Thursday Thirteen Discombobulated Worries This Week (#11)

My brain is way too scattered and full of anxiety to focus on one particular nifty topic this week. So, now you get to see the really true discombobulated, highly anxious me.

Thirteen Things about N. Mallory

1. What if the sale on the little red house falls through and I don’t get it?
2. What if the sale on the little red house doesn’t fall through and I do get it and it turns into a money pit?
3. What if those nice flippers are taking advantage of me because I’m a naive first time buyer and I don’t know what I’m doing?
4. What if my dog is depressed? He’s been lethargic and hasn’t been eating at home, but the doggie daycare folks say he’s hyper and playful there. Maybe he just hates me.

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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, meme, bloghopping, anxiety, home buying, acid reflux, IgAN, autoimmune kidney disease, discombobulated, the puppy

14 comments See also in My Life, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, Wellness, Discombobulated, Anxiety/Depression, The Puppy, Acid Reflux/Gastro B.S., Thursday Thirteen, Memes, Little Red House, IgA Nephropathy

One Diagnosis And A Trip To The ER

Well, yesterday, the Nephrologist gave me a diagnosis about my kidneys. Apparently I have IgA Nephritis, which is an autoimmune kidney disease. I don’t know much about it except that I’m taking the wrong blood pressure med for it and that she’ll be changing that to something that will treat both my high blood pressure and the IgAN — apparently high blood pressure can be caused by kidney malfunction. I’m seeing her on Nov. 2nd to get more details.

However, she did say that IgAN is not the cause of my muscular soreness/pain and many of the symptoms that sent me to the doctor in the first place. (I did see that IgAN does cause fatigue though.) So, I’m back to the drawing board there.

Also yesterday, I ended up in the ER where the Nephrologist sent me after I complained of pain in my kidney area that kept me up all night the night before. Tylenol just wasn’t doing anything and they’ve banned me from anything like Alleve, asprin, advil, etc. The pain was radiating across my back and I was feeling queasy. She wanted to get a cat scan of my kidney but the hospital refused to “fit me into it’s schedule”, so she sent me to the ER, which meant that I got a cat scan of my kidney at the hospital plus some blood work, but it took all friggin’ afternoon. I was starving when I left.

It turns out I have a hematoma, but it’s just the hematoma I had as a result of the procedure that they knew about and didn’t tell anyone. It’s actually smaller now than it was the day of the procedure. They think what’s happening is that my body is just getting around to re-absorbing the hematoma which is why the increased pain. So…they’ve given me a prescription for Vicadin, told me to put heat on it 4 times a day to speed up the process, and call my doctor on Friday if I’m not feeling better…oh, and rest a lot.

So, now I’m at work, about to fall asleep at my desk with a bunny-shaped heating pad stuck to my back…

And it still hurts.

Tags: IgA Nephritis, ER, autoimmune kidney disease, hematoma, health, wellness

It’s All About The Kidneys

Well, my latest lab work came back still showing something abnormal with my kidneys. I’m going back over to the hospital this afternoon to get stuck some more; all of these tests have to do with autoimmune illnesses related to the kidneys apparently and most of these results won’t be back for a few weeks.

The Rheumy wants me to see a Kidney specialist and I’ve asked him to consult with my GP as she was also discussing this — I’d like to have one Kidney specialist and not two in the mix. Since he’s not in today, that discussion beteween doctors will have to wait until Monday, which is fine.

So the angiogram is still on hold because they can’t do any tests with contrasts until they know what’s going on with my kidneys, which they won’t know for a while. So all of that stress and panic just a few weeks ago was for naught. (After discussing this with my shrink, I’ve decided to work on not panicking about my health until the doctors start to panic from now on and just go with the flow.)

However, they’ve gone ahead and scheduled me for the CT-Scan of the lung for next Tuesday. The good news is that I’ve seen the original report from the x-ray now and I’m fairly sure it’s not cancer at this point.

Though I will say that one of the things I told my shrink is that I wish I could go back in time to before I went to the Rheumy and just pretend I didn’t go. I almost wish I could just pretend I’m just tired and I don’t feel well and forget trying to figure it all out at this point. The trying to figure it all out has become very overwhelming and time consuming. I guess for someone from the fast food generation, I just wasn’t prepared for this kind of process even though I said I was. I mean, I knew these kinds of processes of diagnosis can be long but I didn’t realize how stressful they can be. It’s so much easier when you have something recognizable like the chicken pox or a broken arm, but when your body is betraying you and medicine hasn’t caught up yet with what it might be, it’s like you’re lost and going crazy and the world is going crazy around you too.

Tags: wellness, autoimmune kidney disease, rheumatologist, CT Scan, lung cancer

More Tests, More Specialists

So, I saw my GP yesterday afternoon. We went over the concerns of the Rheumy with the blood in the urine; plus I got a copy of the results of some of my lab work that the Rheumy did at his office. I don’t understand much of it, but I have a copy of it now. (By the way, it says I have 16 of 18 of the trigger points for myalgia but my alarming Sed rate is what keeps me from the fibromyalgia diagnosis…that’s what’s written on the paperwork.)

Anyway, one of the things that the Rheumy didn’t test for is IgA Nephropathy, an autoimmune kidney disorder. So, I have to do this 24 hour urinalisis for the Rheumy (re: pee in bottle) and at the end they are taking some blood to do a creatin protein (sp?) work-up anyway so they’re now going to take even more blood and do a work-up for IgA Nephropathy too. Depending on the result of that work-up, if it comes back positive, I’ll go see a Nephrologist, and if it comes back negative, I’ll go see a Urologist. Meaning, either there’s something wrong with my kidneys or my bladder.

Plus, that surgeon has never gotten around to sending anything back to the GP about refering me to a GI Specialist. However, she finally agreed to skip the waiting, so they’re refering me to one.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a horrible cough in my chest but it’s just a cold, nothing to worry the actual doctor with. I just can’t seem to stop coughing. Cough drops don’t help and it’s getting to the point where I pee just a little every time I cough, which is very embarrassing. Gah! You know, my puppy cannot sleep if I wake him up every few minutes coughing!

Tags: wellness, Takayasu's Arteritis, fibromyalgia, autoimmune kidney disease, IgA Nephropathy, chest cold