Medical Update
Yesterday’s doctor appointment was a bit interesting. There is some good news and some bad news.
I guess for starters I will go with the bad. The concern of my weight loss is continuing. I lost another 3 pounds, course we have to remember that this is over a month’s time. To me, that should be a good thing, but unfortunately the doctor doesn’t see it that way because I’m not ‘trying’ to lose any weight. I suppose as many times as I have tried to loose weight and been pretty unsuccessful, I should understand his concern, but I’m happy to be loosing it. Anyhow, to make sure that it’s just the disease (or the meds) doing this to me and not something else I have to have a full lab work up. What does this entail? Pap, mammogram, colonoscopy, and all kinds of blood work. I’m so thrilled about this that I’m jumping for joy too. As I have stated I’m not too great with the whole blood/needle thing, and sorry, the other three are just plain uncomfortable. Well, I don’t know about the colonoscopy, I only know what I have heard from my dad, and it doesn’t sound very fun to me.
My T-cell count is at 235. Not good. I think it’s been over 300 once or twice in the last 11 years, but being that I started these new medications I thought it would go up at least a little bit. Fact, it went down, granted only a couple points, but it went down all the same.
Last part of the bad news is that my back is down right killing me. Of course it wasn’t hurting this bad yesterday when I was actually at the doctor’s, but that is normally the way things go. I mean there was a tinge of pain yesterday, nothing major though. I managed to work today; mostly because I would have felt guilty for not going in, being that we had some big wigs visiting today. I don’t think I’ll be so lucky tomorrow. I don’t recall doing anything that would have caused my back to flair up like this, but there is no telling. Sometimes I do things I shouldn’t just because I don’t realize I’m doing it. If that makes any sense.
On to the good news! My viral load is down below 50,000. This is phenomenal for me, because at one point it was as high as 200,000. It has never been so low EVER. At least one of the medications seems to be working. The kicker here is that had they taken both the viral and tcell count at the same time, my tcell count may have gone up. I don’t know why they didn’t think of that, but anyway.
The doctor decided because of my financial situation that it would be better for me to go on medication to help bring my cholesterol down. Phew. He said I still need to ‘watch’ what I eat and try to cut down on some of the higher cholesterol foods that I’m used to eating, and I should start the medication sometime next month hopefully. (I have to go through the whole patient assistance program, and it takes time.) It’s called prevacaid. I have never heard of it, so if anyone out there has ever tried it, let me know how it works.
The only other good news is that the doc said I looked great, but he always says that. (Even when I’m sick and I REALLY look like death warmed over.)
I think there was more bad news than good. I don’t think I like that too much. Lol.
Hopefully, depending how my back is treating me over the new few days I will be putting up a new and improved whiteflyer.blogspot. I’m not expert at HTML, and it took me a few days to figure the coding out for these blogs, but I think I have done it. I have been working on some graphics, and we’ll see what happens. I still have a bit of tweaking to do, but last night when I was fooling around with it in Front Page, I got tickled to death whenever I previewed it in the web browser and it looked exactly the way I wanted it too.
Well, I’m off to soak in a hot tub, take some happy, happy pills and put myself in a self induced comma until this back problem goes away. Sucky part of all this is other than my back hurting so bad, I feel great. I hate it when that happens.
I guess for starters I will go with the bad. The concern of my weight loss is continuing. I lost another 3 pounds, course we have to remember that this is over a month’s time. To me, that should be a good thing, but unfortunately the doctor doesn’t see it that way because I’m not ‘trying’ to lose any weight. I suppose as many times as I have tried to loose weight and been pretty unsuccessful, I should understand his concern, but I’m happy to be loosing it. Anyhow, to make sure that it’s just the disease (or the meds) doing this to me and not something else I have to have a full lab work up. What does this entail? Pap, mammogram, colonoscopy, and all kinds of blood work. I’m so thrilled about this that I’m jumping for joy too. As I have stated I’m not too great with the whole blood/needle thing, and sorry, the other three are just plain uncomfortable. Well, I don’t know about the colonoscopy, I only know what I have heard from my dad, and it doesn’t sound very fun to me.
My T-cell count is at 235. Not good. I think it’s been over 300 once or twice in the last 11 years, but being that I started these new medications I thought it would go up at least a little bit. Fact, it went down, granted only a couple points, but it went down all the same.
Last part of the bad news is that my back is down right killing me. Of course it wasn’t hurting this bad yesterday when I was actually at the doctor’s, but that is normally the way things go. I mean there was a tinge of pain yesterday, nothing major though. I managed to work today; mostly because I would have felt guilty for not going in, being that we had some big wigs visiting today. I don’t think I’ll be so lucky tomorrow. I don’t recall doing anything that would have caused my back to flair up like this, but there is no telling. Sometimes I do things I shouldn’t just because I don’t realize I’m doing it. If that makes any sense.
On to the good news! My viral load is down below 50,000. This is phenomenal for me, because at one point it was as high as 200,000. It has never been so low EVER. At least one of the medications seems to be working. The kicker here is that had they taken both the viral and tcell count at the same time, my tcell count may have gone up. I don’t know why they didn’t think of that, but anyway.
The doctor decided because of my financial situation that it would be better for me to go on medication to help bring my cholesterol down. Phew. He said I still need to ‘watch’ what I eat and try to cut down on some of the higher cholesterol foods that I’m used to eating, and I should start the medication sometime next month hopefully. (I have to go through the whole patient assistance program, and it takes time.) It’s called prevacaid. I have never heard of it, so if anyone out there has ever tried it, let me know how it works.
The only other good news is that the doc said I looked great, but he always says that. (Even when I’m sick and I REALLY look like death warmed over.)
I think there was more bad news than good. I don’t think I like that too much. Lol.
Hopefully, depending how my back is treating me over the new few days I will be putting up a new and improved whiteflyer.blogspot. I’m not expert at HTML, and it took me a few days to figure the coding out for these blogs, but I think I have done it. I have been working on some graphics, and we’ll see what happens. I still have a bit of tweaking to do, but last night when I was fooling around with it in Front Page, I got tickled to death whenever I previewed it in the web browser and it looked exactly the way I wanted it too.
Well, I’m off to soak in a hot tub, take some happy, happy pills and put myself in a self induced comma until this back problem goes away. Sucky part of all this is other than my back hurting so bad, I feel great. I hate it when that happens.
posted by Mrs. T at 1:26 PM
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