am SO frustrated and SO OVER being in pain all the time. I'm just so damn sick of it, you know? Dr. P reminded me to plan for all the questions I need to ask Dr. A and make sure I cover all my bases, but I just know that it will be hard in the moment for me to think of everything and be articulate. But, I'll try. Good thing Mama Bear is coming with.

In other news, we had a great lab meeting earlier today. I am super excited about my research, and my first ever research article will be ready for publication in a couple of weeks. My advisor (Have I given him a letter yet? I have zero recollection, sorry) is aiming for Big Journal, so we'll see if that happens. Additionally, we watched an hour-long movie in class this morning so really, how could it be anything but a great day?

Take care everyone, and keep your fingers crossed for me this Friday!!

4 comments:

  1. So I've been reading your blog for quite a while, but as I don't have a blog of my own haven't commented before. That being said, I can really relate to what you're talking about. I've had chronic back pain for 12 years. Sometimes it was bad enough that I was wheel chair bound, sometimes able to get about with a cane, sometimes doing better, but the pain was never gone and I was always on a cocktail of meds to help me deal. I guess what I want to say is that when I finally got into recovery from AN, things began to improve. It was about a year after weight restoration before I noticed a change, and another year before I really felt it. And don't get me wrong, I'm still in pain everyday. But the intensity is much less and the frequency of really bad days also a lot less. I read this and just know how isolating pain is, and how people who are not in pain all the time just literally cannot relate. How they try to be sympathetic--they really do--but eventually people stop asking you how you're feeling as regularly. And, after it's been going on for a while, you stop bringing it up because you don't want to think about if more than you already do. I'm not trying to say "hold on it'll get better, chin up" either, because I know how annoying that can be. Anecdotes aren't data, but I just thought I'd like to give you a little hope that it may get better at some point. That was long for a first time comment--hope some nugget of it was helpful!

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    1. Teresa, your comment means so much to me—thank you. Anecdotes can be the best kind of info, especially with issues that the medical community doesn't really seem to have a handle on (chronic pain, anorexia, etc). I am so sorry that you have been in such terrible pain for so long, but it's really heartening to hear that you saw improvement after gaining weight. I try to tell myself that although it feels like forever, I've only been truly weight-restored for about 6 months and my hormones are still a mess, so I should be hopeful that things will continue to improve with time. I definitely hear you on other people—they definitely want to be sympathetic, but there's no way to understand how emotionally ravaging it is to be physically miserable every second of the day, you know? And really, what can they do or say that would help? Anyway, thanks again for your comment and I hope you are well.

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  2. I'll keep fingers and toes crossed for your appointment! Even though maybe the words didn't exactly come out at first with Dr. P, I think you guys came up with a good plan on how to handle it. Plus, hopefully you can run everything down with your mom ahead of time in case you do get upset and unable to articulate yourself well, she can jump in.

    Really exciting about the publication! Good luck!

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  3. Fingers crossed for some good news tomorrow, K.

    (And wow, how exciting about your research! Very happy for you.)

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