The past came to visit again today. As I sat in the waiting room of my rheumatology clinic, eavesdropping on the pharmaceutical rep check in at the window, asking for my doctor and one other, and making jokes that he'd chat with them for 45 minutes because they weren't busy or anything, I shrank down into myself in pain and wished for time to speed up. Instead, it went zipping backwards in a heartbeat. Or rather, a downbeat. I don't know who controls the music station that they played in the waiting room, but it seemed to be aimed at the proper demographic, for once. Those of us who need rheumatologists tend to be of a certain age, and the music station was standards and oldies. After Elvis and something else from the 60s, they played Goldfinger. For a few brief minutes, I was 13 years old, the summer before my freshman year of high school, standing shoulder to shoulder with every musician in the marching band in one giant line, getting ready to step off of the sideline in my first show rehearsal. For once the memory didn't center on how great the arrangements of Bond songs were. It was a wistful remembrance of my young body that didn't hurt just sitting in a chair. Those were the days.
When I left that clinic, another window into the past opened up, just for a quick second. I passed a woman sitting one chair over from where I had been, who had her head down, filling out paperwork. Her once-blonde hair, that was turning silver, was twisted high on her head in a bun, and the shape of her skull, the glimpse of her face, my guess at her age and weight, all gelled together in an instant to convince me that was my great-grandmother sitting in that chair. I was walking as quickly as I could (so not really fast), and was already two steps past her by the time I understood what my brain was telling me, and I wanted to turn around and study her to see whether the impression had any relation to her actual appearance. But I didn't want to intrude on her private medical business, nor appear rude by staring at her, and most of all, I didn't want to find out whether she really looked like Granny or not. In my heart, I passed her and that was good enough for me.
My appointment went well. I unloaded all of my complaints on my doctor, and she treated me like everything was valid, even if not all of it was actionable evidence. She made me feel better, just for listening to me. Today was a milestone, in that after more than a year and a half, she is ready to make the official diagnosis of fibromyalgia (in addition to the lupus, not instead of). So now we proceed with a more complex treatment plan. We are trying a new thing that a friend of mine suggested (a friend who isn't prone to recommending snake oil, whose idea passed the initial sniff test). I have to pay out of pocket for a compounded specialty product that is supposed to block opioid receptors in the brain, that in super low doses is supposed to force my body to produce more of its own endorphins to compensate. As long as I take this, I can't take standard pain pills. My doc has very few patients who have taken this route, so I am going to be one of the guinea pigs. But I volunteered for this, and I'm willing to report back to her and to my friend, so that other people can decide whether it's worth the risks for their own situations. I start it next week, and I hope to have some preliminary data to offer within a few weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment